Fresh snow fell Sunday as skiers and snowboarders tore down Aspen Mountain for their final runs of Aspen Skiing Company’s 75th season.
In the time since industrialist Walter Paepcke co-founded the company in 1946, the slopes have drawn ski bums and billionaires from around the world, and the face of Aspen has changed several times over.
The changes have made it harder for company employees to live where they work, and the accelerating climate crisis threatens the very future of the industry.
Throughout Sunday, the crowd was more subdued than the one at Aspen Highlands' closing day, April 10, but there were still colorful characters, excited for a proper closing day after two years of COVID-related restrictions.
“Call me Flash Montgomery!” yelled skier Josh Montgomery as he jumped onto and slid across a picnic table, barely catching his balance as he landed before toppling a couple yards later.
“I am The Flash!” he shouted over his shoulder as he whizzed down the slope.
Asked his name, a man dressed as the furry Star Wars character Chewbacca issued a series of guttural growls and moans.
He eventually introduced himself as David McConaughy, a resident of Glenwood Springs.
“For me, it's not like a die-hard tradition to come to closing day, but this year, somehow, it seemed special,” he said. “Because we couldn’t for the last two years.”
McConaughy has lived in Glenwood Springs for 24 years, nearly one-third of the time that SkiCo has existed. In those years, higher property prices and increased development have crept downvalley from Aspen.
“Well, the view from across from my house used to be an empty field, and now it's a bunch of houses,” he said. “But, you know, other people get to enjoy living here, too. So that's all good — maybe not all good, but good for them.”
In Aspen, speculative investment and gentrification over the decades have pushed up the cost of living, forcing many lower-income residents — including employees of SkiCo — to live farther downvalley, in places such as Glenwood Springs.
SkiCo has raised wages in recent years, but its workers still struggle to make ends meet in a place as expensive as the Roaring Fork Valley.
John Beezer, a longtime ski patroller for SkiCo, has lived in the valley for more than 35 years. He was surprised to run into two reporters in the Aspen Mountain gondola on his day off.
Asked what SkiCo could do better, he laughed, saying, “You're trying to get me in trouble with my employer.”
He added: “I think (SkiCo) is probably the best place to work, if you're going to work for a ski area in the industry. We are treated well. It's been a dream to live here and work for them. On the other hand, if you were looking to grow your wealth, it's probably not going to happen doing what I do.”
At Aspen Highlands on April 10, lifties Kevin and Jackson tended a grill. But it wasn’t just a closing-day celebration.
“We’re grilling some food so we don't starve,” Jackson said. “We can't really afford food, so we buy meat once a week just to grill down here.”
“We grill 60 hotdogs every Wednesday,” Kevin said.
At Aspen Mountain, Beezer acknowledged that it has always been expensive to live in Aspen, “but I think it's gotten tougher.”
“I mean, let's face it, it's expensive to live here,” he said. “And it always was, but you found a way to do it.”
Recruiting and retaining labor, Beezer said, has become an ever-more vexing problem for SkiCo over the past 75 years, and the pandemic has made it worse.
“The pandemic has created a shortage of workers. That's a changing dynamic for sure, and the ski company is trying. I know that they've bumped their wages up,” he said. “But, yeah, that's going to be a huge, huge problem going forward. There are people at McDonald's getting paid as much as people that have worked here for a long time. And that's tough. Although I'll say this is a hell of a lot more fun than McDonald's, I hope.”
Municipal governments across the valley have invested in affordable-housing projects, and the Colorado Legislature this session has pushed a number of bills to expand affordable housing across the state.
Aspen and Pitkin County, for their part, are exploring how best to regulate short-term rentals, which contribute to higher housing costs by reducing the supply of long-term units while boosting property prices.
The lack of affordable housing in mountain towns and the related labor shortage have taken a toll on the ski industry, but there is an even more existential threat — the climate crisis.
Beezer said he has already noticed shorter, warmer Colorado winters in the nearly four decades he has lived here.
“This has been a great snow year, but there have been years in the past when we've skied on a ribbon of snow to try to get to the bottom,” he said. “And that was awful, and it shouldn't be happening.”
SkiCo has been vocal about the threat of climate change. The company created an executive-level position dedicated to sustainability, invested money in initiatives to reduce the severity of the crisis and, recently, unveiled a work of art inspired by the accelerating crisis: A sculpture of a melting gondola now adorns the top of Aspen Mountain.
On Sunday, though, at the top of the minds of most people on the mountain was making the most of the first ski season since the pandemic's arrival in early 2020 that felt somewhat normal.
Kyle Blank moved to the valley three years ago.
“Our first season got cut short when I was here, but then last season, we had the mask mandate,” he said. “And so this season was kind of a sense of freedom. We actually were able to express ourselves, have fun and not really worry too much about COVID, fortunately.”
He called Ajax “a skier's buffet,” with a variety of terrain and runs from which to choose.
“You can catch me in the trees anytime,” he said.
Snow began falling Sunday afternoon as hundreds of people filled the Sundeck Restaurant to drink and listen to live music. The fresh powder on top of the mountain gave way to patches of spring slush as skiers and snowboarders finished their last runs until November.
SkiCo’s 75th season is over. It’s unclear if there will be 75 more.
Editor’s note: This story was produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps, which is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
