{"id":2455812,"date":"2020-03-15T17:12:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-15T23:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/surreal-sunday-aspen-skiing-co-staff-mountain-visitors-react-to-ski-area-closures\/"},"modified":"2020-03-15T17:12:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-15T23:12:00","slug":"surreal-sunday-aspen-skiing-co-staff-mountain-visitors-react-to-ski-area-closures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/surreal-sunday-aspen-skiing-co-staff-mountain-visitors-react-to-ski-area-closures\/","title":{"rendered":"Surreal Sunday: Aspen Skiing Co. staff, mountain visitors react to ski area closures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just before 9 a.m. Sunday morning at the base of the Silver Queen Gondola, few people gathered to start their day on the Aspen Mountain slopes.<\/p>\n

One or two were playing with their dogs. A few more were skinning up the Little Nell run. None were in line to get on the gondola, which wasn\u2019t running after Gov. Jared Polis ordered the state\u2019s downhill ski areas to close Saturday evening.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor decided he didn\u2019t feel it was appropriate for us to continue to operate,\u201d Mike Kaplan, Aspen Skiing Co. president and CEO, said Sunday morning. \u201cWe received final confirmation at 6:32 p.m. last night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaplan stood with a small group of Skico staff at the top of the stairs to the Silver Queen Gondola, talking with people who may have questions about the closure and how long it would be in place.<\/p>\n

The executive order issued by Gov. Polis directed Colorado ski resorts to close for one week \u201cdue to the presence of (COVID-19) in mountain communities with limited care capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenges posed by COVID-19 are unique and place significant burdens on hospitals and medical personnel,\u201d the order states. \u201cWe are aware of the great cost that mountain communities face if our downhill ski resorts close, even temporarily\u2026 But in the face of this pandemic emergency we cannot hesitate to protect public health and safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

A statement issued Saturday night said Polis would monitor the course of the COVID-19 outbreak statewide and may amend his executive order accordingly.<\/p>\n

Until then, Kaplan said Sunday that Skico is working to stay nimble and adaptive to the ever-changing situation, and urged locals and visitors to be fluid and thoughtful as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are staying in regular contact with the state and our local officials about the potential for reopening and when that can occur,\u201d Kaplan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI keep telling people this is a fluid situation, and it really is. \u2026 We want to make sure our emergency responders and health care system can deal with the sick, so if you do uphill and ski on the mountains, take it easy. Keep cool and be thoughtful.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as uphillers climbed Little Nell on Sunday morning beneath stationary gondola cars and Skico officials talked with people outside of the closed resort, Marcia Griffin, an Australian woman who is on her 39th visit to Aspen, questioned if the state\u2019s decision to close its ski areas will do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was skiing yesterday, I kept thinking to myself, \u2018This is the healthiest, best place in the world I could be right now,\u2019\u201d Griffin said. \u201cI think leaders need to act out of logic, not panic, and feel the anxiety and stress this will cause may be just as dangerous as the virus.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Snowmass, there was a similar scene of stalled lifts and uphill ascents on skis. But David and Therese Akers, a couple from Oklahoma who have been visiting Snowmass for over 30 years, showed up to the Village Express lift unknowing of the ski area closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wondered where everybody was and wondered why the lifts weren\u2019t going and then when we got down here the fellas over there informed us (of the closure),\u201d David said.<\/p>\n

The Akers said they\u2019d flown into Aspen from Denver on a plane with about 16 people Saturday night, arrived in Snowmass Village, went to dinner and interacted with several people at their lodge before skiing down Fanny Hill to the lift Sunday morning, but no one mentioned the governor\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

David Akers said he knew the couple was \u201crolling the dice\u201d by coming to Snowmass, but decided that because not many people are self-isolating in Tulsa, they\u2019d have about the same chance of getting COVID-19 at home as in the village.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very strange moment in history we\u2019re going through. I\u2019m not among one of those people who is critical of people who have responsibility of making these decisions because no one has ever dealt with this before,\u201d David said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are trying to balance a lot of competing factors and the economic factors could cause a tremendous amount of destruction for a lot of ordinary people\u2026I don\u2019t know what the balance point is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich Burkley, Skico\u2019s senior vice president of strategy and business development, said the company is working with state and county officials to find this balance point, too. He was walking around the Snowmass Base Village on Sunday talking with visitors and employees.<\/p>\n

Burkley said Skico pushed to keep Aspen-Snowmass open Sunday, but that Polis felt if the four mountains were the only ones open in the state it would create a humanitarian issue of large amounts of people coming to the Aspen area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly don\u2019t know what the answer is holistically, this could be an overreaction on one end or it could be the right thing to do, so we\u2019re completely neutral there,\u201d Burkley said of the ski area closure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think given the way the dominos were falling in the world we were ready for it, but we thought we could buck the trend. \u2026Once the Vail domino toppled we knew it was probably pretty challenging. We really pushed for one more day so we could do more of an orderly transition, but that didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burkley said Saturday was one of the most surreal of his Skico career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy. In fact I don\u2019t think I can say there\u2019s been a day in my career of 30 years that was quite as surreal as yesterday was,\u201d Burkley said.<\/p>\n

This surreal feeling was evident at the Four Mountain Sports in Aspen, too, as people went in Sunday morning to return their ski gear and seek reimbursement for the coming days they would not be able to ski or snowboard.<\/p>\n

Tony Drives, a Four Mountain Sports store manager, said the Skico rental and retail shop would work to get as many of its rental gear back as possible over the coming days, but that his understanding was staffing would be limited and no other sales would take place.<\/p>\n

When asked what the culture and attitude among the store\u2019s customers and employees had been like, Drives said customers seemed a little irritated and freaked out, but that employees seemed in relatively good spirits after a company email stated Skico would work to support its laid off employees moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been telling people that we don\u2019t know for sure what\u2019s going to happen but that we\u2019re here to help as much as we can,\u201d Drives said.<\/p>\n

mvincent@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just before 9 a.m. Sunday morning at the base of the Silver Queen Gondola, few people gathered to start their day on the Aspen Mountain slopes. One or two were playing with their dogs. A few more were skinning up the Little Nell run. None were in line to get on the gondola, which wasn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 10:27:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2455812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2455812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2455812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2455812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}