Aspen | Snowmass

Our next stop was the next resort on our Mountain Collective ski pass, Apsen.  We preceded the trip to Aspen from Breckenridge by breaking down (surprise! not.) and then by stopping in Carbondale to vist our friend Will from college.  It seems that a great deal of our college friends have migrated to Colorado in the recent years.  Carbondale seems like a very cool town from the short time we spent there, and it was great to catch up with Will and meet his girlfriend, Lucy.  After a nice sleep outside of their apartment, we were on the road to Aspen.  We were lucky enough to arrive at Apsen-Highlands on skier appreciation day, which meant free muffins and parking, score!  We skied some nice groomers and then decided to get a workout by hiking up to Highlands bowl.  We felt terribly out of shape as we headed up the bootpack.  Finally, we arrived at the summit, and we were rewarded for our hard work!  There was awesome powder and very few people in the bowl.  We had a great ski down, but unfortunately arrived too late for the free hot dogs at the base of the bowl.  Drat!  We were pretty tired after the hike and skied a few more groomers before calling it a day.
We heard that sleeping in our vehicle in Aspen might be a challange so we headed way out into a canyon to a cool trailhead where we took the dogs on a really pretty snowshoe.  Soon it was dark and we crawled into the van for one of our epic 14 hour sleeping sessions.  The next day was filled with frisbee with the dogs and various different hikes as we searched for some neat trailheads in the area.  We managed to sleep closer to town that night, in the parking lot at one of the bus stops.  The next morning began a little warmly as we headed up to Aspen-Snowmass (there are four different Aspen mountains, it is a bit confusing to figure out at first).  It was a super warm day and we both hit rocks right after getting off the first lift.  The first half of the day was a bit frustrating as we struggled with the conditions, so we headed for lunch.  After lunch, things got a lot better as we explored different parts of the mountain and we ended up skiing until last chair.  All in all, we really enjoyed the mountains, and we were really jealous about all the snow that fell soon after we left.  Our timing seems to be really off on this trip, it keeps snowing after we leave! So if you are looking for good snow, just pay attention to where we are and go there about a week later!