ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Aspen Mountain Is the Best Place for Selfies in Colorado

Updated on December 15, 2018
Patty Inglish, MS profile image

In many ways, music saved my life, and I have the most famous director of the USMC bands to thank for it!

South Maroon Peak and North Maroon Peak, or the Maroon Bells, near Aspen Mountain in the White River National Forest.
South Maroon Peak and North Maroon Peak, or the Maroon Bells, near Aspen Mountain in the White River National Forest. | Source

Aspen - Snowmass Ski Area

A favorite with skiers and spectators, Aspen Mountain ranks at Number 42 on StoodThere.com's Greatest Places to Stand in America. It is a good venue for photography as well as outdoor sports and visitors love to have their pictures taken here. Standing south of Aspen, Colorado the mountain brings visitors in summer as well as winter. They enjoy kayaking and white water rafting in the non-ski seasons.

Aspen Mountain
Aspen Mountain | Source

Aspen Mountain stands at an elevation of 11,212 feet above sea level in the Elk Mountains in Pitkin County. The mountain offers 76 separate ski trails and is one of four sites clustered together as a larger ski area with Snowmass, Aspen Highlands, and Buttermilk. While the skiing season is approximately Thanksgiving to early April, the mountains are used for three dozen other outdoor sports when snow is not available.

Skiing has been a major sport on Aspen Mountain, rated black diamond (difficult), since 1946. The 4-point rating scale is the US/American scale where green circle = easy, blue rectangle = internediate, black diamond = difficult, and double black diamond = expert (e.g. Olympic and World Games Alpine skiing difficulty). Other nations have other scales.

White River National Forest in Aspen, CO

A
Aspen Mountain, Colorado:
Aspen Mountain, White River National Forest, Aspen, CO 81611, USA

get directions

White River National Forest, Aspen, CO

B
Snowmass Village:
Snowmass Village, CO, USA

get directions

White River National Forest

The US Forest Service names White River National Forest as the best recreation forest in America and to prove this, the agency adds new activities every month. In August 2011, they opened up an area they call Rocky Fork in the park, making it a public rock collection site. Permits are required and sold for a small fee. However, a minimum of 2,000 pounds of red sandstone must be removed for each permit issued.

Trapper's Lake within the forest was one of the elements that led to creation of the 1964 Wilderness Act. As early as the period of World War I, landscape architects surveyed this area and reported that places like Trappers Lake should be left as a wilderness for the people of America to enjoy.

Trappers Lake
Trappers Lake | Source

Aspen's Orientation Within Colorado

A
Boulder CO:
Boulder, CO, USA

get directions

B
Colorado Springs CO:
Colorado Springs, CO, USA

get directions

C
Aspen CO:
Aspen, CO 81611, USA

get directions

D
Gunnisson National Forest:
Gunnison National Forest, Gunnison, CO 81230, USA

get directions

E
Alpine Loop Scenic Byway point:
Silverton, CO 81433, USA

get directions

American Railroads Westward

After the California Gold Rush, the American Railroad movement westward brought a lot of people across Colorado that were looking for an easy route through the Rocky Mountains for trains to reach California.

While some of my early relastives from the UK stopped in Virginia (the famous/infamous Tyrrell family and others), others landed in Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. However, a few headed west. Perhaps they worked their way west while building railroad lines. However that occurred, part of the Ohio group got into a Model A Ford in the early 20th Century and motored across the US to Colorado to visit an older sister.

They purchased gasoline in drug stores along the way (no gas stations yet) and probably needed to fill the radiator quite often, stopping at farms and such. I cannot imagine how they actually did it, buit they went out and came back unharmed and the car still running. They were engineers and the like, after all. In fact, the generation before them had began building Route 40, The National Road east and west across America.

Sage Grouse in Gunnison National Forest
Sage Grouse in Gunnison National Forest | Source

Apline Attractions

The Alpine Loop Scenic Byway is one of the routes through the Riockies that railroad builders considered for construction, but it has become a scenic drive. This is also old mining country, coal mining and Aspen-area silver mining (Colorado Silver Boom) having been major industries in the past. The Loop is 65 miles long, comprises a circuitous drive, and is said to require 4-wheel drive.

The Alpine Tunnel Historic District is one of four Special Interest Areas and the only cultural one among the four. It covers 200 acres of the larger national forest and three sections of railroad line built as part of the Denver, South Park, and Pacific Railroad. This Alpine Tunnel was the highest section of railroad anywhere when it was constructed. This place is 40 miles east of the community of Gunnison on Forest Road 839 in the combined Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, Gunnison National Forest south of Aspen Mountain. Overall, beautifully forested and mountainous areas cover over 1/3 of the State of Colorado, approaching 1/2, and are filled with native plants and wildlife to view as well as geographic features..

Additional Wildernesses, Heritage Areas, Research Areas, and Special Interest Areas are maintained throughout this huge forested area, honoring anything local from flowers to human culture to dinosaurs.

Local Economic Trends

While there are not 1,000s of job listings available on Aspen Mountain or in Aspen, Colorado and nearby communities, there are several hundred jobs posted, increasing during winter and summer months when the most visitors reside in and around the mountain.

Healthcare and Commercial Finance (construction loans, etc.) remain moderately increasing jobs throughout the year.

Economists at the University of Colorado predicted a slow, steady recoveryfor the state post-Recession 2008 - 2010 and they saw this occur from 2010 through 2015. They felt in 2010 that commercial finance is not one of the growth sectors, but it seems, however, to be just that.

Major Hiring Employers

  1. Aspen Valley Hospital
  2. Starwood Hotels and Resorts
  3. The St,. Regis at Aspen
  4. RNTravelWeb.com and other travel-medical agencies - Travel Nurse (also travel doctors and physical therapists) is a growing occupation, because it pays additional wages, bonuses, travel allowance, housing/mortgage allowance, and many other benefits to areas of our nation that are vacation-perfect.
  5. Well Fargo - Financial Products
  6. Vail Resorts
  7. Destination Hotels and Resorts
  8. Comcast
  9. Urban Outfitters
  10. Stonebridge Inn

High Demand Jobs

  1. Executive Assistants
  2. RN-licensed Nurses for OB/GYN and Operating Room
  3. Nutritional staff, in-hospital staff needed
  4. Retail Store Managers
  5. Accountants and Controllers
  6. Food and Beverage Service in resorts and hotels
  7. Hotel Supervisors, various departments
  8. Personal Bankers
  9. Retail Sales
  10. Child Care

Major Hospitals

  • Aspen Valley Hospital - A 25-bed hospital in Apsen.
  • Aspen Valley Birth Center
  • Gunnison Valley Hospital - South of Aspen
  • St. Vincent Hospital
  • Valley View Hospital - North of Aspen

Higher Education Around Aspen

A
Adpen Institute Colorado:
Aspen Massage Institute, 720 East Hyman Avenue, Aspen, CO 81611, USA

get directions

B
Aspen University Colorado:
Aspen House, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA

get directions

C
Colorado Mountain College:
Colorado Mountain College, 802 Grand Avenue, Glenwood Springs, CO 81601, USA

get directions

D
HIgh Mountain Institute; 531 County Road 5A; Leadville CO:
County Road 5A, Leadville, CO 80461, USA

get directions

Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory Among the Ski Slopes

A
Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory; Crested Butte, CO 81224:
Crested Butte, CO 81224, USA

get directions

© 2011 Patty Inglish MS

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)