Aces in Aspen

Aspen, Colorado
Skiable acreage 3,132 (Snowmass), 1,028 (Aspen Highlands),
673 (Ajax), 470 (Buttermilk)
Famous residents Jack Nicholson, the late Hunter S. Thompson
Iconic run Anything on the Highland Bowl, in Aspen Highlands
Must-have accessory Prada ski jacket

CONFESSION: I'm A TERRIBLE SKIER. An ex-boyfriend had me pick up the sport a few years ago as what turned out to be a tortured bonding experience, one that nearly ended our relationship. He insisted on guiding me down a too-difficult, tree-strewn ice patch. I walked down. There were tears.

So when a girlfriend in the East proposed a meet-in-the-middle getaway in Aspen, I was torn. I love the boasting rights attached to skiing legendary slopes, but my more practical side also cherishes an intact spinal cord. Some athletes visualize the glorious arcing curves they carve down the sheer face of Ajax; I see a rolling, growing snowball with me as its warm, gooey centre.

Then my friend reminded me that the last time she had donned skis they were straight as sticks and her Spyder jacket featured swaths of hot pink and fluorescent yellow. In other words, we were even. I booked the flight.

A mix of excitement, terror and Aspen’s thin air gets us up early our first day to be greeted by the smiling face of Women’s Edge organizer Barb Hurwitz. Her warm laugh and gentle tone assure me that she won’t be tricking me into doing the Ridge of Bell run before I’m ready. And despite my fears that my last year’s ski jacket and snowboard pants will peg me as a fair-weather ski girl, I’m relieved to see that this crew is decidedly ski-bunny-free. Barb’s affection for both the sport and us is infectious. To a chorus of “No bumps!” we hit the lifts and I tentatively demonstrate my boyfriend-taught skills down the first easy run.

I learn quickly that, first, I should never have taken lessons from a boyfriend and, second, I’m not as bad as I thought. A videographer films us so we can analyze our form, a great excuse to escape the blizzard that’s descended. The cameraman is a sweet-natured grump who doles out Kleenex and mini chocolate bars as we enter his warm little hut. Stance analyzed, faults corrected—a little more one-on-one girl instruction time and I’m feeling like an ace on skis as I kick down blues and blacks and leave my reluctant self somewhere back on the Cloud 9 lift. (Though a later attempt to repeat my magnificent form back home in B.C. confirms what makes Aspen so magical: the soft and weightless snow, even in the dead of February, that made my newfound grace effortless.)

My ease on the slopes conflicts with my confusion about this place. Aspen is an exercise in contrasts. The celebrity playground of fur-rimmed boots and Prada ski suits plays against the down-to-earth on-mountain amenities, which have yet to morph into the Disneylandesque realm of other big-name resorts. For our first lunch on the hill we attack a raclette of potatoes, ham and gooey cheese in Cloud 9 on Aspen Highlands, which has all the retro elements (roaring fires, rough-hewn wood tables crowded together under a shack of a tin roof (of a mountain lodge circa 1940. Another day, at celeb-magnet Bonnie’s on Ajax, we dig into creamy white-bean chili sprinkled with cheddar and splurge on a mile-high apple strudel. As I fork in another mouthful of sweet local apples and cream, I shoulder check that I’m not in some SoCal slow-food hipster joint. A leopard-print unitarded goddess in oversize sunglasses is the only clue we’re in Aspen.

A girlfriends’ getaway can’t be all ski, no play, so our last day we take it slow: breakfast in town at the famed Montagna in the Little Nell hotel, where star chef Ryan Hardy literally draws from his own harvest—he took over part of the Nell’s wine cellar for his own cheeses and prosciutto. Over a third cup of coffee and some lemony souffléd pancakes, we decide to head straight to an après-ski massage.

As my therapist at the Aspen Club and Spa places perfumey herbal hot packs around my shoulders, hands and feet, I float back to that last time down the steeps of Robinson’s Run, pausing to take in the sun hitting the Maroon Bells in the distance. I continue down, all the way back home to the ice and trees that ended in tears so many years ago. This time, I’m dancing among them. wl