A Day in the Life...: A different Aspen

Aspen is pretty legit. No explanation necessary.

The Maroon Bells

Ok, so now that you can see what I saw for seven days, let me paint a picture for you at how incredible this mountain town is.

Here are a few facts:

The X-Games have been held in Aspen at Buttermilk Mountain for the last ten years, since 2002. Buttermilk Mountain is located directly across from the Aspen Golf Club. We could actually see the half-pipe from a few of the holes on the front nine.

Aspen is located at about 7900 feet elevation. Let me tell you, when you aren’t acclimated to the elevation, it burns. I can usually run three miles no problem. Mix the elevation with fatigue, add it to a run, and you’ve got yourself a walk. I’m just saying. It’s rough.

Aspen also has one of the most interestingly diverse populations (this isn’t actually a Google-able fact, just an observation). Now, I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way, but I do believe that a few of the residents went to Woodstock and never really left. There is also a large portion of the population that can afford to buy Burberry, Coach, Gucci more often than once every eternity. You have the people that come into Aspen for more of a ‘status’ thing, and you also have those who are ski bums who double as hiking bums in the summer. Sometimes I was confused as to what Aspen was supposed to be identified as. Mountain town or celebrity destination…usually they are NOT one in the same.

Not sure if these fun facts actually explain why Aspen is incredible. I’ll just let you look at another picture while I think of something clever to say.

Just enjoying the view

I've got nothing. So how about a little ghost story?

So, as I wrote before, we were fortunate enough to stay in the Hotel Jerome. It is a gorgeous hotel; built in the late 1880s and still complete with much of the charm it was first built with. For some reason, with old buildings, it’s only appropriate to be accompanied by a few ghost stories.

We had heard about the haunting before we even arrived. Tommy, our tournament assistant had said that when they stayed in the Hotel Jerome at last year’s tournament, they were unable to squeeze any information out of the employees about the ghosts. This year, they pretty much laid the juicy info out for us on a silver platter. All we had to do was ask.

Here’s the first one:

The old chef was so attached to the hotel, that he requested to somehow be incorporated into the building after he died. Kind of a weird request, but who am I to judge what an old chef’s dying wish was? Can you guess how he was incorporated into the building? Yep, there are a dead guy’s ashes behind the grandfather clock in the foyer. That’s not at all creepy. And, I had the pleasure of walking past this fine piece of time-keeping machinery at least twice every day.

Here’s the second, longer and more intriguing story:

It starts with a young boy, about seven or eight years old, and his parents, who were all staying in room 310 in the Hotel Jerome in the early to mid-1900s. One evening, the young boy’s parents decided to go out for dinner and a night on the town, leaving their son alone behind. This can never be good.

The young boy ended up going swimming by himself in the hotel pool. He ended up drowning, and apparently, he still hangs around the Hotel Jerome, showing himself from time to time to guests and employees.

A few years ago, one guest reports that she came out of her bathroom to find a drenched, shivering boy standing in her room. Now, my first thought would be, how the heck did this little boy get in my room? The woman tried talking to the young boy, tried to coax some kind of information out of him, but was unable to connect with him. After about five minutes of one-sided conversation, she decided to call the front desk to report her visitor. She connected to the front desk and turned around to face the boy to describe him, and he vanished. There was still a puddle of water where he was standing.

Another woman claims that she had a paranormal encounter, most likely from the ghost of the young boy. She was taking pictures of the hotel, and claims that there was a shadow cast by absolutely nothing. Chills….

And so, the Hotel Jerome is haunted. Apparently. Just to add to the haunted effect, when they remodeled, they just happened to make every single long hallway look like it was straight out of The Shining. I expected to see REDRUM every time I walked to my room. What a great visual right before you head to bed.