Side-By-Side Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands Embrace The Steep Stuff
No two ski and snowboard mountains are as steep and as close as Colorado's Aspen Mountain and Aspen Highlands -- both looming over the upper Roaring Fork Valley like mighty royalty.
Nowhere can you find a pair of ski and snowboard areas right next to each other with 3,000-plus vertical drop, 11,000-foot summits, and no green-labeled trails. Neither is particularly big -- Aspen (aka Ajax) at 675 acres and Highlands at 1,040 -- nor has posh facilities on the hill.
Each faces mainly north so, on winter days, the sun merely glances across the slopes before "setting". With plenty of 13,000-foot-plus peaks around, winter storm fronts rise out of southwest, cool and drop cold, light powder.
Both Ajax and Highlands are on the same daily and season tickets, as well as seven days on the Ikon Pass and two free plus half-off with Mountain Collective. If you've had enough of one mountain, take the short shuttle to the other.
Expert runs is what both mountains are all about. On Ajax, steep black and double-black plunges can be found everywhere on the mountain: Off Ruthie's Run, on either side of the Bell Mountain ridge, up in the new Hero's expansion, right down into the base. A plentiful supply of steep glades spill off Traynor Ridge to skier's left and Gentlemen's Ridge to skier's right.
At Highlands, the notorious black diamonds cluster at the 11,675-foot top of the Loge Peak chair. Lengthy double-black diamond runs dominate the pitch to skier's right, served by the Deep Temerity fixed-grip triple.
Above that looms the infamous Highlands Bowl, reached only by a hike that can take a full hour or more. This giant cirque rolls around with east, north and northwest aspects that feed into the Deep Temerity lift. Lower down the mountain, long and longer blues splay into Thunderbowl, the wide-open exhibition run to the base.
Both mountains' lift system is aging. Aspen Mountain runs a 40-year-old gondola from the base to the summit, and its newest chair -- aside from the Hero's high-speed -- is now two decades old.
Highland's five chairlifts are a bit dated: Both high-speeds went up in the '90s, and youngest is the Deep Temerity (2005). Old-timers tell of having to ride three (at that time) slow chairs to reach Highlands Bowl, highlighted by the precarious Loge Peak ridge-runner.
Nowadays, moving around Highlands is more straightforward than Aspen, where long lines form for the gondola, and Spar Gulch bisects the mountain and requires some side-hill travel. Plus, all trails funnel into the narrow Aspen base, without softening their pitch.
