Skiing and Snowboarding

Skiing started drawing people to Aspen just after Silver did. The Silver City has a long history of fostering the mountain fun it affords.  Today the massive Aspen/Snowmass SkiCo operates its 4 mountains for a lot of visitors.  Snowmass, Buttermilk, Highlands, and Aspen Mountain are located in different spots but your ticket gets you into all of them. See the   Aspen Snowmass website    for more about skiing.  Aspen Snowmass hosts the X-games and tons of fun lessons, outings, and activities.

The history of backcountry skiing in Aspen is going to be explored at   this event hosted by the Aspen Historical Society  and at this event of seeing   the Ascent Backcountry Slideshow.

To get a backcountry guide you can look into the   Aspen Alpine Guides  or   Aspen Expeditions.

Aspen Expeditions Worldwide  is the backcountry guiding service linked to the resort.

Sunlight Mountain Resort is a much smaller mountain up 4-mile road in Glenwood Springs.

Marble has a ski area but it was never developed as one.  This website  is about backcountry skiing in Marble. This website has a   reproduction of the 1971 Aspen Times article about the Marble ski area.

Powderhorn    is the ski area on the Grand Mesa just southeast of Palisade.

The Flattops and the Grand Mesa are more for cross country skiing and snowshoeing.   This blog post     is about backcountry skiing on the Grand Mesa near Mesa Creek.  There is a lot of information about   Mesa Creek here, but the important thing to note is you can enjoy the runs after you ascend 1000 ft, so go for this only if you are totally prepared and fit.