Updated Feb. 28, 2024 at 12:30 p.m.
ASPEN — Glistening in the sun, the landscape looks like it has been sprinkled with sugar. The chairlift passes over craggy mountains with clusters of spruce and fir trees, their branches laden with freshly fallen snow. Ten centimetres overnight! Every breath of wind makes delicate flakes dance over the untouched slopes. The nearer we get to the top station, which is surrounded by steep, 4,000-metre high peaks, the wider the smile on each skier’s face grows.
Today is one of the powder days for which Aspen, Colorado, is famous: when skiing down the slopes feels like gliding over cotton wool through an oversized snow globe. Champagne powder: that is what skiers and snowboarders call these soft, loose flakes, which fall gently from the sky in the dry altitude of the Rocky Mountains. There is nothing comparable in the Alps.
Because the region around Aspen has guaranteed snow for many months, the winter sports season here lasts until spring. All four ski mountains in Aspen stay open throughout March. With 42 lifts and gondolas transporting skiers to more than 300 pistes, no one has to wait around for more than a few minutes here. The area around Snowmass, Aspen’s highest ski mountain at 3,813 metres, is not due to close until Apr. 21.
“Early to rise, then get the first lift up the mountain!” That is what Klaus Obermeyer advised the night before this powder day, when dark clouds came rolling in and announced the coming snowstorm. Klaus Obermeyer’s words carry great weight in Aspen: no one knows the area better. He may have been born in 1919 in Oberstaufen, southern Germany, but he has been part of Aspen’s story since the late 1940s and was instrumental in transforming it into the most fashionable winter sport destination in the U.S.
As a young boy in Allgäu, he started skiing at the age of three, using improvised skis that his father had cobbled together for him by nailing slats from a wooden fruit box to an old pair of shoes. Klaus was talented and skied to school in winter. As a young man, he competed in skiing races and one day he also had to don his skis to flee the Nazis’ bloodhounds.
The Gestapo were aware of Obermeyer’s Jewish heritage. By then an aeronautical engineer, he was warned that he was about to be arrested and tried to flee over the mountains to Switzerland. He was discovered and shot, but escaped his pursuers by bravely jumping off the edge of a cliff. He broke his femur, but managed to ski to the nearest village, where the locals hid him and nursed him back to health.
Once a ghost town…
After the Second World War, Obermeyer’s talent as a skier took him to Aspen, where he realized his own personal American Dream – as the inventor of the down jacket. He is still a businessman today. His hair may be white as snow, but he is often to be found in his office at his sportswear company, keeping an eye on things. In December Obermeyer celebrated his 104th birthday here, with alpine horns and apple strudel. Across the road is Aspen Airport. It is packed with private jets – on some days there are so many parked here that there is not a single free space.
In 1947, when Obermeyer first arrived in Roaring Fork Valley, Aspen was not yet the glamorous Rocky Mountains hotspot that it is today, but a half-deserted ghost town. The doors of the opera house were barricaded, the bars were closed, the legendary Hotel Jerome was still nothing more than a budget hotel. “You could buy a plot of land for 30 dollars, and there were more stray dogs than people among the ruins,” says Obermeyer. But German industrialist couple Walter Paepcke and his wife Elizabeth had their eyes on the former capital of silver mining. They drew all kinds of intellectuals to the beautiful seclusion of the Rocky Mountains.
Small houses cost on average million.
The artistically inclined couple organized a Goethe symposium, which was attended by the “jungle doctor” Albert Schweitzer, who struggled with the thin air at altitude. They asked Bauhaus graphic designer Herbert Bayer to build a sun terrace at 3,417 metres, set up a music festival and founded the Aspen Institute. Along with the Austrian Friedl Pfeifer, investor Paepcke founded the Aspen Skiing Company in 1946, and in 1947 they opened their first lift and advertised for winter sport experts from Europe. One of these was Obermeyer, who was hired as a ski instructor.
At the time, there was no such thing as specialist skiwear. Obermeyer says he was always freezing when he made the half-hour journey up the ice-cold Aspen Mountain, so he made himself a down anorak from a quilt. “I looked awful, like a Michelin man. And for three weeks I was finding feathers in my breakfast,” he jokes. “But I wasn’t cold any more!”
One of his many students was the Hollywood actor Gary Cooper. He also wanted to avoid freezing on the chairlifts and ordered a down jacket for himself – and thus Obermeyer’s clothing business was born. Alongside skiwear, he has also developed a brake that is still used in ski bindings and brought out mirrored sunglasses and sunblock. The Americans love the man from Allgäu for his innovative inventions, but also for his personal success story: he has been inducted into the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.
Klaus Obermeyer is a living legend. At 101-years-old he is a man who has acquired a lot of wisdom. As a young man he witnessed the rise of Nazi fascism and e…
…now a destination for the rich
Aspen has been Obermeyer’s home for more than 75 years. In his early days, he taught many celebrities to ski, including Oscar-winner Ingrid Bergman: “She was nice, a good sport. But her husband! He hid behind the trees, because he didn’t trust the ski instructors.” The other stars who soon flocked to Aspen included the actor Jack Nicholson, the singer Cher and the songwriter John Denver.
Obermeyer was also there in the 1970s when young skiers in the Rocky Mountains started to spend the whole winter in skiing areas. These snow hippies included people like the Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who even ran for local sheriff, but lost out to a 28-year-old bartender.
The beautiful landscape and big names attracted other guests to Aspen, people who were not as cool but were very rich – for example, Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana. Today you can often find Paris Hilton, Kendall Jenner and Justin Bieber on the slopes, as well as countless multimillionaires.
As a year-round destination, Aspen has also become one of America’s most expensive towns. Small houses cost on average million, while large estates can go for 0 million. Anyone who is working a normal job in the area but doesn’t have subsidized housing is forced to commute long distances.
“When you keep skiing for longer, you live longer!”
And as a holidaymaker, it doesn’t hurt to have a healthy bank balance if you want to enjoy all Aspen has to offer. A room in one of the five-star resorts costs ,500 a night and it’s easy to splash out a few hundred dollars on Veuve Clicquot in the après-ski venues (nowhere else in the U.S. sells more of this brand of champagne than the Cloud Nine bar).
Those with a more modest budget have to look for deals: the resort has very little affordable accommodation, the prices are generally as high as in luxury ski resorts in Switzerland. But you can save some money if you eat dinner before 6 p.m.: some of the restaurants have special offers on pizzas and wraps then, and during Happy Hour you can buy a margarita for instead of the usual .
Good skiing for beginners and pros
When asked where the most beautiful spot in Aspen is, Klaus Obermeyer finds it difficult to answer. It used to be the 3,777-metre-high Highland Peak, he says. He recalls that he once came bombing down the slope there while yodelling, at such a pace that others skiers could not keep up.
But the summit can only be reached on foot and the descent is very demanding, so Obermeyer’s hips can’t take it any more. “Being old is no excuse to be lazy,” says the 104-year-old. So he keeps himself fit with strength training, swimming and aikido.
Now his favourite place is Buttermilk. In the 1950s, Obermeyer was one of those who campaigned for the 3,018-metre-high mountain to be developed for skiers. Buttermilk is a good mountain for beginners, but also for pros: freestyle skiers, snowboarders and snowmobilers come here to perform their impressive flips in the legendary X Games. Up on the mountain, there is a descent that was named after Obermeyer to mark his 100th birthday: Klaus’ Way.
Employees from Obermeyer Sports can often be found there. They always get a day off when more than 15 cm of snow falls overnight. Of course the boss is also itching to get out there. “You learn something on every descent. I hope I can still do it when I’m 110 or 120,” he says, with a wide smile.
Klaus’ Way
But he hasn’t got his skis out so far this season. It’s been too cold for him. Temperatures of minus 20, which we saw in January, are not for him any more — he is waiting for the spring sun. Even so, Obermeyer still goes up the mountain a few times each season. “An old man might limp a little when he walks. But when he’s skiing no one can see that.”
When he does get on the slopes, Obermeyer doesn’t need to pay for a lift pass. The Aspen Skiing Company gave him a lifelong free pass for his 90th birthday. “Their boss joked once that the accountants didn’t think I would still be using it now,” he says, with a cheeky smile.
So on a fine day in March, look out for him on Klaus’ Way. The piste begins at 2,963 metres, and from there you can see from Pyramid Peak to the glacier valley Maroon Creek, which is closed to traffic in winter due to heavy snow.
But anyone making the descent would be well advised to look straight ahead. The piste is a steep Black Diamond run, with a 40% gradient – exactly the kind of run its namesake loves. When the weather lets up, the indefatigable centenarian skier plans to thunder down into the valley again. He adds, laughing, “When you keep skiing for longer, you live longer!”
