One Town, Four Mountains

Lucky enough to compare some of the most amazing places in America make no mistake about it, Aspen is my favorite.  What makes any environment unique is the people.  Aspen itself is built around a staggeringly wealthy infrastructure, which at a fundamental level essentially serves to un-limit the boundaries faced by any normal developing town.  Everything here is so well planned, carefully thought out, and impressively executed.  There are free buses throughout the entire valley, beautiful lit trees lining the streets at and lighting up the snow at night, and the roads are heated…  It all sounds very premium but you’d be pleasantly surprised by the genuine hard working, real life cross section of people who actually live here.

When you take an environment that is built on such solid bedrock, and then fill it with a few thousand people who all share one huge common interest, you create something amazing.  Not everyone in Aspen wants fake tits and a boyfriend half their age, some people just want to prove themselves and earn their place in the world.  Some people want to aim high and settled their sights at the apex of the arc.  Some people want to escape the world and live out the springtime of their youth having the absolute time of their lives.  Then some people just want a quiet family holiday.  But everybody, everybody, wants to ski.  And everybody wishes for snow.

When it dumps snow all night and the sun burns away the storm in the morning, the air is electric.  The whole town literally puts down their work and flees for the mountain, and it doesn’t matter which mountain one they choose because it will never be crowded, we’ve got four…

All photos by Jeremy Swanson