SKIING IN ASPEN
Because we were by now canyon shy and deserted to the fill, we were in the vicinity of Aspen two days early. Now you may say great, more skiing. As the financial director of this circus on wheels I would say - NO CHANCE.
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Our hotel in Aspen, at the height of the season, Presidents Day Weekend no less (think August Bank Holiday with bells on) was what you might call mouth wateringly expensive. I am not going to disclose the cost (£340 a night and no breakfast). Therefore we looked at hotels in a wider and wider band around Aspen and finally settle on a town called Rifle, a mere 1.5 hours drive away, I kid you not. And we booked three nights.
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Rifle was an eye opener. Small town, cattle ranching country, cold, austere, and deeply odd. We stayed at a bog standard Holiday Inn sort of place and boy! It was proper weird. There was not a single soul in the hotel who I would describe as normal. Everyone had issues, they were either bloody ginormous, had several kids with disorders (to add to the parents obvious disorders), were dressed as tramps, were actually tramps, or were what looked like classic drug addicts.
Having booked in and enjoyed the best wings in town at Wingchesters, just across from Kum&Go (great name) Sara succeeded in her wish to dine in a proper saloon, long bar, assorted cow punchers lining said bar, we made plans to drive the 90 minutes to Aspen the following day. Obviously not mentioning to our fellow hotel guests that we saw ourselves as 'Aspen quality folk', although I doubt that they would have either understood our 'Australian' accents, or had any clue where, what or why Aspen was.
So we escaped to sanity - of another weird sort. Our first sight of said Aspen was the airport. F'ing hell!! We have never seen so many private jets in one place! We are talking tiny airport, small parking area, twin engine jets everywhere (no little one engine buggers, def no props), there must have been a hundred. Then one crashed while were there and they were stuck for ages - he, he.
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It was a good move to drive up early. Aspen was stunning, it really lived up to expectations. We drove up the valley in bright sunshine, parked at our future hotel in Buttermilk, chosen because it hosted the easiest slopes for miles around, and took the bus into Aspen town. Lovely place. Real money, real style, quite quiet though.
On an impulse we paid for visitors passes for the ride to the summit and enjoyed a few hours in a typical European style alpine setting with deckchairs, booze (yes, American’s actually drinking and skiing, whatever next). Music, good looking people and characters like ‘Turtle Man’.
Yup, Sara had been very disappointed in Costa Rica at not getting a tick for turtle in her I-spy book of wildlife, but she cracked it here at 10,000 feet up an ice-cold mountain. Not the turtle’s normal habitat I agree, but there they were, two of the little darlings, and would you believe it? Turtle Man had taught them to ‘high-five’, I kid you not. And they are NOT tortoises. Shell shape.
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It was at about this time we realised that having been a aware of the possibility of ‘altitude sickness’ at the giddy height of 7,500ft in Mexico City we were now at the positively dangerous height of 10,000ft! We even met a recent arrival who had just recovered from three days vomiting as a result of said sickness. !0,000ft is bloody high. St Anton in Austria is at 5,000ft. In wartime pilots use oxygen from 8,000ft. We were lucky having spent the best part of a week driving up to this height so apart from some breathlessness we were OK. Pity the Turtles!
Back down the road to Rifle, and on the next day, a rest day, we visited the local attractions, a falls and another half empty dam. Frozen solid with added ice fisherman. Very picturesque. Very cold.
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Finally the actual day dawned, the day to book into the Inn at Aspen, Did I mention £340 a night (NOT including breakfast). Cheap at the price. We stopped off on the way to look round a small pretty town called Glenwood Springs to stretch our legs. Remember please that we were travelling really light and only had hot weather clothes plus one Uniqlo down jacket each, so NO ski clothes at all. We were planning to hire the works for $150 each. Well we parked in a random space, got out, and walked straight into the only shop for a hundred miles that sold cheap ski gear! Like kids in sweetshop! Proper branded ski jackets £30! Within a few minutes we were both kitted out for pennies, the works. The only downside was that when we left we had to abandon it all to the hotel maids to give it a good home, not much use to us for Mardis Gras or in Florida in 30 degrees in March!!!
So fully kitted out we booked into our room. Great result in that we were given a ground floor room with a patio, that let out onto the slopes, about 50ft short of the lift, Proper 'Ski in-Ski out'. Hire the skis and we were off. Check the lift passes - and WOWSERS! No wonder there were no queues for the flipping lifts! $230 a day! Per adult! We knew in advance that it was going to be pricey, what we hadn't banked on was it being Presidents Day Weekend. No matter, we played on the beginners slopes and bought half-day passes instead!
After three great days all that remained was the last 200 miles to Denver, making 1,300 miles in all - Road-trip!!! Drop the car, up at 0400 for the flight to New Orleans for Mardis Gras for five days. Plus some warmth! To show you how cold it was the picture on the left is the guys de-icing our plane. Three of those rigs took 15 minutes to get us ready!
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The picture above is our balcony, so you can see how close it was to the lifts.
It was great. We both thoroughly enjoyed the skiing, which as I had felt I was at the end of my skiing career due to two dodgy knees, was quite a result.
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We had just two falls and a submission, the submission being us both sprawling in a pile as we came off the main lift as people skied over us. No injuries.
