Aspen or Whistler?

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

my wife and I both work our asses off to support our family.

Cool..I imagine Aspen is a tough place to carve out an existence..props to you for doing it!!!

 

[Geoff]

Just to clarify a couple things.

Aspen Airport is a 20 minute flight from DIA (Denver) 3 miles from town, and the drive from Denver is 3.5 hours(dry). Fly Frontier they are better than United

Eagle Airport (Vail) is 1 hour and 15 minute drive and usually takes that time. There are no passes only Glenwood Canyon and the elevation is low 5-6K so usually no snow.

Aspen is a city/town that has history and the skiing is awesome. We never have crowds except between Christmas and New Years. 4 mountains to choose from, free transit, etc...

As far as nightlife. There is a reason why Aspen is famous. With over 100 restaurants and bars which are mostly high end you can't go wrong. Whistler has nothing on the nightlife in Aspen NOTHING.

Shopping is 1st class the food is amazing. Check out the LimeLite lodge and also www.stayaspensnowmass.com for info on reservations.

Hope to see you here.

Lloyd

Oh and one more thing, I was drinking beer with Bode Miller last night. You never know who you will be hanging with in Aspen!

I have a slightly different perspective. I have a ton of days at both places. Mom wintered at Snowmass for a lot of years and my sister has been in Vancouver with a place at Whistler since 1986.

Whistler is a purpose-built ski village. It doesn't have the tradition of Aspen but it does get 2 million skier visits so you have the dining and night life that go along with a major destination resort that sees that kind of business.

For terrain, Whistler is the best in North America. Period. There are many places with fluffier snow and better odds on a low moisture content powder skiing surface but when Whistler is good, it wins. Aspen just doesn't get the natural snow. The problem with Whistler is that you can hit total crap weather. The pineapple express can roar in and it pisses all the way to the top. You can be there for a week and never see the sun. The top third of the mountain above the tree line can be closed for days on end.

If I had a non-skier in tow and had a stupid amount of money and limited myself to North America, Aspen is a no-brainer. If the flights go, it's really easy access. If the flights don't go, the drive from DEN won't kill you. The walkin' around checking out the galleries & boutiques while looking at the rich & famous has no equivalent this side of the Atlantic.

From the east coast, I think Europe has better alternatives for a mixed group of skiers & non-skiers. As a non-skier, you can hang out with the Brits who ski one run and then get the lounge chair at the mid-mountain restaurant for tanning, drinking, and eating for the rest of the day. It's the Riviera scene but with snow. Everything is close together so you can go skiing while the non-skiers do a day trip to somewhere interesting. That just ain't possible in the US.

 

[Geoff]

Cool..I imagine Aspen is a tough place to carve out an existence..props to you for doing it!!!

You can earn a good living working the service business in Aspen since it's a true year-round destination but the housing costs are staggering. You don't buy a house in Aspen on W-2 money. I haven't looked in a while but I think you have to get at least 30 minutes out of town to find housing you could even remotely consider. It's probably gotten worse since I last looked, not better.

 

[deadheadskier]

You can earn a good living working the service business in Aspen since it's a true year-round destination but the housing costs are staggering. You don't buy a house in Aspen on W-2 money. I haven't looked in a while but I think you have to get at least 30 minutes out of town to find housing you could even remotely consider. It's probably gotten worse since I last looked, not better.

I know when I visited in 2001, the only real option was to live in Glenwood Springs, which was 30-40 minutes away. Even there the cost of living to earnings ratio seemed way more difficult than what I was experiencing in Stowe at that time.