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PrintA Snow King Pentathlon
Jackson’s ‘town hill’ offers a surprising array of fun stuff to do and see.
The alpine slide on Snow King Mountain can dish out a truly thrilling ride. Just don’t go too fast, or you might fly right off the track!
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I doubt it would ever have occurred to me to spend the better part of a day trying out a bunch of different activities on Snow King Mountain—had I not assigned this story to myself, that is. But now I’ve done just that, and I have to say: It’s a lot of fun.
Oh, sure, in the past I’d mountain biked on Snow King’s trails, hiked to the top for a tough workout, and skied down its often icy slopes in the winter. But not until on a Sunday early last September did I play around on Snow King Mountain during the dry months with leisure foremost in mind.
It was around ten a.m., the morning after the closing day of the Western Design Conference, which I’d been working over the weekend. It was also the final day of some of the mountain’s summer operations, so I knew—although I’d have preferred sampling Snow King’s recreational offerings with a companion—it was now or never. I set out to conquer the King on my own.
The temperature had dipped into the low twenties overnight, but now the sun was up and the air perfectly still. It was rapidly transforming into one of those rare and precious autumn days of the sort you wish would keeping coming for the next six months.
I started out by wandering up to and into the little hut situated at the base of the mountain, where I plopped down my money in exchange for a Snow King Fun Pass. This, the man on duty said, would earn me not only two rides on the alpine slide, but a round of miniature golf and a scenic chairlift ride. Then I walked back outside and around to the other side of the building, where I was greeted by a generously pierced and tattooed, bespectacled young fellow who saw to it that I properly loaded the chairlift. I was off!
A little higher up, above and beyond the miniature golf course, I spotted a grave in the adjacent Aspen Cemetery with BUSH carved into the headstone. For some inexplicable reason this got me thinking about the upcoming presidential election, just two months away.
I unloaded at the top, where the young woman on duty briefly explained how to operate the bobsled-like alpine slide cart. I then crawled into one of the carts and sat down, and the girl gave me the go-ahead.
I started out slowly, applying pressure on the brake lever, which permitted me to coast through the banked turns at a prudent speed. But I let the sled go quite a bit faster down straight sections of the track (there are actually two side-by-side, parallel tracks), which took me through wooded areas and above meadows still brimming with brilliant displays of late-season wildflowers.
“I’m surprised how much fun that was,” I said to the attendant at the bottom, as I crawled out of the sled. “Gravity is our friend.”
“You’d better do it again, then,” he responded.
