MY FIRST SKI RESORT LOVE:
Sexy S-curves on un- touched, ivory meadows. Powder snow tickling my earlobes, caressing branches of Aspen firs. Sparkling blue-sky days. Rambunctious nights.
Aspen
Snowmass
BY KATE ALLMAN
THEY SAY YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST LOVE. Aspen Snowmass and I are approaching the 10-year anniversary of our first date, but my memories of her are as crisp as the corduroy groomers she greeted me with over coffee each morning. She was my first North American ski trip – my first long haul flight across the pacific to the land of stars and stripes. I had finished a year of university and was staring down three months of summer holidays in Australia – eight months before I would have a chance to click boots into bindings again. It was time to pop my Aspen cherry. After 16 cramped hours riding an economy cabin between Sydney and Los Angeles, my first impressions of Aspen’s beauty were muted by the classic talk to the hand manoeuvres of airlines: my luggage was lost. When we finally located it in the labyrinth of security screenings that is Los Angeles International, there were overnight delay and next-day delays. A day’s journey became nearly three. Eventually, flying into Aspen airport – a dramatic event as pilots navigate over a cauldron of surrounding mountains to drop into the scenic valley with its snow-laden airstrip – was coloured by my jetlagged frustration. But I made it to Snowmass village in time for a romantic evening: a blizzard swirling into town.
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