Osius: Highlands closing day goes big

Ten years ago my friend Rhea came up from Golden to ski on what happened to be closing day at Aspen Highlands, which I mentioned, adding that I’d be wearing a Dalmatian suit.

Midday at the area, she said, “When you said you were wearing a Dalmatian suit, I thought that was a little weird. Now that I’m here, I wish I had one.” 

That’s Aspen Highlands’ closing day, its biggest party and pageant. The parking lot is full, the lift line out the door, the base plaza thronged and teeming with the colors of a thousand costumes and at least 100 wigs: green, orange, yellow and pink, and heavy on the mullets. I have been going to closing day at Highlands for many years but in the last handful have seen it skyrocket in popularity and … fervor. 

There is always a riot of neon, especially full powder suits, sometimes handed down in families; there are tigers, bunnies, pandas, and cows, glitter and feathers and spangles. You can see Elvises (three of them one year), people dressed as bananas and hot dogs, and people in sumo suits or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costumes. Many, many capes. 

My friend Gella, when I saw her on the plaza one recent year in a red one piecer, called herself underdressed.

“Retro used to be enough,” she said. “Now it isn’t.” 

Not too good was that I’ve never seen such a long line, longer than for a powder day (which is saying something), at the Exhibition lift at the base as there was today. The line stretched across the plaza, around the corner and past Strafe and the other shops. 

“It’s moving pretty fast,” I suggested to my husband, Mike, who was looking thunderstruck. 

“Not fast enough,” he said.

As we got to the bend, he said, “This might be my last closing day.”

And that doesn’t even count having seen three busses fly by, full up, as we waited at the shuttle stop.  

But we made it to the mountain, and rode the lifts with people from Steamboat and Beaver Creek and Vail, or Denver, who’d made the journey for this day. I’ve heard of people coming from Florida or Wisconsin for it.

Mike said on the lift, as we gazed around, “I think there are about five people on the mountain not wearing costumes.” That’s a pretty proud, creative community effort.

Among my favorites are always the teams: Today I saw a crew in gold lamé, another in all denim, and Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and Glinda the Good Witch; I remember a vast crew of gladiators one year. Our young friend Ben used to rule closing day, organizing his many friends into squads all wearing animal onesies, or Mario Kart costumes, or mermaid outfits. 

I still remember seeing Ben at the top of the Loge lift, run-stomping past us, snowboard in hand, in his thin green mermaid pants and jacket of shimmering strung silver sequins. On his head was a backwards baseball cap, also with green scales. Ben was blue with cold. That year it was not lūʻau temps, which create the ideal vibe, but gray and blustery.

“Go go go go go!’ Ben was shouting.  

His friend John, nicknamed Jay-Bro, was right behind him shouting, “No no no no no!”

They had planned on hiking Highland Bowl, up the ridge to the 12,392-foot top, three-quarters of a mile away and 800 vertical feet higher. Jay-Bro was in a mermaid suit, too, but he had found a jacket and hood to pull over it, and may have been a little more amphibious.

“Dude, I don’t want to get frostbite!” Ben shouted, and disappeared down slope. 

I must’ve worn the Dalmatian suit that year, too, because I remember doing the Bowl, and, despite the cold weather, overheating on the way. I stopped, rolling the top down and knotting the arms, which sounds simple, but involved first taking off my slim ski backpack, in the wind, with my dog-head hood getting stuck on the bindings.

I staggered to the top in the gusts, surprised to see Mike and our crew waiting. I had thought they’d be too cold, would drop down and ski.

“No,” said someone, “there’s a good windbreak” — created by the hundred celebrants clogging the summit.

Today we saw, at the packed Merry-Go-Round party, a mechanical bull for entertainment, and it was busy. One year I did the pond-skimming, when Highlands still had that. I’d always wanted to try, and hiked up and shyly joined the 20-something boys lined up amid blasting music and a waft or two of smoke. At my turn I dropped in, hit the water, and face-planted on the other side. There’s a video, the crowd yelling an alarmed, “Ohh!” as I hit. (I went back up and made it across, but that’s not the lasting image.)

Our older son, Ted, away in college in Vermont, posted the video Mike took. A college friend of his, visiting here, commented, “Dude! That was your mother? I thought she was dead!” 

Gella’s wisdom notwithstanding, Mike and I rolled with simple retro this year: jeans, a denim jacket, and red cotton bandana for him, while I resurrected a circa 1990 wool Obermeyer sweater and a soft-shell from the long-gone Cloudveil. We both eschewed helmets for old three-pointed ski hats, sunglasses in front and goggles slung on facing backwards.

At home I texted Ben, who has since moved away from Colorado, a pic. 

“Oh, man,” he replied. “Let’s run it back.” That is slang for do it again, and we all would.

Alison Osius of Carbondale is a skier, climber, and hiker who has been in the Roaring Fork Valley since moving here in 1988 to work for Climbing magazine.