Aspen Peak - Niche Media - Aspen living at its peak
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/824799
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE GLASS/GETTY IMAGES A group of women cheer me on as I ride by, raising their fists in the air. "You're a superhero!" they scream. "Go, mama, go!" I'm on the final pitch, a never-ending switchback running up the mountain- side. Snowbanks tower over us several stories high, still far from melted in mid-May, so the road appears as if it's been cut between two huge slabs of marble. As I look over a precipice, the valley floor comes into view almost 4,000 feet below. I turn the cranks on my pedals and creep along, slowly mak- ing my way up the 20-mile climb from downtown Aspen to the top of Independence Pass—a real chore, especially when I'm t owing a bike trailer with my four-month-old son and pug on board. That's some 30 pounds of dog and baby cargo. Friends from other parts of the country think my husband and I are crazy for dragging our baby along on our countless mountain adventures. They marvel at our arsenal of equipment: the trailer with its bike, ski, and running wheel attach- ments; the plastic baby skis; the elaborate backpack we carry him in, complete with drool pad and col- lapsible sun shade; his Patagonia down onesie and red sunglasses with the blue polarized lenses. Since that trip up the mountain, he's ridden the Aspen Mountain gondola, celebrated his first birth- day at the Pine Creek Cookhouse, napped in his stroller during après-ski at The Sky, and crawled around our picnic blanket at the summer concert series at Snowmass. I'd dreamed of living in Aspen ever since my parents took me on a ski vacation to Snowmass when I was 8. It was one thing when I made that dream come true for myself. But to have a child and to raise him here, to share with him the stuff my own dreams were made of—to carry him on my back under the denim- blue sky surrounded by a kaleidoscope of snow- capped peaks, listening to the song of his gurgles and coos—is heart-busting. Nothing makes me hap- pier than seeing my son on top of the world—even if I have to pedal his little butt up there. . IN TOW GIVING MY SON THE HIGH-COUNTRY CHILDHOOD OF MY DREAMS. BY ALI MARGO "TO RAISE MY SON HERE, TO SHARE WITH HIM THE STUFF MY OWN DREAMS WERE MADE OF—NOTHING MAKES ME HAPPIER." First impressions: Whether in a bike trailer, on skis, or in an elaborate, baby-ready backpack, Ali Margo and her husband have taken their young son along on every Aspen adventure. 152 ASPENPEAK-MAGAZINE.COM ASPEN INSPIRED