Aspen’s Buttermilk Mountain assumed two distinct personalities over a weekend in January 2008. It was almost like different ski mountains coexisting — somewhat incredulously and barely aware of each other — on the same hill at the same time.
On the front side, filling the base area and the slopes closest to the valley, ESPN’s Winter X Games XII spun along for three days and nights like a hip-hop, youth-culture, on- snow circus.
Snow-covered alleyways between sponsors’ tents teemed with opportunities for free swag. TV cameras watched from above, swiveling on massive cranes.
Music throbbed to just about drown out the two-cycle scream of the snowmobiles. And astonishing pro athletes popped like popcorn above the lip of the halfpipe, battled their way down skiercross courses, and flew over big-air gaps wide enough to hide a small fleet of semi trucks.
At the same time on the mountain’s backside, my friend and I found a Buttermilk as serene as any inbounds, lift-served skiing we could remember. (And we have collectively skied more than 90 seasons.) In what is known as the Tiehack area on the mountain’s eastern flank, we found 6 inches of quiet, cushiony powder and almost no one with whom to share it.
This was timeless old-school Aspen on one side, extreme-bling, new-century Aspen on the other.
And this is the combo with which Aspen has tried to reinvent itself in recent years. Colorado’s first great ski town had grown stodgy in its dependence on upscale baby boomers and its refusal to allow snowboards on Aspen Mountain. That changed in April 2001, when the first “trial period” for boarders resulted in a wholesale opening of the floodgates.
The X Games blew into town in 2002 and are set to return through 2010. (This winter’s dates are Jan. 22-25.) The ski company and the town have made a concerted effort to grow younger — a biological impossibility, perhaps, but a marketing success, it seems.
Over on Tiehack, my friend and I drifted through sunny aspen glades. Turning among aspen trees is unlike anything else in skiing. The slim, straight, white-bark trunks wink at you with Cleopatra eyes — actually the eye-shaped scars of sloughed-off lower branches. Sunlight streams through. There is no shade, only barred shadows that flicker as you pass like frames in an old movie.
But where were all the powder- crazed Aspenites? Not at Buttermilk.
The learner slope
Buttermilk is beneath them. They were riding high at Aspen’s three other bigger, more-famous mountains: Snowmass, Aspen Highlands and Aspen Mountain, known locally as Ajax. That left us to spoon lines in all that delicious powder by ourselves, powder the cat drivers had thoughtfully left ungroomed.
For an hour and a half we rarely crossed another skier’s track. Then we thought, Let’s see what the circus is up to, shall we? From the backside around to the front, the way down offered more surprises.
Buttermilk was created in the late 1950s to be Aspen’s learning mountain. (Ajax was and still is too steep for most novices.) Across Maroon Creek from the old silver mining town, Friedl Pfeifer, Aspen’s ski school director then, spotted a gentle bread loaf of a mountain with sustained easy pitches from top to bottom. He bought a ranch at the base and opened Buttermilk with one T-bar in 1958.
The name came from one of two stories, depending on which old-timer you talked to. Loggers used to work that mountain, cutting ties for the railroad. One “tiehack” on the crew brought a pail of buttermilk every day to wash down his lunch, and eventually the hill became known as Buttermilk Mountain.
The other story goes that the road leading up to the logging operation was itself paved with railroad ties. Supply wagons bumping along the track were so rattled on the uneven boards that by the time they reached the sawmill, milk had turned to butter.
Either way, there was no denying the snow we encountered on the 2,000-foot descent was like buttah: a buttery surface over oceanic shapes. We started on Buckskin, which had seen so little traffic that it still wore its corduroy texture. These are the fine lines left by the overnight grooming machines, and they do resemble corduroy, the king’s cloth.
From Buckskin’s concave avenue we swooped left onto Savio, which quickly forms large, rolling waves — perfect for carving on the new shaped skis and snowboards. The tracks we left were deeply gouged crescents. Sometimes in riding up the wave faces, we banked so far over that our hands skimmed the silky surface. It was, my friend (a lifelong surfer) exclaimed when we had caught our breath, “like surfing huge open-ocean swells.”
Down we flew, giddy with the ever-changing shapes. Down through the creek-bottom funnel of Lower Savio — a natural halfpipe! — over more rollers and haystacks and curvilinear walls on Bear and Columbine, all the way to the base.
Make no mistake, this is unusually complex low-angle skiing, rare in the ski world for its playfulness. Most blue (intermediate) and green (novice) trails these days are bulldozed flat from side to side. Cutting the folds and filling the hollows makes it easier to lay down man-made snow. Easier for them, not so interesting for us.
Buttermilk hasn’t done this. Maybe it’s because the mountain was developed before the era of artificial snow, although it does have snowmaking now. Or maybe Friedl Pfeifer insisted on preserving the fanciful terrain for his own and his students’ pleasure.
Whatever, Buttermilk has left its groomers, its snowcat drivers, with a myriad of convoluted challenges. And they have responded with virtuoso subtlety. Imagine trying to spread vanilla frosting evenly over a Henry Moore nude.
‘Boarding at the bottom
At the bottom we were greeted by the resounding slaps — like beaver tails on still water — of snowboarders throwing Backside 900 Rodeos and Frontside 1080s (three full revolutions in the air) before spanking down on the run-outs.
ESPN likes to describe the 200 competitors as “gravity defying.” And as long as they are soaring through the air, it’s true. I have to say, neither the speed nor the huge forces involved come across on TV.
Most event finals were scheduled for prime time under the lights, with live music and an even crazier party atmosphere. But we did get to see preliminary heats for most of the events during skiing hours.
With all that great snow up top, my friend and I couldn’t stay long at the bottom. We ended up alternating laps on the Summit Express, with its ecstatic roller-coaster lines ending at the base throng, and the Tiehack chair, with its still-unsullied powder. We’re both pushing Social Security eligibility; we make a point of keeping our skis on the snow at all times, but we got to stand very close to the cutting edge for a day.
As part of Aspen’s new push, there is a free, winter-long, outdoor concert series featuring groups like Everclear, P.O.D. and Arrested Development. New pipes and jib parks have sprung up at Snowmass and Buttermilk, including the massive Superpipe used by the X Gamers.
There’s even a beginners’ rail park atop formerly aloof Aspen Mountain. You still see a lot of silverhairs in Bogner suits skiing here. But now youth is served too.
Few skiers would journey to Aspen just to ski Buttermilk. There is so much else.
But if you go, take one day, take the free shuttle from downtown Aspen or Snowmass Village, and treat yourself to surprise Buttermilk — whether or not Winter X is in town. It’s worth it for the view of Pyramid Peak from The Cliffhouse restaurant.
More than that, it’s worth it for the revelation that comes with skiing fast and loose on terrain that is constantly intriguing but not steep. There’s a freedom there that is not unrelated to the freedom X Gamers express in the air — but without that annoying hard slap when you come down to earth.
Peter Shelton first skied Aspen as a teenager in 1964. His most recent book is “Climb to Conquer: The Story of World War II’s 10th Mountain Division Ski Troops.”
Insider’s Guide
GET THERE: More than 200 flights per week fly into Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, including nonstops from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix and Salt Lake City. United, Delta and US Air come directly to Aspen. Every major airline flies into Denver International, where connecting flights or ground shuttles (three hours at least on dry roads) are available.
STAY: There is only one place to stay at Buttermilk proper, the three-star Inn at Aspen (Aspen/ Snowmass Central Reservations, online or 888-649-5982). During the X Games, the entire inn becomes ABC/ESPN production headquarters. No matter: There are 14,000 beds in the greater Aspen area with an excellent free bus system connecting it all. There is no parking at the base during the event, but if you’re driving, check out the two semisecret parking lots at the Tiehack and West Buttermilk bases. Arrive early.
PLAY: The 2009 lift ticket prices: three-day pass, Early Season $177; Holiday $261; Value Season $228 (Jan. 6-Feb. 10).
Peter Shelton
