Sports + Skiing + SnowBoarding + Hiking

Larger than the other three Aspen ski areas combined, Snowmass has a well-deserved reputation as an intermediate skier’s paradise. Look beyond the manicured cruiser runs of the Big Burn and Elk Camp, however, and you will find that Snowmass has some of the best and most varied expert terrain in Colorado.

High Altitude Golf at the Aspen Golf Club, Photo by Keith BarnholtIn the last twenty years, the golf scene in the Roaring Fork Valley has gained nationwide prominence with the addition of exciting new courses with provocative challenges. However, this was not always the situation. There was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when the only course in Aspen was the Aspen Golf Club, notoriously frequented by a rowdy crowd more focused on imbibing adult beverages than chalking in a serious round. That era has passed, to some degree. Nowadays Carbondale and Glenwood Springs have attracted affluent retirees from around the country for private golf and fly fishing clubs, rustic residential communities, and an active four-season lifestyle of Rocky Mountain fun. Arnold Palmer is known to spend Christmas skiing at Snowmass, so the region can stake claim to some sort of atmospheric magnetism for golfers.

A hiker in awe-struck contemplation at the top of the Ute Trail
In the 1879, the U.S. Army chased the native Ute Indians away from their ancient hunting grounds in the Roaring Fork and Crystal River Valleys to make way for settlement and mining. However, before exiting Colorado for the rugged deserts of Utah, the Ute are rumored to have placed a curse on the Western Slope, mystically bewitching the land while handing it over to the white man and decrying the region would never make him truly happy. This old tidbit of Wild West folklore is occasionally applied to ski bums who take a semester off from college or med school for a winter with the intentions of going back but end up staying in the Roaring Fork Valley for 50 years trying to slap together a career as a bartender, barista, or lift operator. I’ve even heard the term referenced to overzealous developers and real estate agents pimping magnificent multimillion-dollar estates on once-sacred land who abandon their principles in the covetous process of building, buying, land acquisition, and ego conquest.

Crouch. Touch. Pause. Engage. And drink beer, preferably dark and most certainly plentiful: it’s important to stay hydrated during Aspen Ruggerfest. Guinness and Stout, two seasoned rugger Rottweilers, lay on the sidelines basking in the sunshine while Scott Poindexter from Colorado’s Harlequins walks by shaking his head.