Aspen’s Legendary Skiers Chalet Will No Longer Be Home to Local Skiers

This article originally appeared on Ski Mag

For years, the skiers who've lived in a historic lodge called the Skier's Chalet at the base of Colorado's Aspen Mountain have thrown a legendary New Year's Eve party. Each year, with an impending end to their too-good-to-be-true leases, they thought it might be their last at the Chalet, so they'd plan a big sendoff party and invite all their friends.

"That was why all the New Year's parties were always so good: We touted them as the last one," says longtime Aspen-based skier Pat Sewell, who lived in the Chalet from 2010 until 2020, when he scored a house through Aspen's affordable housing lottery. "It was hard to leave, but we all saw the writing on the wall. We knew it wasn't going to last forever."

The motley band of skiers who called the Chalet home knew that eventually the building would be redeveloped into high-end condos, but for years, it remained the last bastion of low-rent housing at the base of a legendary ski hill. The party is finally over: The remaining tenants of the Skier's Chalet were notified in an email sent on June 8 that their lease would be terminated as of August 31.

The Chalet sits at the base of the iconic Lift 1A, the first lift installed at Aspen Mountain back in 1946 and, at the time, the longest chairlift in the world, whisking skiers up 2,550 vertical feet. The original single chair was replaced by a fixed-grip double in 1971 that still stands today. It's a nostalgic spot on the mountain, full of romantic ideals of what skiing used to be.

With around a dozen units, the Chalet's converted motel rooms have just the basics: exterior door, bathroom, enough room for a bed, a few bikes, and a quiver of skis. Picture the floor plan of a standard Motel 6 room. There's no kitchen, but most tenants cobbled together a hot plate, mini fridge, and microwave. ("The one annoying thing: doing dishes in a motel sink," one tenant said.) The crew who lives there shares a grill outside, where the long-abandoned pool has been covered and converted into a deck.

The former hotel's lobby became the gathering lounge, where traveling friends crashed on couches and played ping-pong. By day, it became an impromptu co-working space and easy-access locker room for rent-paying tenants and their friends. A carousel of ski-obsessed characters came and went. The group's mascot was a plastic penguin named Petey. The hot water was spotty, the heat didn't work in all the rooms, and the walls were thin. One current tenant, who asked not to be named, says: "Everything in this town is ritzy. This is one of the last rough spots." Adds Sewell, "We weren't there for the amenities. We were there because it was at the base of the ski hill and all of our friends were there."

In the fall of 2007, a local ski coach named John Nicoletta, who competed on the Freeskiing World Tour and had moved out to Aspen from Massachusetts, moved into one of the Chalet's abandoned motel rooms full-time. Rent was $300 a month back then, though it eventually crept up to $600 on a month-to-month agreement; still a total bargain in a town where these days, you can't find a room for rent for under $1,500 a month and studio apartments go for over $4,000 a month. "We were young and rent was cheap," says Sewell. "You made enough working one night job that you could just be a skier in the true sense of it."

The following year, Aspen ski coach JF Bruegger moved in. He brought in more hardy skier friends, including Sewell, Will Cardamone, Casey Vandenbroek, and others, and suddenly, the place became ground zero for one of Aspen's quirkiest ski gangs, a fraternity of long-haired, ramen-eating powder hunters. Many in the bunch grew up in Aspen and worked for the ski area as coaches and ski instructors, but they couldn't afford to stay in their hometown if it weren't for the Chalet. Tragically, Nicoletta died in a ski accident in the spring of 2008 at the age of 27, but his legacy lived on at the Chalet. (His friends constructed a shrine for him on the mountain, at which they still congregate today.)

As writer Heather Hansman wrote in her 2021 book Powder Days: "Over the years, the Chalet has become both a skier stronghold and a symbol for how the freaky underground of Aspen--the thing that made it cool in the first place--is still hanging on."

Bruegger, who works in construction and still lives in the building, became the de facto property manager. He shoveled the roof, fixed the plumbing, and rewired the electrical in all the rooms. He's been called the glue that held the Chalet together over the years. Bruegger doesn't like the term "ski bums" to describe the tenants at the Chalet during its heyday. "I've always worked hard my whole life. There was nothing bum about it," Bruegger says. "We happened to live at the base of the mountain and ski a lot. But everyone had jobs."

The crew worked as ski instructors, fly-fishing guides, contractors, waiters, and bartenders. Longtime Chalet tenant Elliot Wilkinson-Ray started his jean-short brand, Ripton & Co., from the lounge, and Lange Adams--a current tenant--launched Elk Mountain Expeditions, a river rafting outfitter, from there as well.

A Canadian by the name of Howard Awrey first built the Chalet in 1953, modeled after a Swiss cabin, and at the time, it was a modest hotel, the first ski-in, ski-out lodging in Aspen. Legend has it the Kennedys used to stay at the Chalet when they'd visit Aspen. A second lodge building, including the Steak House restaurant, was added in 1965. Awrey sold the property in the early 2000s for $3 million--motel operations ceased in 2005--and as part of the sale, he negotiated that he'd get to live in a lodge room until the end of his life. Awrey died in 2014 at the age of 94.

In 2015, the Chalet sold again--for $22 million--to its current owner, a local developer tied to the real estate investment firm HayMax Capital. (The current owners did not respond to multiple email requests for an interview for this story.) In 2019, Aspen voters approved a controversial neighborhood redevelopment plan for that part of town--it passed by a mere 26 votes--that would enable the developers to install a luxury hotel and private residences and a revamped version of the old Steak House. A ski museum run by the Aspen Historical Society is also slated for the property. ("We always made the joke that the Skier's Chalet was already a living museum--ski bums in real life," skier Chris Tatsuno, a regular at the Chalet, likes to say. "They could have just put glass windows up.")

In an email to Ski Magazine, Ben Anderson, the deputy director of community development for the city of Aspen, writes that the 2019 election showcased the differing perspectives on the pace and nature of development. "That has been a relatively quiet part of the mountain for at least a couple of decades and certainly an access point that has a local's flavor to it," Anderson writes. "This development would fundamentally change that. Some people thought the redevelopment would bring a renewed vitality to this part of town and the mountain; others felt it was just more excess within our development context."

Known as the Lift One Lodge development, construction on the new hotel and residences won't break ground until at least 2025. (The current property owners may continue to use the property for employee housing until construction begins, but for how long remains unclear.) The redevelopment project is estimated at around $200 million and will encompass more than 200,000 square feet.

Anderson wrote that the first task would be moving the Skier's Chalet downhill to a new location. "You can imagine the engineering challenges with stabilizing and then picking up and moving a building of this size down a fairly steep grade," he adds.

Lift 1A, which Aspen Skiing Company operates, will be replaced with a high-speed chair-gondola hybrid and relocated 500 feet downhill to make it easier to access from town, but that new lift won't be operational until November 2028, according to an Aspen Skiing Company spokesperson. "I understand accessibility and improvements are important, especially in a town like this," says Sewell in regard to the upcoming updates. "It's just going to be hard to see a change, though change is the only constant."

For the former tenants of the Chalet, life has trudged on, with families, jobs, and places to live with kitchens that have full-sized sinks. Chris Tatsuno never officially lived at the Chalet, but when living in his van and traveling to ski towns, he'd store things in the lounge and crash for the night on regular occasions. For him he still looks back fondly at those end-of-ski-day moments when Shadow Mountain would cast shade over the Chalet and ski boots would finally come off. "There was a momentary time at the Chalet when time stood still and I was able to appreciate what we had," Tatsuno says.

Bruegger and the other few remaining tenants of the Skier's Chalet will move out next month. They're all scrambling to find new places to live, in a town flanked by mountains where housing is neither available nor even close to affordable.

Though previous tenants have hinted at it, throwing one final goodbye party isn't on Bruegger's radar. "Everyone who lives here is concerned with finding housing and moving," Bruegger says. "We're not really in the mood to have a huge party."

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