Fifty years of passion for the mountain
Before there was Snowmass as we know it today, there was Snowmass-at-Aspen, which officially opened to skiers on Saturday, Dec. 16, 1967. But for those born and raised in the Brush Creek Valley, Snowmass was never Aspen. Even now, as Snowmass marks its 50th anniversary this season, those who come of age on the slopes of Aspen Skiing Company’s fourth resort are celebrating Snowmass as its own special place.
“I’ve skied around the world, and Snowmass is still the best ski area there is,” said Jesse Caparella, a lifetime Aspen Skiing Co. employee who has a run named for him at Snowmass.
During the Hayden Survey in the late 1800s — right around the time when a wave of ranchers and farmers from the Midwest arrived — an area the Ute Indian Tribe called Cold Woman was renamed Snowmass for the abundance of year-round snow between its two summits, Burnt and Baldy mountains. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that anyone started to think about skiing it.
After ski racer William Janss visited Aspen in 1941 to compete in the National Alpine Championships, the Los Angeles-based land developer returned to the area with his sights set on creating a European-style ski resort in 1958. Famed architect Fritz Bene-
dict was enlisted to design the base area lodges, and Aspen Skiing Co. was brought on board to build and run all mountain operations. Tapped to train and direct the new ski school was the legendary skier Stein Eriksen.
In the years leading up to what Time magazine called “far and away, the biggest new winter resort to be developed since Alec Cushing built up Squaw Valley for the 1960 Olympics,” a posse of powder pioneers ripped around the hills to learn every acre and help ready the terrain.
Most of those skiers worked only 9 miles away on Aspen Mountain. D.R.C. Brown, then president of Aspen Skiing Co., commissioned them to make the move to Snowmass. Ski school instructor Jim “Sneaky” Snobble received a summons: “You’re done with ski school. Go to Snowmass and start studying Snowmass,” the Snowmass Sun reported at the time.
Among his main crew were Bill Mason, Tom Marshall, Don Rayburn and Hal Hartman. While taking visitors from Aspen to ski fresh tracks, they were also charged with determining the feasibility of building the ski resort, scoping terrain and cutting ski trails.
As part of a season-long anniversary celebration, gold trail signs with the Snowmass 50th anniversary logo will mark runs from its inaugural ski season, many of which were named for the “ski-niks” — what The Denver Post dubbed the area’s original ski bums in 1965.
This season, skiers and snowboarders can start on Sneaky’s in honor of Snobble, who passed away in 2006, before taking turns down Hal’s Hollow, named for Hartman and his son, Hal Hartman Jr., who followed in his father’s footsteps. Now 62, Hartman Jr. was among the first to ski Snowmass when his dad drove him around the mountain on the first snowcat, prior to Aspen Skiing Co.’s tours.
Hartman still lives in the log cabin he built himself along Snowmass Creek after graduating from high school. “I was raised skiing powder,” he said. “My dad and uncle Nicky were the original snowcat ski guides before Jim (Snobble) showed up.”
With the building of the resort underway, Hartman remembers doing daily rounds with his dad.
“He attached me to a rope tied around his waist and dragged me all over the mountain and the base pointing out, ‘There’s going to be a lift up there, a restaurant here, a lodge over there someday,’ ” he said. “I didn’t believe him, but it happened fast. By 1967, I thought the world was coming to an end and we were going to run out of powder.”
Skiers this season can also wind their way down Whispering Jesse, which is named for Caparella, who started working on Aspen Mountain in 1954.
Caparella, 79, formerly retired in 2010 as a lift manager at Snowmass but still works summer seasons on the mountain. About Whispering Jesse, he said with a laugh, “They used to say I was the least quiet person known on the mountain.”
He recalled opening day at Snowmass. “We were working around the clock, still putting up the chairs on the lifts that morning.”
Now his grandson works for Aspen Skiing Co. in Snowmass, where Caparella visits him throughout the season.
“Back then, we all knew it was going to grow but could never have imagined what it would look like now,” Caparella said. “You can’t stop progress, and as far as the skiing goes, there’s even more terrain they can open up on the mountain someday.”
For the families that first planted roots in Snowmass, lifetime legacies and generations carrying them on are ingrained in the community’s character. The Town of Snowmass was incorporated in 1977, just a year before journalist and member of Snowmass’ 50th Anniversary host committee Britta Gustafson was born.
In a recent column for the Snowmass Sun, she wrote, “Local legends circulate that the Ute once called Brush Creek ‘The Valley of the Lost Souls,’ because anyone who tries to leave is destined to return.”
Gustafson’s parents moved to Snowmass in the late 1960s, she said, “In a green van with a cat, a dog and $8,” and still live there. Gustafson, 39, returned after attending the University of Colorado and is now raising two kids of her own. Her mother started the Snow Cubs ski school program, where she learned to ski. But her favorite memory is running around the back rooms of the family owned-and-operated Gwyn’s High Alpine during lunch breaks.
“Their family always made it feel like it was an extension of our living rooms,” Gustafson said.
George Gordon and his then-wife Gwyn first took over the mid-mountain institution in 1979, which in 2016 underwent a $5.9 million remodel headed by Jim “Gus” Gustafson, principal of Z Group Architects. It feels the same today with its owner’s daughter, Whitney Gordon Stalker, who also returned to Snowmass after graduating from CU, now managing it.
“We have one of the most tight-knit, supportive communities in the world that consists of not only the locals that I grew up with, but an ever-returning loyal clientele that have become part of our family — some four generations deep,” Gordon Stalker said.
Only adding to the significance of the golden anniversary is the muchanticipated green light of the $600 million redevelopment in Snowmass Base Village, including a third Limelight Hotel property and the Lost Forest, an on-mountain adventure park for the summer — both slated for completion in 2018.
“As we celebrate 50 years this season, it’s exciting to see the original vision and potential of Snowmass finally become a reality,” said Mike Kaplan, CEO of Aspen Skiing Co.
Snowmass will likely see even more growth in the next 50 years. But Gustafson finds solace in the magic of the summit that started it all. “While everything else in the world is always changing, our mountain has stayed the same.”