A ski area expansion at Aspen Mountain has given many inbounds skiers and riders the chance to experience the chutes, glades and powder stashes of a zone now called “Hero’s.”
The expert-oriented terrain, historically referred to as Pandora’s, was frequented by backcountry skiers before the Aspen Skiing Company installed a chairlift and added the terrain to their trail maps.
Now, it’s more accessible to people within the designated ski area, but has limited access points to the backcountry due to a closed boundary around most of its perimeter.
It’s one of a few exceptions to Aspen Skiing Company’s open boundary policy, which allows people to exit and reenter the resort at almost any point, as long as they’re traveling through open inbounds terrain and aren’t trespassing when they leave. SkiCo requests and encourages people to use backcountry access gates, but doesn't mandate it along most boundaries.
In Hero’s, however, people who want to exit the ski area for backcountry touring must use a gate near the top of the chairlift. And they can only return to the zone at the same point or another gate further down the slope, on the Buddy System trail that links to a public easement.
Aspen Journalism contributor Elizabeth Stewart-Severy looked into the matter for a story last month.
“The easement language does say that it's for ingress and egress coming in and out of the ski area,” Stewart-Severy said in an interview with Aspen Public Radio. “But SkiCo has closed … the road going out.”
Stewart-Severy said that public easement isn’t the most popular place to enter the backcountry. The skiing is better, and easier to get to, from the top of the hill.
But she found that some people were concerned on a matter of principle, because the closed boundary limits public access to the backcountry in a zone that used to be the “poster child” for flexible entry and exit from the ski area.
Stewart-Severy said she sensed some “weariness” about the change as part of a larger, cultural push and pull between competing interests in the community.
“The reason that people care about this is because Pandora's was the spot where that open boundary policy was needed and was used and was celebrated,” she said.
Stewart-Severy found that the closure was partly a response to a request from private property owners, who have land just outside the skier’s right rope line next to the “Starwalk” run — but people aren’t supposed to trespass there anyways.
On the bottom border of the terrain, Stewart-Severy reported that officials were more concerned about skier safety and protections for wildlife.
Some of the challenging, complex slopes below Hero’s spill into a closed section of the North Star Nature Preserve. And while there is signage reminding people about the consequences of that terrain, the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office still gets calls from people who find themselves in trouble out of bounds. Just last weekend, crews had to conduct an evening rescue for two out-of-bounds skiers who were on the terrain below the Hero’s chairlift without adequate clothing or equipment.
