History, glamour, drama and views for days: A trip to a glamorous winter playground in Aspen

Is there a doctor in the house?

Turns out there was — and he was in the DJ booth.

Only in Aspen, I discovered, when dropping into a charity event 11,000 feet high the other week, in the glamorous winter playground set amidst the Elk Mountains of Colorado. Having been to a few parties in my time, this was a first: a fabulous swirl of about 200 stopping in their tracks about an hour into the thing when a young man collapsed right in the centre of the room. Servers with trays froze mid-canapé. Necks swirled in tandem, the party forming a kind of circle, as his girlfriend knelt beside him. A hush descending — like we were at a murder mystery party (except we were not). Or possibly a high-altitude riff on “The White Lotus.”

“One drink equals three drinks up here,” someone near me offered sotto voce. This, as I remembered the steep gondola ride a friend and I had taken (in the dark! aside from the winnowing lights of the town below!) to get to the private AspenX Members Club, where the shindig was on (a welcome party to kick off the annual Aspen Snow Ball Gala, sponsored by Balmain, and founded by film producer and philanthropist Thomas Pierce in support of the Children’s Oncology Support Fund).

As the ski patrol was dispatched, and others checked for a pulse, the DJ (who had been spinning “I Want to Dance With Somebody” just minutes before in a booth) sprung to action. Later, yes, I discovered he is an anesthesiologist and he helped get the poor guy upright after several tense minutes.

The man down had actually just run a marathon a few days prior: went one of the murmurs. Thankfully, by the time the ski patrol arrived, the guy was able to walk outta the room to get to a gondola, seemed all right — and the alpine bash continued. Sheepishly at first, but then with carpe diem zest (in this, a club, where hosting a wedding starts at a million dollars, I understand).

“I started the LinkedIn of dental hygiene,” a woman, for instance, was soon telling me — a local who had moved to Aspen from Georgia after her divorce and selling her company. Folding into another circle, I was introduced to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe (one of the honorees at the gala this year); another charismatic woman who used to be the American ambassador to Austria and a “Saltburn”-y man in a cowboy hat and python leather pants (they are faux, he advised). Soon enough, I was being sold on a luxury condo in Miami by a lass with a Brazilian accent.

Like all parties everywhere in this socio-economic sphere in 2024, the conversation in one part eventually turned to who was on Ozempic in the room, and notably so since last ski season. Tell me everything: my eyes narrowed.

“Small town feel … but very international.” So piped an Italian now living now in Aspen, reinforcing, finally, what I have always felt about this woodsy abyss from previous visits. Once a silver mining boom town — Aspen’s population peaked in 1893 at about 12,000 when there were 227 working mines — it had some sleepier decades and, later, became a sort of hippie magnet (countercultural icon and writer Hunter S. Thompson lived here for four decades but — as the legend goes — only went skiing once!).

In the 1980s, it began developing a ritzier rep, one it has never shaken since. This past Christmas season, as is a rite of passage, a storm of beanie-topped notables landed here — everyone from Jeff Bezos to Kendall Jenner and, of course, the unofficial celebrity ambassador of Aspen, Mariah Carey.

Spotted then at the famous Kemo Sabe shop, where cowboy hats average $700 (U.S.) a pop and there’s a party vibe all day long: Rihanna herself. (I checked it out — and it was wild! A hat store like no other.) Many revelled at the superfun Caribou Club (a plaid-clad English lodge that kinda mimics Annabel’s in London) and others inevitably glided through the Little Nell, one of the finest small hotels in America: a bastion of quiet luxury that remains an apres-ski classic, has one of the great wine cellars in the world and even recently became home to the first “ski in/ski out spa” in town.

The biggest buzz here, though, decades in the making? One less to do with schmooze than slopes: an expansion to Aspen Mountain that amounts to the first significant addition since the Silver Queen Gondola in 1985. Just debuted! A terrain previously called Pandora’s (as in Box) and now rechristened Hero’s (gotta love a rebrand), it is a 1,220-vertical-foot quad serving 153 acres, including double-black-diamond steeps and more mellow glades. Much debated, but finally a reality, this stretch. “Previously thought of as the great beyond,” it “has increasingly been discovered by in-the-know skiers looking for a taste of wild snow just over the boundary line,” as I read in the Aspen Times.

Visiting its top with a guide, I was informed that the new addition acts as a kind of hedge against climate change, given that it is north-facing and super high. Ideal for holding powder in seasons when snowfall is less frequent.

In eye-range: what they call the “continental divide.” And, over yonder, Mount Elbert, the highest peak in the Rockies. In my mind: the shrines paying homage to the likes of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John Denver (and, of course, Hunter S. Thompson) — some of the random mountain memorials sprinkled throughout the area. One of the quirks of Aspen!

Also, a reminder that Aspen is more than just flash (although there is that). While it remains a place where restaurants like Matsuhisa attract gluttons night after night, and the shopping scene rivals Rodeo Drive (everything from Valentino to Dior and, just freshly open, a 5,600-square-foot Gucci boutique), it is a place with a there there. Maybe it is its Old Hollywood connection that goes back to John Wayne? Maybe it is because here is a place where ideas have always flown, as evidenced by the existence of the Aspen Institute, created in 1949. Or maybe it is because it is a place out of time with the cutest opera house (the Wheeler, nee 1889) and the newer Aspen Art Museum, with its woven wood facade courtesy of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban.

History. Glamour. Just enough drama. And, of course, views for days.

Correction

This story has been edited to reflect the fact that the party guest who fainted was not married and that the team that responded was the ski patrol, not the snow patrol.