Time travel
Aspen Snowmass, Colorado, celebrates 75 years of skiing
Offering some of Colorado’s best powder snow and a glamorous apres-ski scene, Aspen Snowmass has been a firm winter favourite with the rich and famous for decades. But it wasn’t always the mountain playground we know today.
With its beginnings in mining in 1880, it suddenly morphed into a Wild West boom town producing a sixth of the nation’s silver. When the industry declined from 1893, the population plummeted.
But the idea that skiing could change Aspen’s fortunes was discussed from
1936, the birth year of the Roaring Fork Winter Sports Club.
A decade later, the Aspen Skiing Company was set up and Aspen Mountain’s Lift-1, the world’s longest chairlift at the time, was launched.
Second World War veteran Friedl Pfeifer worked with Chicagoans Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke who helped finance the corporation which paved the way for the modern Aspen.
Pfeifer went on to co-found the Aspen Ski School and was inducted into the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of fame in 1980.
Pioneering in many ways, in 1950
Aspen hosted the first ever FIS World Ski Championships held outside Europe, putting it on the global skiing map.
In 1977 it also hosted the first ever gay ski week and three years later, Aspen became the first municipality in Colorado to secure gay rights protections, kicking off a long history of LGBTQ advocacy.
In 1986, The Silver Queen was installed – the longest single stage gondola in the world connecting downtown with the 11,211ft summit.
Spread over four mountains – Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass – there are 337 ski runs. Big on sustainability, solar energy is widely used and a decommissioned mine has been transfigured into a plant that converts leaked methane into electricity.
To celebrate 75 years of fun in the snow, Aspen Snowmass is hosting a series of events, including the 2022 X Games Aspen, now in its 21st year, and the Audi Power of Four Mountaineering Ski Race, as well as a three-night celebration.
aspensnowmass.com
Need a cheap sleep at Christmas? Travelodge has released 150,000 rooms for £29 or less across its 582 UK
hotels for the 12 days of festive fun. A family room caters for two adults and two children making it £7.25 per person.
travelodge.co.uk