Willoughby: What could have been

Aspen has four ski areas, but there could have been others. They are as wonderful as those you are familiar with, and the story of them is fascinating.

The quintessential one was the Highland Bavarian plan from the 1930s with a Swiss Village base at Ashcroft. It would have had the greatest vertical drop and the longest runs. Designed by André Roch, the top lift would have ended on the ridge with Electric Peak (13,600). If you have hiked the Electric Pass trail, you can imagine skiing down from those lofty heights. Think about skiing over Cathedral Lake. Roch laid out trails that would have gone down the back side of the ridge heading down the Conundrum Valley, where you would have been picked up by a bus and returned to Ashcroft.

The Highland Bavarian group had acquired funding from the Colorado Legislature, all was set to go, then Pearl Harbor ended it. In the 1960s, the last surviving member, Ted Ryan, tried to resurrect the plan and apply to the U.S. Forest Service for a permit. But Snowmass received its approval and began building. Ryan did not think there would be enough business for two new areas.

The Little Annie Basin has been on the list for the whole history of Aspen’s skiing. It was what attracted the Highland Bavarian group to Aspen, and they used it for their initial ski area. Skiers in the 1930s and ’40s skied it when the Aspen Ski Club had its initial operations on Aspen Mountain. They were hauled to the Midnight Mine and sometimes to the top of the mountain to ski Roch Run, but some skied the basin instead.

The Midnight Mine owned most of the surface rights to the abovementioned basin. In the 1960s, Waddill “Waddie” Catchings bought them with the idea of building a ski area there. He opened up his ski touring business using snow cats, demonstrating the basin’s potential. He was unsuccessful, but that dream was taken up by Dave Farney who proposed a gondola (before the Aspen Mountain gondola was built) that would take skiers from town to the top of the basin.

There was an additional ski area proposal, too, but few knew about it. It was proposed by Friedl Pfeifer and my uncle, Frank Willoughby, in 1957. If you are at the Elk Mountain Lodge area on Castle Creek Road and look toward the ridge that comes down between Express Creek and Castle Creek, you have some idea of where it would have been. The higher area you see, an open basin, was the Columbia Mining District.

Beginning in 1954, they began buying up all of the mining claims. They had both skied the area and knew that the snow conditions were some of the best in the area. Like the Highland Bavarian Ashcroft plan, there was skiing potential on three sides of the ridge, and the ridge connected to Taylor Peak, so it had a high elevation. They planned an initial two lifts.

Both of them had had dreams of owning ski areas. Pfeifer’s was blocked when he made a deal with Walter Paepcke that he would only be in charge of the Aspen Mountain operation, that he was the driving force of, for the first year and then run only the ski school. Willoughby had, with the Ski Club, been planning an operation for Aspen Mountain that was interrupted by the war, and he was late in returning, so the project (Aspen Skiing Company) formed without him.

They filed for a permit and a land swap with the Forest Service in 1957 and then looked for ways to make it happen. Pfeifer ended the plan when he, instead, developed Buttermilk. Willoughby continued to do surveys and initial engineering for lifts on both Aspen Mountain and Highlands.

Tim Willoughby’s family story parallels Aspen’s. He began sharing folklore while teaching at Aspen Country Day School and Colorado Mountain College. Now a tourist in his native town, he views it with historical perspective. Reach him at redmtn2@comcast.net.