Renowned Architect P roven Developer Introducing 446 Forest Road‌ the most anticipated new residence on Forest Road. The 10,500 square foot, seven-bedroom home will be constructed of the highest quality materials and will occupy the last available ski-in, ski-out lot on Forest Road. Drop down into your private warming hut and enjoy lunch, then click on your skis and head out for a memorable afternoon of powder. Watch the sun set and the snow fall through the 20-foot windows. Ron Byrne & Associates‌ for over 30 years helping create memories has been our passion, developing and selling legendary properties our business.
Unbeatable Location
285 Bridge Street Vail, Colorado 81657 970/476.1987 www.ronbyrne.com
MOSCHINO CHEAP & CHIC
Solaris 970.479.0050
In the Sonnenalp Resort 970.476.1667
WO R L D - C L A S S J E W E L RY D E S I G N E R S The Finest Collection of Fossil, Crystals and Minerals
Lionshead JeweLers
Come in as a Customer, Leave as a Friend 555 East Lionshead Circle • 970.476.0499 lionsheadjeweler@aol.com
perfect together The best of Vail combined with the world-class amenities and services of the ladies and gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton. Private and serene, these beautiful homes offer the ultimate Vail lifestyle for a fortunate few, including a social membership at The Arrabelle Club with private lockers and ski-in ski-out valet services steps from the EagleBahn Gondola. Experience Vail’s most exclusive address.
furnished residences open every day from 9am-6pm 970-754-1208 TheResidencesVail.com
RCR Vail, LLC, an affiiate of
Obtain the Property Report required by Federal law and read it before signing anything. No Federal agency has judged the merits or value, if any, of this property. The information presented herein is proposed and should not be relied upon as a basis for purchasing since
all elements are subject to change, refinement or elimination by the developer without notice. The Arrabelle Club social membership is subject to applicable terms and conditions. Verify before purchasing. The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Vail are not owned, developed or sold by The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC. RCR Vail, LLC uses The Ritz-Carlton marks under license from The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC. The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Vail are being developed and sold by RCR Vail, LLC an affiliate of Vail Resorts Development Company. Designated trademarks are the property of Vail Trademarks, Inc. © 2011 Vail Resorts Development Company. Sotheby’s International Realty and the Sotheby’s International Realty logo are registered (or unregistered) marks used with permission. Each office is independently owned and operated.
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The VAIL 33 From Vail’s iconic covered bridge to a backcountry adventure via snowmobile, here’s your list of 33 items that make Vail an experience to remember. By VAIL Luxury staff 59
The Innovators Local architects toe the line between art and function in their work. Whether it’s sculptural or industrial, their creations can be found far beyond the Rockies. By Traci J. Macnamara 67 75
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Fashion Forwar d Forget the slopes — ski culture is really about après culture. Trendy designers explore the world of mountain fashion when you’re out on the town. By Kim Fuller 75
Good Taste International reputations and local celebrities comprise the Vail Valley’s food scene, which is helping define “Colorado cuisine.” By Lauren Glendenning 82
Off the Wall
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67
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Featured in the ART gallery guide, sculptors, painters and jewelers are recognized in the galleries that help create Vail’s thriving art scene. By ART staff 88
enjoy the subtle touches of home bringing mountain luxury to new heights with us
The Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa has everything you need for a mountain getaway with style. Offering well appointed deluxe hotel rooms and suites The Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa is its your withPark hypo-allergenic options, Allegria Spa with home away from home, with something for everyone. signature healing water sanctuary and 8100 Mountain Enjoy in our farm-to-table Bar & Colorado’s Grill servingfresh localflavors farm-to-table culinary delights. 8100 Mountainside Bar & Grill overlooking the of All located in the heart of the village at the base Rocky Mountains or simply pamper yourself in the Beaver Creek Mountain, with a high-speed gondola healing of Allegria Spa’syou water out yourwaters back door. So perfect, willsanctuary. want to extend your stay. For reservations, please call 970 -949-1234 or visit parkhyattbeavercreek.com For reservations, please call 970 -949-1234 or visit parkhyattbeavercreek.com 50 West Thomas Place, P.O. Box 1595 Beaver Colorado 81620 50 WestCreek, Thomas Place, P.O. Box 1595 Beaver Creek, Colorado 81620
10 from the editor 12 contributors 17
the vault
jew elry Handpicked items from local jewelers. By Kim Fuller 17
13 REASONS TO LOV E VA IL + BC The best ski runs on the local mountains. By Vail Luxury Staff 40
cocktails Classic cocktails that never go out of style. By Wren Wertin 20
CA LL OF THE WEST Painter Natalie DeStefano’s “Along the Colorado” mural enhances the Vail Parking Structure. By Wren Wertin 42
Beaut y Made in Colorado, wild-harvested ISUN skincare products beat the altitude. By Cassie Pence 22 cachet
CELEBRIT Y STATUS Susan Sarandon dishes on her favorite Vail hotspots. 44
M att Inden’s COLOR A DO The photographer shares his scenes of the Centennial State. By Wren Wertin 27 in search of his father, a spy Local filmmaker Carl Colby explores accountability and politics in a documentary about his father, former CIA director William Colby. By Caramie Schnell 32
VAIL LUXURY G S P R I N G 2 012
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Fancy Faces The valley’s social scene captured at some of the biggest parties of the season. 46
27
calendar Must see. Must hear. Must go. Must do. 49
daybook
32
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A SW ISS FA MILY M ASTERPIECE In the heart of Vail Village is a home with a decade’s worth of murals. By Maureen Burks 37
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parting shot
VAIL GOLF COURSE 1119 Ptarmigan Road Main House – 5 Bedroom Guest House w/ caretaker unit – 4 Bedroom $19,500,000
BACHELOR GULCH 228 Tall Timber Road 6 Bed/ 7.5 Bath $7,300,000
970.390.7018
CORDILLERA DIVIDE 350 Little Andorra 6 Bed/ 8 Bath $2,800,000
JoniTaylorRealEstate.com
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BACHELOR GULCH CONDO Bearpaw D-5 4 Bed/ 4.5 Bath $2,500,000
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Editor’s Letter
hough technically there are prettier spots in Vail — the ride out to Blue Sky, the path along Gore Creek, my favorite spa — there’s a nook in front of the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Museum where I like to stop and just watch. A couple of flights of stairs up off the street, the covered bridge juts off to the mountain straight ahead, and Meadow Drive bustles to the west. And with a quick glance from that spot, you can tell a lot about what’s happening in the town. Throngs of skiers head to and from the Vista Bahn, bundled-up families are in search of a meal, bagtoting shoppers head back to the hotel with their finds. Vail turns from a sleepy little town into a hustling, bustling resort overnight, all at once. It’s always like that, with the dictates of the calendar and snowfall reigning supreme. Galleries start buzzing with international collectors, looking to fill a particular space on their walls or simply commemorate their trip with something unique. High-fashion outposts send their stylish confections out into the world with discriminating buyers. Restaurants fill to overflowing with hungry diners ready to treat themselves to something savory and delicious. VAIL Luxury was created for times like these. A brand-new publication, we aim to celebrate everything that is Vail during the height of the season: fashion, cuisine, jewelry, adventure, beauty, art and architecture. We’re a little bit fancy, a little bit rock and roll — just like Vail. Read about the styles that say, “Vail,” and the ones that are coming next. Artists return again and again to local galleries; see who’s where. Some of our local architects are reimagining mountain style, and they’ve taken it on the road. Our favorite cocktails, ski runs, landmarks, movers and shakers are all in here, too, and much more.
So enjoy this inaugural issue, and look for more to come. Wren Wertin
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editor
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Contributors Vail Daily writer and editor Lauren Glendenning started writing at an early age and immediately recognized the beginning of a lifelong love affair with the craft. She loves a good adventure and is constantly seeking out her next one. A friend recently asked her, “Do you ever sit still?” In her spare time, you’ll find her traveling, snowboarding, snowmobiling or sipping margaritas while boating in the Florida Keys, her favorite place to unwind.
Kim Fuller grew up in the Colorado mountains and began her freelancing career when she lived in Scotland and traveled through Europe in 2010 and 2011. Kim loves all things bright and beautiful, seeking her stories amidst the worlds of recreation, wellness, food, wine and travel. She now lives in Vail and says it’s the ideal place to come home to. Traci J. Macnamara is a freelance writer and literary adventurer. She has followed poet William Wordsworth’s footsteps through France to the Alps and worked with scientists at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Macnamara currently lives in Avon.
970.748.4480 | 888.699.8556
eastwestluxuryhomerentals.com
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As the Vail Daily Arts & Entertainment Editor, Caramie Schnell writes about culture, food, music and wine: the good things in life. Her favorite stories, though, are the ones that focus on passionate local residents like Carl Colby, a documentary filmmaker who lives in Vail part-time.
Freelance writer Cassie Pence believes in living a greener lifestyle. Drawing from personal experience, she writes about all things sustainable, including local food, gardening, biking, green cleaning, natural beauty and soon to come — the nuances of cloth diapering. When she’s not sparking dialogue about how to live harmoniously with Mother Earth, she’s traveling on two wheels, practicing handstands, growing at her community garden or cooking tasty meals from her local-farm box. Photo editor Dominique Taylor has been ‘round the world on adventure odysseys. Whether it’s seeking out powder stashes in Japan or eating street food in the middle of Thailand, Dominique always has her camera in hand (or in her backpack). She loves the power of storytelling through images, from the hustle and bustle of a busy restaurant to the pristine moments before sunrise.
Elite representation for elite homes Luxury Home Rentals by East West Resorts offers an exclusive portfolio of vacation residences in Vail, Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead. These premium properties offer the finest in location, dĂŠcor and amenities and are accompanied by our unparalleled five-star services. 970.748.4480 | 888.699.8556 | eastwestluxuryhomerentals.com
The Vail Global Energy Forum is an inaugural event bringing together distinguished U.S.
Publisher
Don Rogers
drogers@vaildaily.com Editor
Wren Wertin
government officials,
wren@vaildaily.com
policy makers, senior
Aaron Cessna
energy executives,
Alithea Doyle
entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, leading energy research scientists and journalists to discuss a transition to a global energy system that is affordable, clean, sustainable, and secure.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Creative Director
Art Director Contributing Designers
Louie Atencio Carrie Calvin Afton Groepper Malisa Samsel Photo Editor
Dominique Taylor dtaylor@vaildaily.com Contributors
Kristin Anderson Krista Driscoll Lauren Glendenning KIM FULLER Brenda Himelfarb TRACI J. MACNAMARA Claudia Nelson Cassie Pence Andy Rupczynski Caramie Schnell ED STONER Melanie wong Marketing Director
mark bricklin
mbricklin@vaildaily.com Advertising Director
Cathy Ethington cethington@vaildaily.com Account Managers
Carole Bukovich cbukovich@vaildaily.com
Patrick Connolly pconnolly@vaildaily.com
Jeremy Lepore
jlepore@vaildaily.com
Austin Maring
amaring@vaildaily.com
Beth McKenzie
George P. Shultz
Mark Udall
bmckenzie@vaildaily.com
Former U.S. Secretary of State
U.S. Senator, Colorado
hschmitt@vaildaily.com
Secretary of the Treasury
U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Secretary of Labor
TICKETS
General Admission: $100 • Signature Package: $175 (Signature Package includes reserved seating section and event hospitality)
Tickets are available online at www.vilarpac.org or by calling the Vilar Performing Arts Center Box Office at (888) 920-ARTS (2787).
www.VailGlobalEnergyForum.com 14
VAIL LUXURY G SP R ING 2 012
Heidi Schmitt Kip Tingle
ktingle@vaildaily.com Circulation Manager
Jared Staber Distribution
Jeff Sumliner Printing & Prepress American Web Denver, Colorado The Vail Daily is a wholly owned subsidiary of Colorado Mountain News Media 200 Lindbergh Drive | P.O. Box 1500 Gypsum, Colorado 81637 p. 970.328.6333 f. 970.328.6409 Copyright Š2012 Colorado Mountain News Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.
I don’t just build snowmen. I build relationships with my customers to help them find the home of their dreams.
~ Liz has successfully closed millions of dollars of real estate transactions in Vail, Beaver Creek, Arrowhead, Singletree and the surrounding area. ~ Liz’s continued relationships with buyers and sellers has resulted in her unparalleled understanding of the needs and expectations of her clients. That combined with her unique interpersonal skills, create an efficient and valuable experience. ~ To quote Liz, “To be successful you must focus on the needs of your clients and continue that commitment forever. I utilize all of the experience I have had to the best of my ability.”“
LizLeeds…
…O T H E R S F OL L OW
phone (970) 331-1806 | email lizleeds@msn.com | website www.lizleeds.com
Don’t let your dreams melt away. Call Liz today.
Creating Heirlooms Since 1970
DAN TELLEEN
VAIL VILLAGE 970.476.4760
Shaken, stirred AND PREFERRED LIBATIONS 20 // Natural Vitality, all bottled up 22
T H I N G S
O F
V A L U E
G
O B J E C T S
O F
D E S I R E
TOWN JEWELS J
ewelers in the Vail
Valley know how to show all that sparkles and shines. Stunning gems, precious golds, unique clasps and beautiful diamonds are set by some of the most recognized jewelers in the Rockies. Loitering amidst beautiful jewelry is a noble pastime, according to Terry Betteridge. His son,
Win, owns Betteridge in Vail, which specializes in estate and designer jewelry. “We want our customers to feel comfortable,” says Win, “knowing that they are with friends in a classically elegant place.” In this mountain valley, classic elegance meets artistic innovation with an ease that only a world-class resort can bring. With several hands-on jewelers and a host of collectors that seek out unique pieces the world over, it’s easy to find a singular piece (or three) to add to the jewelry box.
Emer ald Bea d Necklace with Dia mond Clasp
This emerald bead necklace is composed of 41 graduated, natural emerald beads. It weighs approximately 860 total karats, and is secured by a diamond-set, signature Bulgari platinum clasp. Available at Betteridge.
P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F B E T T E R I D G E
S P R I N G 2 012 G VAIL LUXURY
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by K IM FULLER
JEWELRY
J. Cotter Studio Jeweler and sculptor Jim Cotter likes to play with concepts. What is fine art? What is jewelry? Sure high-karat gold and shiny diamonds are considered worthy of jewelry, but what about concrete? What about steel? One look in his two shops, both in Beaver Creek and Vail, and it’s obvious the conclusion he’s come to. The inventive artist keeps pushing boundaries.
Karats Dan Telleen is the kind of guy who listens to questions and then gives a thoughtful answer, whether it’s about glittering diamonds, ancient Roman seals or frozen lightning. He works with all manner of interesting and exotic materials for his jewelry, which goes from the intellectually stimulating to the classically beautiful. A hands-on jeweler in the heart of Vail Village, his body of work is unmistakable and cohesive.
Betteridge Y ellow Sa pphir e R ing
This daring, one-of-a-kind ring by Jim Cotter is a true eye-catcher. The piece is a stand-out — with a prominent natural yellow sapphire, complemented by a wide, yellow gold, textured band. According to the studio, this ring is a prime example of Jim Cotter’s unique big stone rings for which he’s become well known.
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In the heart of the Vail Village, Betteridge has been a gem in the Vail community for more than 25 years. A place to feel comfortable, the store is located in Solaris and features the world’s first “watch bar,” a leisurely place to view and sample fine Swiss watches and sip fine Scotch. Here you’ll mingle with a knowledgeable staff in an elegant environment that holds one of the finest collections of jewelry and watches in Colorado. Ane m o ne T a s s e l E a r r i n g s
These anemone diamond drop earrings in 18-karat yellow gold are composed of a double pavé diamond drop with gold chain tassels suspended from them. The earrings stay securely in place with posts and friction backs for pierced ears. Handcrafted in Philadelphia, they’re designed by Paul Morelli.
“S” Link Necklace
An 18-karat gold necklace, it highlights the Tahitian South Sea Pearl. The necklace is made from two bracelets and a centerpiece, yet it’s the textural variation in this piece that makes it attractive and unique. The bracelets can be worn singly or nested as a pair, and the pearl releases so you can have a white one if you desire.
F R O M L E F T, P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F J . C OT T E R S T U D I O, B E T T E R I D G E A N D K A R AT S
Jewelry,
Miner als,
Fossil Ammonite – Canada & Three Bronze Frogs from Tim Cotterill – Frogman™ | Machairodus giganteus - Asia – Late Miocene
Fossils…
BY NATURE GALLERY specializes in the finest rare fossils and minerals available anywhere in the world. From museum-quality artwork to accessible and functional pieces, It’s the best gallery of its kind. Come see for yourself at our NEW location. Up the stairs from the ice rink, on the right, across from the Children’s Ski School.
• N E W LO C AT I O N •
45 W. Thomas Place | Gerald R. Ford Hall, Unit C8 | Beaver Creek, CO 81620 | 970.949.1805
C O C K TA I L S
I
t just doesn’t get
old — walking into a restaurant, sitting down at the bar and ordering some kind of fizzy-frothy-feisty adult beverage. Cocktails were originally created to mask the bad flavor of spirits that were de rigueur during Prohibition. Bathtub gin might have been illegal, but that didn’t keep it out of circulation. Flavor, though, wasn’t what distillers were concentrating on; it was all about the buzz. From there, bartenders at speakeasies created concoctions that went down a little easier. ¶ Spirits have come a long way since then, and so have the cocktails. Whether you call them bartenders or mixologists, the folks making syrups, muddling mint and shake-shakeshaking it all up are the kings and queens of the show. Just like chefs, bartenders jump back and forth between the classic and the new, playing with new liquors, flavors and styles. Some restaurants, such as Kelly Liken, La Tour and Flame, have gone so far as to evaluate the size of the ice, deciding that a single large cube has more panache than several small ones in particular drinks. At other restaurants, such as vin48 and Spago, the chefs grow some of the herbs that are featured in their cuisine and drinks. And everyone seems to have some fun and funky spirit with a story, be it Peak Spirits Cap Rock gin from Hotchkiss or Cocchi Americano from Italy. ¶ Here’s the hit list of delicious ways to indulge in grown-up drinks.
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THAT’S THE SPIRIT Classic cocktails that never go out of style
Red Cachaça from Cima
P h oto BY B r i a n K l i n g b a i l
by W REN WERTIN
Pomegranate Sparkler K e l ly L i k e n , Va i l
A long-time signature drink at Kelly Liken, the Pomegranate Sparkler makes the menu every ski season. Sparkling wine is embellished with pomegranate liquor, and then topped with a few pomegranate seeds. Imbibers get to watch the seeds ride bubbles up to the top, fall off and sink to the bottom, only to be carted up by another bubble. It’s a great start to dinner, as Champagne goes with, well, everything.
Corpse Reviver #2 from Vin48
Corpse Reviver #2 V i n 4 8 , Av o n
Corpse Reviver #2 was originally intended as the hair of the dog the morning after those exuberant nights on the town, because nothing says, “Good morning,” quite like gin. (Unless, of course, it’s gin, triple sec, lemon juice and absinthe.) At vin48, they make theirs with an Italian aperitif, Cocchi Americano, instead of the traditional Lillet. Vigorously shaken and served icy cold in a subdued glass, it’s an excellent beginning to another one of those exuberant nights.
Red Cachaça C i m a , Av o n
Cachaça never tasted so good. Brazil’s national spirit, cachaça is a bit like rum, though it’s made with sugarcane instead of molasses. With mint and red pepper, the kicker, literally, is the chili syrup, which turns the heat up in the sassy drink. It’s a very good way to begin après, as are any of the Latin American dishes on the menu.
BGT Bourbon Sour F i r e s i d e B a r & L o u n g e – F l a m e , Va i l
There’s something about bourbon that unites folks — bourbon drinkers like to stick together. It certainly united bar manager and sommelier Steven Teaver and executive chef Jason Harrison at the Four Seasons, who like to trade small-batch bourbons and the recipes in which to use them. Most recently on the menu is Teaver’s BGT Bourbon Sour, made with Buffalo Trace Bourbon from Kentucky, fresh lemon and a smack of muddled orange.
Greyhound D i s h , E d wa r d s
Pomegranate Sparkler from Kelly Liken
P h oto s by K r i s t i n A n d e r s o n a n d A n dy R u p c z y n s k i
The enormous citrus squeezer on Dish’s bar gets a workout year-round, thanks to the classic Greyhound cocktail that remains a local favorite. Ruby Red grapefruits are juiced and mixed with vodka. Add a salted rim for a Salty Dog. It’s a pristine offering of a quaff that’s stood the test of time.
S P R I N G 2 012 G VAIL LUXURY
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by C A SSIE PENCE
BEAUT Y
QUANTUM RESTORATION Bunnie Gulick’s ISUN harnesses the raw healing powers of nature.
“Nature has given us these magnificent plants to sustain us and support us and allow us to thrive. If we use these plants in their natural states, without destroying them, our bodies are going to respond in a positive way,” Gulick says. “Many things are possible. Ideal health is possible. Greater youth in our skin is possible. Rejuvenation is possible. It is possible to look younger longer without any outside intervention by being more in harmony with nature.” Wild-crafted, organic and natural plant ingredients form the basis of all ISUN products. No chemical preservatives or other synthetic ingredients are used, which means the shelf life is not as long as other skin -care lines. Behind the power of ISUN’s performance are not only the ingredients, but also how they are obtained and how they are processed, for example, at low temperatures for long periods of time. Each step is careful not to destroy the life-force energy and nutrient values of the plants.
Culled from the wild
W
hen Bunnie Gulick
set out to make a skincare line, she knew it first had to take care of her aging skin in the harsh mountain climate. “If it does that,” she thought, “it will do anything.” At age 63, Gulick — whose skin is enviously bright and smooth — commutes on her snowmobile to the ISUN skincare headquarters, nearly two miles along the foothills of the Sneffels Mountain Range near Telluride. The ride can get intense — windy, snowy, thick
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with clouds. “Well, thank god I’ve got ISUN,” she says. Gulick designed ISUN to have a quantum healing effect on anyone who uses it. This means it affects the mind, body and spirit in a positive and uplifting way, through the products’ feel, smell and energy. So she looked to nature — not to harsh chemicals from a lab — because the only way to achieve this was through using the earth’s most pristine and powerful ingredients.
Wild-crafted means Gulick and her local team or Indians in the Amazon go out into nature and harvest ingredients by hand without destroying the plant or root system, taking only 10 percent of a large area and leaving the rest to continue to proliferate. “It is scientifically and clinically proven that there’s a huge difference in the nutrient values of plants that are wildcrafted as opposed to cultivated by man,” Gulick says. Around the San Juan Moun-
Experience Rocky Mountain Renewal at The Westin Riverfront with a relaxing Abhyanga Massage, Aroma Journey or River Stone Massage. Where nature nutures.
Four distinctive studios, one complete club: - Movement Studio featuring aerobics, TRX, Circuit Training and more - Studio Anjali offering all forms of yoga - Pilates Studio - Cycling Studio offering CycleOps and Computrainers
126 Riverfront Lane Avon, CO 81620 970-790-3020 | SpaAnjali.com
nurturing your body
and soul
BEAUT Y
tains, where ISUN is produced, Gulick harvests horsetail herb, which is rich in silica to strengthen the health of the skin, and nettles, yarrow and wild lavender. Around the globe, Gulick works with humanitarian organizations to employ indigenous people in places like the Amazon and the Himalayas to harvest wildcrafted ingredients. “These people live close to the land, they live in trees, on the ground, not in houses. They know the plants. They know their medicinal properties, and they know them because they have a special relationship with all of nature, not from a book,” Gulick says. “This is how they live. They have a communication with the spirit of the plants, and they speak with the plants, and the plants tell them what to use them for.” The goji berries used in many of ISUN’s products have
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a special story. A nomadic group wanders the foothills of the Himalayas and collects the wild goji berries. Tibetan monks purchase them, bless the berries through ceremony, then Gulick buys them through a Tibetan Medicinal Center on Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest. All of these wild-crafted plants are boosted by ISUN’s one unique ingredient — Ormus — mono-atomic elements, or single atoms, from the platinum group that are largely responsible for ISUN’s rejuvenating properties. The luminous energy of Ormus is due to its high spin rate to the right, which indicates a healthy condition. (Disease molecules spin to the left, indicating an imbalance.) “It enhances cell communication,” Gulick says. “If you have damage in the body or if you’ve got skin damage, Ormus will speed up the communication between cells to repair the damage, and it hap-
pens much more rapidly.” The universe has gifted Gulick with a supply of Ormus behind her house in a hidden spring. High altitude springs are a common place to find Ormus in the water.
treatments, says Erin Sehnal, the spa director. Spa Anjali uses ISUN in two of its facials: the Repair and Restore Facial (great for those who have been enjoying the sun and wind in the mountains) and the Ayurvedic Facial, featuring Neem, known The spa experience as the “pharmacy tree” in InThe best way to introduce dia, Sehnal says, and together yourself to the ISUN experiwith the Himalayan Marma ence is at a spa with one of the Massage, the facial soothes, line’s signature treatments. The Westin Riverfront Resort’s hydrates and firms the skin. “Personally, it’s the best Spa Anjali in Avon carries line I have ever used,” Sehnal the line because it’s made locally, and ISUN takes the same says. “It’s such a beautiful line, giving back to the earth and ayurvedic approach that the giving back to others and to Spa Anjali promotes with its ourselves — that’s why she (Gulick) just uses ISUN TREATMENTS the purest ingredients. She believes so strongly Spa Anjali, The Westin Riverfront about putting good Resort and Spa in Avon things on your skin.” The Ritz-Carlton, The Marma MasBachelor Gulch Spa sage is an energy point The Lodge and Spa treatment, like manual at Cordillera acupuncture, using The Arrabelle at Vail Square hands and crystals. in Lionshead Gulick calls it a “natural For more information, visit face lift,” a technique ISUNskincare.com she learned while living in an Indian ashram. Another healing ritual ISUN incorporates into its treatments is the Shirodhara scalp treatment. A small, hand-held copper pot is filled with warm oil infused with herbs and poured onto the scalp and then massaged into the hair. “The essential oils and herbs in ISUN, especially in the scalp treatment, calm the mind and central nervous system. Everything you’re using in that line is affecting those guests positively and creating relaxation,” says Courtney Bourn, esthetician at The RitzCarlton, Bachelor Gulch Spa.
P H OTO by K r istin A n d e r son
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EXCLUSIVELY AT SONNENALP SPA Fortify your skin with this innovative water facial treatment for women and men. You will see fine lines reduced, uneven skin tones washed away and large pores minimized in appearance. Limited packages available, call to book your treatment today. HydraFacial MD has been featured on:
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my next HydraFacial and I’d recommend everybody!” S P R I N G 2 012 it G to VAIL LUXURY 25
A man, a country, a secret 32 // Slide and Glide 40 // Where mountain lions wait 42
I N S I D E R ACC E S S TO T H E PEO PL E, PL AC E S & PE R K S T H AT M A K E VA I L E X T R AO R D I N A RY
MATT INDEN’S COLORADO Eschewing the digital age, this photographer’s vintage gear and artistic dedication allow him to capture the world as he sees it.
ART & PHOTOGR APHY
Detail from “Corn Lily”
M
att Inden was supposed
to be a soccer player or a ski racer. Growing up in Delaware, he spent his high-school years at a ski academy in Vermont to train. It was there that he took a photography class, taught by the father of a fellow
racer and student. A few rolls of film later, he put the camera down at the end of the class and didn’t pick it up again for years. He’s made up for lost time, though. After a stint as a photojournalist for the now-defunct Vail Trail newspaper, he went
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on to shoot for the Colorado Tourism Bureau, crisscrossing the state to capture all that is quintessential Colorado. Inden’s gone solo now, and has a small gallery in Lionshead filled with his visions
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of Colorado and beyond. It’s a little discombobulating, standing amongst the large prints. Though representing a vast array of expansive scenics and intense textural studies, they’re unified in one thing:
by W REN WERTIN
Lower left Matt Inden totes his signature vintage Deardorff 8x10 camera. Left “Shrine Ridge.” Below “Goats.”
They pull you in and make you feel like you’re there. “I want people to be in the photo,” Inden says. “I want them to really be there.” Whether it’s lily pads suspended on Lost Lake or
the moon setting at sunrise over Shrine Pass, if a shot has made it to his gallery’s walls then there’s something special about it. It means everything worked. No two ways about it: Inden is impractical. He doesn’t just hike for his shots, but he hikes carrying his vintage Deardorff 8x10 camera, complete with bellows, curtain and large sheets of film. Imagine the camera used for family portraits a century ago — that’s what he hauls around. When he heads out for a day of shooting, his pack weighs
about 65 pounds. For overnights, it comes in closer to 85. Because each sheet of film is a commitment (every time he hits the shutter button it costs $30), he is meticulous in his setup. He might spend hours dialing in a scene before actually photographing it, all the while keeping an eye on the sun and shadows. He can tilt the body this way and that, bring up the texture in one spot or soften it in another, all by working with the focus, depth of field and tilt. And he does it all upside down, since he’s not looking into a view-
finder but a mirror that throws back the scene upside down and backwards. “I’m competitive, which is probably from my sports background,” Inden says. “I like getting the best image possible from a particular area. I want to put the best work out there that I can.” “He’s very particular,” says Inden’s printmaker, Ron Landucci of Infinite Editions. “Of all my clients, he’s in the top 10 percent for being picky at getting what he wants.” Inden approaches his images like a graphic designer,
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“Lost Lake”
which is why they make such fine art. Whether it’s strong vertical lines or ephemeral textures, he slowly and carefully puts the scene together. Sometimes he’s affected by how long he’s been going for an image of a place, or by how long it’s been since his last successful shot. For instance, he’s been trying to get a perfect shot in Jackson Hole for seven years. Last summer he spent nine days camping and exploring. Finally — finally — the world opened up for him for exactly seven seconds. And he was ready for it, capturing
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exactly what he wanted. But it’s not always such an epic quest. He hiked Shrine Pass five mornings in a row a few years back. Located just south of Vail Pass, it’s an easy jaunt up from Minturn. And the morning of the fifth day he saw the moon setting and the sun rising, the wildflowers were bursting into bloom and the light was magical. He knew immediately that he had something special, something perfect. And he was right. “Matt’s really specific about not doing a lot of manipulation to the image,” Landucci
says. “He just wants it to show what it was that made it interesting to him, to make it look like it did when he was there.” Being in the gallery is like taking a quick tour through Colorado, from Vail’s backyard in the White River National Forest to the peaks and valleys of Southern Colorado. Lately he’s been venturing out of state more. This summer he spent a few weeks on the East Coast. He traveled from the Adirondacks down to Tennessee and back again, shooting on the way. The photo he’s happiest with, though, he got
after he returned to Delaware, to the house where he grew up, and took a hike two miles down the road. That image is now hanging in Montauk restaurant in Lionshead: rambly, brambly fall colors in the chaos of a living forest. “I don’t want to sound cheese ball, but the idea is to really transport the viewer,” Inden says. “I want to get them to that moment in nature, to the idea of the scene.” Falling into his photographs, the idea doesn’t seem cheese ball at all: That’s just how it works.
by CA R A MIE SCHNELL
IN SEARCH OF HIS FATHER, A SPY In Carl Colby’S latest documentary, THE Vail filmmaker examines a lifetime of unanswered questions about his father WILLIAM COLBY, THE former CIA director.
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ike his father, Carl
Colby is a quiet man. Understated. Intelligent. Both have probing eyes and glasses that shield them. The similarities end there. Otherwise Colby wouldn’t have ever made his latest documentary, “The Man Nobody
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Knew: In Search of My Father CIA Spymaster, William Colby.” “Carl’s an extraordinarily accomplished guy, but not someone who wears it on his sleeve,” says Howard Stone, Carl’s friend, and a part-time Vail resident. Carl has created documentaries on a variety of figures: Franz Kline, Willem De Kooning, Bob Marley and more. But years after his father’s death he turned his camera inward, on his own family, to illuminate a man that those closest to him didn’t even know. Not really. “You could be talking to my father about the weather while someone was sawing off his right arm and he wouldn’t so much as flinch,” says Carl, who lives part time in Vail, and part
top Poster for “The Man Nobody Knew,” a film by Carl Colby, 2011; above Catherine, William, Barbara, Carl and Jonathan near Lake Champlain (mid-1950s).
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time in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Doe Browning. “He had a great capacity to absorb pain. He lived at a lower boiling point than you and me.” William Colby served as the 10th director of the CIA, between 1973 and 1976. After decades of doing the United States’ dark work, he gave up the CIA’s “family jewels,” details about covert actions from the 1950s through the ‘70s, during a series of congressional hearings. Shortly after, he was forced to resign, replaced by George H. W. Bush. “When he was asked to lie to Congress, he couldn’t do that; he sided with the constitution and he was thrown out,” Carl says. THE Secrets.. In circular fashion, the film begins at the end. Of his father’s life, that is. Elusive even in death, William, 76, went on a nighttime canoe ride and disappeared. His body was found nine days later in a tributary of the Potomac River. That was 15 years ago. As the film begins, Carl narrates: “My father was a soldier. He jumped out of airplanes. He lived to serve. People would turn to me and say, ‘You know your dad was a murderer.’ My immediate reaction used to be ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Then I’d find myself thinking, was he? Well, who was he, really?” Long after the film ends, that’s the question you’re left to ponder. The film is a morality tale. It’s at once a deep memoir of what it’s like to live with someone so ghost-like, and a historical account of the CIA. It weaves the personal with
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the political, and more than anything, it’s an inquiry into the secret actions this country is involved in every day. “This president (Obama), even though he has his hands full right now, every other night, or whatever, he’s approving what’s called a presidential finding,” Carl says. “He signs off on a high level, high profile, highly dangerous, covert operation; he’s using that capability probably more than any president since the Kennedy brothers.” Carl’s father used to tell him “the CIA exists so that the president has an option between lodging a diplomatic protest or sending in the Marines,” he says. “We’re in like 15 to 18 countries, at least, including the ones we already know about,” Carl says. “It’s a very seductive tool, the problem is it becomes easy to use, and not that accountable. You’re not having to tell the American people anything. And then if anything happens, he can blame the CIA ... I wanted to make it so people would understand the sacrifice people are making, not just the one my mother made, and my small family, but also now. People are lifting off tonight. Helicopter blades are whirling. Men and women are out there, thousands of them, so we at least ought to have a discussion. What is this secret war?” For Howard Stone, the similarities between Vietnam and now are unsettling.
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above President Gerald Ford and his Cabinet award William Colby the National Security Medal (1976) with his family present in the Oval Office; below Carl with his wife, Dorothy (Doe) Browning.
“It smacked me upside the head,” Stone says. “I said, ‘Whoa, we’re reliving this now, with Iraq, Afghanistan, drones and a lot of current real-life events’ ... the government doesn’t always tell us everything. It resonates with anyone who is aware of what’s going on in the world today. You see similarities and how history repeats itself. I think it was done exceptionally well.”
THE SacrificES.. Carl worked six years on the film, interviewing some 85 people, 35 of whom are part of the movie, including his now 90-year-old mother, a strong, expressive woman with a rare vantage point. Neverbefore-seen archival footage is intermingled with interviews with former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense and Director of CIA James Schlesinger, as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh and Tim Weiner. The result is an authentic film about a man no one truly knew. The film opened Sept. 23 in New York City, and has shown around the country. It’s garnered praise from critics, and has been written up in the Wall St. Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle and more. It showed at the Landmark Nuart Theater in L.A. in
October. That’s where Howard Stone saw the film along with his wife, and a slew of friends he invited to the screening. Afterwards he hosted a party at his Santa Monica home. People at the party nearly buzzed with energy, lavishing Carl and the film with praise. “It’s an important story about the history of this country,” Howard says, “and a compelling story about people and their families. And there is something in that film I’ll never forget. It took my breath away.” The film will screen at the Vilar Performing Arts Center in Beaver Creek March 18, at an event that benefits the Vail Veterans Program. “The movie is about sacrifice — not about war fighting and losing limbs, not about what those veterans have gone through — but sacrifice in what families do for psychologically wounded warriors,” Carl says.
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Located in the heart of Vail Village, this seven-bedroom home was designed to accommodate large families.
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wning a home on
Vail’s Beaver Dam Road has always had a certain cachet, especially when a family is able to create an estate for generations to come. More than two decades ago, the owners of 394 Beaver Dam did just this, projecting their ideal design onto a virtual blank canvas in one of the most desirable locations in Vail. With a strong Swiss heritage, and an even stronger sense of family, the owners wanted a cozy family home in the alpine tradition. To achieve this look on the exterior, they personally hand painted the shutters, copying a flame and cross design from their grandparents’ home in Gorgier, Switzerland. Traditional architectural details copied straight from Swiss chalets perfected the look. The home’s interior design was crafted by Sudie Woodson out of San Francisco who, with the owners’ help, spent endless days unearthing stylish antiques and accent pieces that represented traditional alpine living. Locating European rugs with traditionally subdued colors was the most difficult of the design tasks, according to the owner. “We really wanted to recreate a traditional chateau and did not realize what an undertaking and an education it would be, but it was worth every minute,” she says. Finished throughout with hand-crafted artwork including etched glass doors and
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394 Beaver Dam Road Interior Design by Sudie Woodson 7 Bedrooms / 6 Bathrooms Listed by Ron Byrne & Associates More info at ronbyrne.com or 970.476.1987
window panels as well as murals by muralist Samantha Renko, there is a charming surprise hiding around every corner of the home. Renko, whose work has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens and Sunset magazines, was originally hired to paint just the entrance and great room
of the home. But the owners loved her work so much they asked her to keep going. The murals evolved over nearly a decade as the artist lived in the house each summer for a month to six weeks and just let her fancy take over. Renko would paint and then dry sandpaper the paint down so
it looks old. She always left the family a “surprise” at the end of her annual stint — one year it was the family medallion on the outside wall, another year it was the owners’ own family home in Switzerland recreated in the master bathroom. “You truly feel as though
VAIL’S HOME TO CrEATIVE CuISInE And CrAFT BEEr you have been transported to a chateau in the Swiss Alps outside of Zermatt when you step inside the front door,” says Ron Byrne of Ron Byrne & Associates Real Estate. “It is a perfect combination of privacy and seclusion, when in fact you are within 500 feet of the slopes of Vail. I have had the privilege of watching this home come to life, seeing the children grow up over the years and this magnificent European chalet become a legacy on Beaver Dam Road.” Along with its seven bedrooms and six baths, this home boasts four indoor family living areas, a hidden inground hot tub, an all-weather enclosed grilling room, and exterior access from nearly every room of the house.
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Muralist Samantha Renko has been adding to the home’s plethora of murals for a decade.
866.666.3341 | DineOnGoreCreek.com 1300 Westhaven Drive Vail, CO 81657 Only a five minute ride on the bus or shuttle to Vail Cascade Village. Complimentary Valet Parking
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B ES T O F VAI L
13 REASONS TO LOVE VAIL+BC vail and beaver creek have a plethora of trails to choose from. HERE ARE the ones that get us up in the morning on powder dayS — or any OTHER day for that matter.
beaver creek. Unlike most mountains, Beaver Creek’s mellow, easier runs are at the top of the mountain, while the middle section gets steeper and more challenging. It’s a terrific place to learn to ski, and intermediates and experts alike have plenty of terrain, too.
01 | red buffalo A gently rolling, mellow cruiser at the top of the mountain. Red Buffalo is ideal for beginners and those still building their confidence. Dip, dip, dip goes the run. On powder days, it’s usually half groomed, so skiers and riders can take their pick.
02 | cabin fever Bachelor Gulch sits between Beaver Creek and Arrowhead, and is an intermediate skier’s dream. Cabin Fever is the run furthest west in Bachelor Gulch, and has a nice and consistent pitch.
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WINTER ADVENTURES
VAIL MOUNTAIN.
03 | goshawk run Not to be confused with Goshawk Glade, Goshawk is part of the Talon’s Challenge — an annual throw-down that has skiers and riders trying to complete a certain number of vertical feet on 13 steep runs. The aspens toward the bottom allow for a bit of soul serenity, and the views are amazing. The rollers at the bottom are a lot of fun as well on a powder day. Try to get it early.
04 | harrier Upper Harrier is a groomer. It’s a solid run, with rolling terrain, wide-open spaces and tree islands to dart through. Want bumps? Continue to lower Harrier.
05 | thresher glade Off Strawberry Park, Thresher Glade is a tree run. Fairly open for a tree run, it’s a good place for intermediate riders to develop their tree-riding abilities.
Vail is the largest ski area in the United States. It’s huge. Enormous. The Back Bowls (otherwise known as the seven wonders of Vail), Blue Sky Basin, the front side and Lionshead are all part of the terrain.
06 | lost boy A nice, long circuitous route, Lost Boy offers up a Back Bowls experience to beginners and experts alike. Generally groomed, it’s good for the whole family — the kids can duck into the trees while Mom and Dad do figure eights down the main run. Snowboarders should hold their speed down the hill, since there’s a flat section to power through before turning onto Lost Boy. Lost Boy was named for (wait for it) a boy who was lost overnight, having skied into the Game Creek Bowl before it was developed. Legend has it he made a snow cave under a tree and spent the night there. In the morning he managed to get out safely, and announced himself to ski patrollers when he walked into the patrol shack and said, “I’m the lost boy.”
09 | riva ridge Vail’s most famous run, Riva is named for the place in Italy where the 10th Mountain Division ski troopers did battle with the German forces and won. Having trained at Camp Hale not too far from Vail, the American soldiers took the Germans completely by surprise. Riva is rated both blue and black, depending on where you are on it. Groomed regularly, it has several pitches that are famous in their own right. Put them all together and you have a long and delightful run.
10 | chaos canyon The kids’ area just below Mid-Vail is the best way for small fries to learn how to ride or ski both bumps and trees. Designed for smaller skis and boards, adults are welcome to try it but will find it a bit more difficult.
11 | simba Groomed almost every day, Simba is just plain fun. Rolling, sweeping and wide open, it’s an easy place to let it rip. Simba hugs the west side of Vail.
07 | whiskey jack
12 | genghis khan
After a day in China Bowl, Teacup Bowl or Blue Sky Basin, there will come a time when you have to head to the front side and find your way to a hot tub, après, dinner or all three. So take Whiskey Jack, a groomer that won’t challenge your tired legs.
Genghis is a steep, consistent pitch in China Bowl all the way down to the catwalk. There’s nothing like it on a powder day.
08 | blue ox When it’s groomed, Blue Ox is a long, fun, rolling black that offers excellent views of the Gore Range and Vail Mountain. But if it’s not groomed, beware the endless moguls. They keep going and going, and there’s no way to exit without simply finishing what you’ve started.
13 | big rock park It’s fairly easy to get to Blue Sky Basin, but it’s awfully hard to leave. Designed for experts and intermediates, Blue Sky feels like the sort of ski area found in dreams. Big Rock Park holds powder and lightly zigzags down the hill. An expansive run, hold on tight because the terrain just keeps changing.
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Call of the West FROM MURALS TO WOODEN TOYS, NATALIE DESTEFANO BEAUTIFIES THE WORLD WITH HER ARTISTIC VISION AND JOIE DE VIVRE.
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rowing up on the
lower East Side of Manhattan uniquely prepared Natalie DeStefano for her parking-structure mural in the Vail Transportation Center. Surrounded by a cloud of pigeons and carbon monoxide, she painted on a large, concrete canvas one cold October 11 years ago. DeStafano’s “Along the Colorado” follows the spiral ramp that takes cars from the entry level of the garage to the Meadow Drive level. Before a wall was erected at one end, the area was called The Doughnut for its unhindered round shape. “It’s my interpretation of Colorado’s landscape,” the artist explains.
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It begins with a mountain lion looming atop the red-dirt rocks so ubiquitous in Western Colorado. From there the river snakes through, spilling out from a distant mountain range. A bull elk bugles between drinks, and the mural finishes with scrubby brush and berry bushes. The Town of Vail’s Art in Public Places board asked artists to submit ideas for the space, and DeStefano’s drawing was chosen. The end mural
Her murals can be seen all over the county. Most are in private homes, but she’s also got work in Fiesta’s and Marko’s in Edwards.
was basically the same as the original drawing. “It didn’t take me any time at all,” DeStefano says about the painting. “I was two weeks into it, and the gal who was in charge of the job told me I had to stop. I told her I wasn’t done, and she said, ‘You’ve done enough. We don’t want it to become too distracting to the drivers — we don’t want them to hit the wall’” Painting for a flat fee, it was the first (and last) time she’s been told to stop painting before she felt she was finished. In her typical easy-breezy style she just shrugged, laughed and packed up her paintbrushes (and her husband, George Turon) and headed home. She tells personal anecdotes with the same sense of carefree je ne sais quoi — stories of happening upon a bobcat in the henhouse, or relocating a lynx who shot out of the back of her car “like Superman.” “Along the Colorado” is huge — 150 feet long. It starts out a reasonable 6 feet tall, but as the spiral continues it grows and grows by degrees. The ending height is 15 feet tall. “George helped me there,”
she says. “We had to use scaffolding to get to those high places, and he blocked in the color for me because I’m afraid of heights.” Having a mural in a parking garage might seem odd — the fumes, the cars, the general dirt associated with internal combustion. “Transportation centers are ideal locations to incorporate public art given the high visibility from both pedestrian and vehicular traffic,” says Molly Eppard, coordinator for the Town of Vail’s Art In Public Places. “As these structures may be a first stop for guests to a community, these oftentimes large and dark structures can be made more inviting through incorporating art. Vail’s Art in Public Places aims to visually enhance the transportation centers through a variety of mediums of art for all to enjoy.” “Along the Colorado” continues to be a locals’ favorite — especially that big, ole cat. Born to artistic parents, DeStefano’s mom, a photographer, relocated to New York City from France after World War II. Her father was a painter whose “real job” was as a vio-
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by W ren Wertin
— DETAILS —
linist in the New York Philharmonic under Maestro Leonard Bernstein. DeStafano took her art education into her own hands when, on rainy days, she’d ditch school and spend hour upon hour in the expansive worlds of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and other outposts of fine art. Her style ran to sexy fantasy — half naked women, mythological creatures, furry beasts. Though she spent so much time painting, drawing and imagining images onto paper and canvas, moving West to the endless vistas of Colorado was an artistic challenge. “After moving to Colorado I realized people weren’t into my kind of artwork, so I taught myself to do landscapes and wildlife,” she says. “That was really a challenge. Growing up
in the City, it was all people. The only animals we had were dogs and cats.” But 30-plus years of living in the West has changed
You’ve done enough. We don’t want it to to become too distracting to the drivers — we don’t want them to hit the wall. that. Her murals can be seen all over the county. Most are in private homes, but she’s also got work in Fiesta’s and Marko’s in Edwards, as well as in the children’s room at the
Eagle Library. She camouflaged the utility boxes throughout Beaver Creek years ago, and made the rodeo signs for the resort’s summer series. She’s also illustrated several books (she’s working on three at the moment) and she didn’t stop creating her “sexy women.” Most recently she’s started making alpaca rocking horses for a friend who has an Alpaca shop in Eagle. “So I’m getting into woodworking,” she says, grinning. For a woman who has made a career out of laying paint on any available surface (including her cars) and lugging home animal skulls to decorate the outer walls of her and her husband’s place, Skull Bone Ranch, it certainly won’t be her last “new” art endeavor. It’s simply what’s next.
(01) The mountain lion is Natalie DeStefano’s favorite part of the mural. (02) There is a plaque commemorating the mural, but unfortunately the artist’s name is misspelled on it and doesn’t match her signature. (03) The mural is 148 feet long. On the right it’s 6 feet tall, but on the left it’s 15 feet tall. (04) The mountain range is an amalgamation of Gore Range peaks. (05) DeStefano never decided if she’d painted the Colorado or the Eagle River, so the Art in Public Places board decided for her: the Colorado. (06) Golden aspens represent high-alpine fall. (07) A bugling buck elk is a familiar sight to DeStefano and her husband, George Turon. They sometimes hide in the bushes and bugle in the elk just to see them. “But they get mad if they find out it’s you and not a cow,” she says. “They’ll gore you to death.”
Drivers experience the mural from right to left as they head down the circular “doughnut” from one level to the next; top Left end of the mural.
C E L E B R I T Y S TAT U S
SUSAN SARANDON
Sarandon bought her mother a birthday present at PISMO Gallery, and spent some time at CineBistro, Masters Gallery and Kemo Sabe. She’s pictured at Mid-Vail in a 4Cento jacket from Kappa, the official skiwear provider of the Italian Ski Team and available exclusively in the United States at Vail’s Luca Bruno.
Susan Sarandon was in town for the Vail Symposium’s inaugural SPiN Vail Ping Pong Tournament. Co-owner of the SPiN Galactic ping pong social clubs throughout North America, Sarandon spent a couple of days enjoying the valley. In addition to eating at Splendido at the Chateau and Allie’s Cabin in Beaver Creek, she lunched at The 10th on Vail Mountain — and took her very first chair-lift ride to get there.
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P H OTO by R ya n S c h m i dt/e p i c m i x photos
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Clockwise FROM ABOVE: Rod Slifer, Michael Charles, Beth Slifer, Pete and Debbie Hayda. Kelly Dantas, Barbara Scrivens, Tricia Swenson, Stacey Truitt and Stacy Thibedeau. Holly Horvath and Bob Hernreich. Becky Hernreich and Don Remey. John Feagin and Marty Head. Gary and Vicki Boxer. Kathy Borgen and Amanda Precourt.
Black Diamond Ball he Black Diamond Ball is arguably the biggest fundraising event of the year. Hosted by the Vail Valley Foundation during the Birds of Prey World Cup races, the evening of dinner and dancing raises money to fund the organization’s mission of enhancing the quality of life in the Vail Valley for both residents and guests through athletics, education and the arts.
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P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y o f Va i l Va l l ey Fou n dat i o n
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SPiN Vail Ping Pong Tournament he second-oldest non-profit organization in the Vail Valley, the Vail Symposium seeks to offer affordable, thought-provoking and diverse programs for all. With the tagline “Convening locally, thinking globally,� they have a full slate of events that includes presentations on fine arts, ecology, politics, culture, science, cookery, music and more. The grassroots group hosted its first-ever ping pong tournament/fundraiser with the help of Susan Sarandon and Jonathan Bricklin of SPiN Galactic.
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Clockwise FROM ABOVE: Anthony Scully, Susan Sarandon and Mark Bricklin. Rob Levine, Kirk and Jay Huffard. Taya and Liana Carlson. Doe Browning and Rebecca Hernreich. Michelle Parenti, Amy Lewis and Paul Sendor.
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16 – April 15, 2012 MUST SEE // MUST HEAR // MUST GO // MUST DO
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21 TAO: THE ART OF THE DRUM Athletic bodies and contemporary costumes meet explosive Taiko drumming and innovative choreography in a reinvention of a traditional art form.
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February FEB 16 First Ascents of the Soul — Worldwide Adventure Compassion The Vail Symposium presents Timmy O’Neill, who will share stories from his worldwide travels and adventures in community service and humanitarian work. Free event. Donovan Pavilion, Vail 6 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 FEB 16 Leroy Justice Street Beat free concert, presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Solaris Vail Village 6:30 p.m. vail.com FEB 17 SOUL SALVATION: RUTHIE FOSTER & PAUL THORN Steeped in the traditions of American music, Ruthie Foster and Paul Thorn blend blues, rock, gospel, folk, R&B and country with a whole lot of soul to create their own unique style of music. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac. APR org 970.845.TIXS (8497) FEB 18 AN EVENING WITH BRYN TERFEL Grammy SPRING BACK TO VAIL Award-winning with GRACE POTTER bass-baritone Bryn Last year Grace Potter headlined Spring Terfel is a towering Back to Vail, a week-long festival that presence in the international music brings a party to the mountains with music, world, whether in festivities and the World Pond Skimming opera, Broadway, Championships. Potter is returning for an folk song, oratorio encore performance this year, and will take or popular song. A gala concert to the stage at Solaris on April 12. The event runs benefit VPAC, Terfel April 9-15 and more details will be available performs his favorat springbacktovail.com closer to the event. ite songs, arias and Broadway tunes. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 6:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) Feb 19 Carnivail Crawfish Boil Mardi Gras, mountain style, includes a crawfish boil with live music from The
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Though confirmed for publication, listed events, dates and times are subject to change. Please contact the presenting organizations to confirm details.
Laughing Bones. Eagle’s Nest, Vail Mountain. Noon-2:30 p.m. vail.com FEB 19 VILLAGE VIGNETTES Join the Vail Symposium and the Vail Valley Theater Company (VVTC) for an evening of performances that bring the stories of wellknown local personalities and community leaders to life, including Beth and Rod Slifer, Dr. Jack Eck, Elaine Kelton and Kelly Liken. Vail Mountain School, Vail 6 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 FEB 19 RANDY TRAVIS Country music superstar Randy Travis is celebrating the 25th anniversary of his award-studded career. Travis’ success has helped country music’s transition from the backyard to the front porch, paving the way for the new wave of country music performers. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac. org 970.845.TIXS (8497) FEB 20 MASTERS OF MOTOWN Masters of Motown features stylishly costumed and fully choreographed tributes to both male and female groups of the era, backed by a band of seasoned musicians who’ve been performing together for decades. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac. org 970.845.TIXS (8497) Feb 21 CarniVail parade Mardi Gras, mountain style, includes a Fat Tuesday Parade & Bud Light Street Party in Vail Village. Parade at 4 p.m. followed by a free concert with Frogs Gone Fishin’. vail.com FEB 21 TAO: THE ART OF THE DRUM Athletic bodies and contemporary costumes meet explosive Taiko drumming and innovative choreography in this show that features TAO’s extraordinary highenergy precision and stamina. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) FEB 22 MOSCOW FESTIVAL BALLET Under the direction of Sergei Radchenko, the Moscow Festival Ballet continues to expand its repertoire and international exposure. In addition to commissioning new works from within Russia and abroad, the company specializes in 20th century full-length ballets. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) FEB 23 No Barriers The Vail Symposium presents Neal Petersen. Born in South Africa, he’s an international professional
Meet the stars at.. the 9th Annual.. Vail Film Festival.
BEGINNING
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29 adventurer, solo around-the-world racing yachtsman, global investor and international speaker. Free event. Donovan Pavilion, Vail 6 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 Feb 25 Coed Telemark Workshop All abilities welcome for this telemark workshop — discounted telemark gear available. Beaver Creek Mountain, 9 a.m. beavercreek.com FEB 26 BRIAN REGAN With quality material that is relatable to a wide audience and revered by his peers, comedian Brian Regan consistently fills theaters nationwide with fervent fans that span generations. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac. org 970.845.TIXS (8497) FEB 29 “ROCK OF AGES” Nominated for five Tony Awards, “Rock of Ages” is an arena-rock love story told through the mind blowing, face-melting hits of Journey, Night Ranger, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Asia, Whitesnake and more. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497)
P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F G R AC E P OT T E R & T H E N O C T U R N A L S A N D T H E VA I L F I L M F E S T I VA L
March Mar 1 The Underbelly of Adventure Journalism Stefani Jackenthal is an adventure and wine journalist and author of “Wanderlust Wining: The Outdoorsy Oenophile’s Wine Country Companion.” She’ll discuss her trip to India’s wine country and other highlights of her South India trip. Free event. Donovan Pavilion, Vail 6 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 MAR 3 TALONS CHALLENGE More than 23,000 vertical feet of black diamond and double-black diamond runs await on Beaver Creek’s legendary World Cup Birds of Prey downhill course, Grouse Mountain, and on the flanks of Larkspur Bowl. Conquer all 13 runs and earn your spot on the Talon’s Wall of Fame. Beaver Creek Mountain, beavercreek.com Mar 3 Kids’ Telemark Workshop All abilities welcome for this telemark workshop — discounted telemark gear available. Beaver Creek Mountain, 9 a.m. beavercreek.com
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MAR 4 TALONS KIDS CHALLENGE This year, kids will have Grouse Mountain all to themselves. All participants will receive an official Talons Kids helmet cover, and finishers will receive a commemorative pin and some cool prizes. Ages 5-12. Beaver Creek Mountain, beavercreek.com MAR 5 KOOL & THE GANG Kool & The Gang has performed continuously for the past 35 years, longer than any R&B group in history. Their bulletproof funk and tough, jazzy arrangements make them the most sampled band of all time. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac. org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 8 LEFTOVER SALMON With a legion of die-hard fans and a reputation as one of the most exciting concert experiences to ever hit the road, Leftover Salmon fuses an improvisational fervor with a dizzying combination of bluegrass, Cajun and funk. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac. org 970.845.TIXS (8497) mar 8 Less Than Jake Street Beat free concert presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Solaris, Vail Village, 6:30 p.m. vvf.org 970.777.2015 MAR 9 “TSCHAIKOvSKI” ST. PETERSBURG STATE ORCHESTRA Roman Leontiev, Music Director and Chief Conductor of the “Tschaikowski” St. Petersburg State Orchestra is widely regarded as one of the preeminent Russian conductors of his generation, will lead this group of musicians on an evening of masterpieces including Rimsky-Korsakov’s most popular work “Scheherazade.” Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 6:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) Mar 10 Coed Telemark Workshop All abilities welcome for this telemark workshop — discounted telemark gear available. Beaver Creek Mountain, 9 a.m. beavercreek.com MAR 11 BEAVER CREEK SNOWSHOE ADVENTURE SERIES The culmination of the popular three-part series, kids have a 1K, beginners and walkers can enjoy a leisurely 5K, while hard-core competitors battle for a prize purse in the 10K Jeremy Wright North American Snowshoe Cham-
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BEGINNING
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05 taste of vail Some food and wine festivals are about celebrity chefs, some are about nibbling wee little bites and some are about tasting boutique wines. Taste of Vail is an extraordinary celebration of Vail’s pionships race. Post-race parties including food and prizes. McCoy Park, 11 a.m. bcsnowshoe.com mar 15 Lez Zeppelin Street Beat free concert presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Solaris, Vail Village, 6:30 p.m. vvf.org 970.777.2015 Mar 16 Best in the West Chef Unveiling Taste of Vail painting unveiling. Carrie Fell Gallery, Solaris, Vail 5 p.m. tasteofvail.com MAR 18 THE MAN NOBODY KNEW Documentary by part-time resident Carl Colby about his father, William Colby, former CIA director. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 6 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 20 “POP GOES THE ROCK” BY CIRQUE DREAMS This one-of-a-kind variety show offers popular and time-
“livin’ the good life” attitude. Beginning with a street-long lamb cook off and wine tasting, the event powers through with a mountaintop picnic at 10,000 feet, a grand tasting with live music and loads of foodie-centric seminars, all accompanied by outstanding wines. Runs April 5-7, check tasteofvail.com for complete schedule.
less tunes with a kaleidoscope of Cirque Dreams talent, extravagant costumes and theatrical mayhem. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 6:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 21 “JUNIE B. JONES” Outspoken, precocious, and lovable Junie B. Jones stars in a colorful, funny, fast-paced musical about new friends, new glasses, sugar cookies, the annual kickball tournament and other first-grade angst-ridden situations.
Though confirmed for publication, listed events, dates and times are subject to change. Please contact the presenting organizations to confirm details.
Presented by TheatreWorks USA. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 10 a.m. & 12:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) mar 22-25 Korbel American Ski Classic Skiing legends, sports and entertainment celebrities and corporate America join together on the slopes of Vail Mountain. This event combines the thrill of both professional and amateur ski racing with an array of entertainment options for fans of all ages. Vail Mountain, vvf.org mar 22 G. Love & Special Sauce Street Beat free concert, presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Golden Peak, 6:30 p.m. vvf.org 970.777.2015 MAR 22 UTE LEMPER WITH VOGLER QUARTET & STEFAN MALZEW “BERLIN NIGHTS/PARIS DAYS: THE ART OF CHANSON” Internationally-renowned cabaret artist Ute Lemper, the acclaimed Vogler Quartet and clarinetist/pianist Stefan Malzew cross national and stylistic borders to mix Weimar chansons and the classical works they influenced. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 6:30 p.m. vilarpac. org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 23 STUNT DOG EXPERIENCE With acrobatics that range from worldclass Frisbee catching to the Stunt Dog Triathlon, audiences will witness the most athletic and talented dogs in the world. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 4:30 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) Mar 24 The World’s Most Wanted Art: Recovering Looted Art International corporate and trial lawyer Michael Lacher and International Director of Restitution and Senior Vice President at Christie’s Monica Dugot will discuss the origins, history, and authenticity of lost and stolen art, as well as several open cases. Edwards Interfaith Chapel, Edwards 5:30 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 MAR 24 BRUCE HORNSBY Bruce Hornsby has built one of the most diverse careers in contemporary music. Drawing from a vast wellspring of American musical traditions, three-time Grammy Award-winner, Hornsby will perform a solo acoustic show that
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We Help Injured
people
APR
07 VINTAGE SKI FEST There was a time when all skis were wooden, edges were non-existent and
• • • • • •
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women skied in skirts. And not so long ago, snowboarders took to the slopes in Sorels. Both are welcome at Beaver Creek’s Vintage Ski Fest on April 7, which brings “remembering the past” to a whole different level. Come and compete, or just come and watch. More info at beavercreek.com.
www.vailinjury.com
AN EPICUREAN EXPERIENCE
EAT REA AN EPICU
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TEAM GREEN an Four great vegetari cookbooks PUFF PIECE Decadent souf flés at home E WINE TO DINure Italian wine cult for beginners
An insider’s look at the best restaurants in the Vail Valley
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Though confirmed for publication, listed events, dates and times are subject to change. Please contact the presenting organizations to confirm details.
features his large and accomplished body of work. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 25 RHYTHM OF THE DANCE Featuring the National Dance Company of Ireland, dancers showcase traditional and modern arts of dance (ballet, modern dance and jazz) and music. The show features a live band, three tenors and many dancers, combining traditional Irish dance and music with state-of-the-art technology. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 26 THE SPENCERS: THEATRE OF ILLUSION Back for an encore performance, The Spencers’ “Theatre of Illusion” is a breathtaking show of magic, suspense and mystery for the entire family to enjoy. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 6:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) MAR 27 STRAIGHT NO CHASER Formed while students together at Indiana University, this male a cappella group has reassembled and reemerged as a phenomenon with a massive fanbase, more than 20 million views on YouTube, numerous national TV appearances and a reputation as an unforgettable live act. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) mar 29 Rootz Underground Street Beat concert series, presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Solaris Vail Village 6:30 p.m. vvf.org 970.777.2015 mar 29-apr 1 2012 vail film festival Festival Activities include film screenings, panel discussions, live music, nightly galas, and the filmmaker reception. Features, live action shorts, documentaries, family films, animated shorts and more. Vail Village, vailfilmfestival.com 970.476.1092 Mar 30 Thomas Benton: Art & Activism Join Vail Symposium founding father Terry Minger and author of “Thomas W. Benton: Artist|Activist” and Daniel Joseph Watkins for a presentation on the life, art and political activism of silk-screen artist Thomas Benton. Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, Edwards 5:30 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954
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as featured on
Banjoist Béla Fleck and the Flecktones are recently back together with the original lineup.
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April APR 3 ZORRO Presented by Visible Fictions & Traverse Theatre Company, “Zorro” is the story of Don Diego de la Vega, a young boy with a respectful envy of his father’s discerning warrior spirit. When a mystery intruder breaks in and slays his father, Don Diego seeks revenge and justice. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 10 a.m. & 12:30 p.m. (Stars) vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) Apr 5-7 taste of vail Experience the Vail Valley’s world-class restaurants, fine wine poured by winemakers and winery owners from top wineries around the globe, along with interactive seminars, the Colorado Lamb Cook Off, apres ski tasting and the popular Mountaintop Picnic sensory extravaganza at the top of Vail Mountain. Vail Village, vail.com Apr 5 Lamb Cook-Off Taste of Vail: valleywide lamb cook-off and après ski tasting in the heart of Vail Village. 3:30-6:30 p.m. tasteofvail.com 970.926.5665 Apr 5 Reflections on the Arab Spring Ambassador Christopher R. Hill will discuss
the events of civil unrest, protest and revolution in the Middle East, Africa, and which have come to be known as the Arab Spring. Sonnenalp Resort, Vail 5:30 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 apr 5 Kinky Street Beat free concert, presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Arrabelle Square, Lionshead Village, 6:30 p.m. vvf.org 970.777.2015 APR 6 “ARE YOU MY MOTHER?” Presented by the ArtsPower National Touring Theatre, Baby Bird emerges from her shell and expects to be greeted by her mother. But her mother is not there. While searching for her mother, Baby Bird meets an array of colorful characters — Cat, Dog and Hen — each of whom she greets with the simple plea: Are you my mother? Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 10 a.m. & 12:30 p.m. (Stars) vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) Apr 6 TASTE OF VAIL, Mountain-Top Picnic The best picnic on top of the world. Winemakers and chefs offer a host of tastings. Eagle’s Nest via the Eagle Bahn
Though confirmed for publication, listed events, dates and times are subject to change. Please contact the presenting organizations to confirm details.
gondola 12:30-2:30 p.m. tasteofvail.com 970.926.5665 APR 6 BÉLA FLECK & THE FLECKTONES Banjoist, composer and bandleader Béla Fleck recently reconvened the original Béla Fleck & The Flecktones, the initial line-up of his incredible combo with pianist and harmonica player Howard Levy, back alongside Fleck, bassist Victor Wooten and percussionist Roy “Futureman” Wooten. Vilar Center, Beaver Creek 7:30 p.m. vilarpac.org 970.845.TIXS (8497) APR 7 VINTAGE SKI FEST A celebration of ski history, racing and tradition returns to Beaver Creek. So dust off the ol’ skis and sign up to celebrate the final weekend of the 2011-2012 ski and snowboard season. Join the competition or stop by as a spectator. Beaver Creek Mountain, beavercreek.com Apr 7 TASTE OF VAIL, Grand Tasting and Auction The Rolls Royce of food and wine events, the Grand Tasting unites winemakers, chefs and foodies. Vail Marriott, Lionshead 7 p.m. tasteofvail.com 970.926.5665 apr 9-15 spring back to vail Spring Back to Vail is a week of fun in the sun. Come early for an all-mountain film competition open to pros and amateurs, and then roll on through the week for free concerts, sweepstakes, the World Pond Skimming Championships and a free concert on Closing Day. Grace Potter is back by popular demand — schedule unavailable at press time. Vail Village springbacktovail.com Apr 9 Banks and their Role in Economic Revival How can American banks provide solutions to the current economic crisis and help create a path to recovery? Free event. Park Hyatt, Beaver Creek 5:30 p.m. vailsymposium.org 970.476.0954 apr 12 Street Beat free concert Funkiphino presented by the Vail Valley Foundation. On select Thursday evenings throughout the season Vail Valley residents and guests alike can enjoy free music in the streets of Vail. Solaris Vail Village 6:30 p.m. vvf.org 970.777.2015 APR 15 CLOSING DAY The last day of the season at both Beaver Creek and Vail. beavercreek.com, vail.com
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The Vail Created by locals, made for everyone
H
eading into its 50th year, Vail has become synonymous with some of the best skiing the world has to offer. But over the years Vail and Beaver Creek have become more than snowy slopes. From world-class dining to spa treatments to signature public art, Vail’s identity is varied and layered. Here’s our Vail Valley checklist, from the iconic to the adventurous, of what you should experience, know about or simply notice… { By VAIL Luxury Staff Writers } S P R I N G 2 012 G VAIL LUXURY
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The Adventurous 01 02
THE Minturn Mile + The MINTURN SALOON Late afternoon, especially on a powder day, you might see skiers and snowboarders disappearing up Vail’s Ptarmigan Ridge. Chances are they’re heading for the Minturn Mile, one of the most well-known backcountry trails in the area that takes you through 60
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powder fields, some whoop-de-doo rollers and through the woods straight into the town of Minturn. This is a fun trail for experienced riders and skiers, but especially on a good snow day, it is straightforward enough for intermediate adventurers as well — as long as there’s someone who knows the route in the group. The easiest way to get
there is via the Game Creek lift: At the top, take a left and follow the signs toward Ptarmigan Ridge. From here, you will take a five-minute hike up the ridge that takes you to the ski resort boundaries, to the gate of the Mile and to a breathtaking view of the surrounding ranges. From here, you’ll plunge into the powder fields, where if you arrive at the right time,
can yield some of the best, untracked snow around. This bowl leads into narrow, twisting terrain that crosses Beaver Pond and ends at a trailhead — all in all, the trail is more than three miles long and boasts 3,100 feet of vertical drop. The obligatory ending point of any Minturn Mile trip is the Minturn Saloon, a rustic establishment that has been serving up hearty food and libations to Minturn Milers for years. Order one of the “best margaritas in town” and peruse the knick-knacks, autographed photos and other memorabilia that cover every nook and cranny. P H OTO by D o m i n i q u e Tay lo r
* While well-traveled, the Minturn Mile is still considered backcountry, and adventurers should take precautions, bring supplies and know the trail. Go with someone who has done the route and make sure to tell others where you’re going. Due to the flatter portions of the route, snowboarders should be warned there might be some walking involved. McCoy Park 03 Most ski resorts have some sort of Nordic park, and it’s often found at the base of the hill. Not so Beaver Creek’s McCoy Park. Located at the top of Strawberry Park Express, the serene loops of crosscountry and snowshoe trails come in green, blue and black varieties, just like traditional downhill ski runs. With unending views and extreme quiet, it’s an unforgettable experience.
opposite
Moonlight Snowshoe Once the sun hits the hay and the moon is on the rise, a whole different set of animals begins to come out of the woodwork. There is an irresistible lunar effect between the moon and the snow, which works as a multiplier. The moon casts off a little bit of light, and the snow reflects it back more powerfully than it was before. It makes it easier to see a magical, black-and-white world. Regular moonlight snowshoes are run out of the Nature Discovery Center at Adventure Ridge, as well as through TrailWise Guides.
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Fly Fishing There’s something about snowy banks and ice-crusted rocks that makes fishing seem… out of season. Not so. For the truly dedicated, or simply the curious, fly-fishing trips are offered year-round in the Vail Valley. Head out to chase trout with a guide from Minturn Anglers or the Gore Creek Fly Fisherman.
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Snowmobiling Whether you call them sleds, snow gos or snowmobiles, they’re powerful machines that can speed you through the powder and into the backcountry. Two outfits, Nova Guides and Sage Outdoor Adventures, have access to hundreds of acres of National Forest trails, some of which head straight for the Continental Divide.
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Word to the wise: though the machines do most of the work, they’ll put some demands on your upper-body muscles as they dip up and down in the snow. That just means you’ve earned whatever decadent dinner you go for at the end of the day. Blue Sky Barbecue Blue Sky Basin is a world unto itself, with pillows of powder and — hopefully — bluebird skies. It’s a tradition for Vail locals to plan some kind of picnic at Blue Sky over the course of the season. Though some groups haul up whole pigs to roast on the free-for-all barbecues, others prefer something more demure, like a bratwurst and a bit of bubbly. Either way, it’s a fun and unforgettable experience.
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Powder day on the Minturn Mile. this page Cross-country skiing at Beaver Creek’s McCoy Park; snowmobiling on Vail Pass; snow biking at dusk from Adventure Ridge.
P H OTO S by D o m i n i q u e Tay lo r , K r i st i n A n d e r so n a n d C h r i s McL e n n a n
Ski biking At Adventure Ridge, folks can straddle a bike that has skis instead of wheels, and strap into specialized skis themselves to cruise from Eagle’s Nest to the base of the hill. Ski biking isn’t so much skiing or biking as it is flying. Flying. Whipping around corners and swooshing down the hill, time slows down and you speed up.
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Ice Skating There is something about twirling under the sky on the ice that makes a moment magical. Beaver Creek’s ice-skating rink is the focal point of the Plaza, and is the only outdoor rink opened year-round. Vail options include one at Arrabelle in Lionshead and another in Vail Village in front of Solaris.
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The iconic 62
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Powder Day in the Back Bowls The seven wonders of Vail stretch across six miles: Sun Up, Sun Down, China, Teacup, Siberia, Mongolia and Game Creek Bowls. The wide-open, seemingly endless terrain is about as iconic as it gets, and many people head directly for them as soon as they hit the hill. The Back Bowls draw people
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because of the open runs, the gladed tree runs and the soft bumps that are a powder hound’s dream come true. There are so many nooks and crannies to explore, it’s easy to spend the whole day (and the next and the next) cruising around. Vail Resorts long-time employee (and go-to guy for all information mountainrelated) John Bailey has been skiing, telemarking and snowboarding on Vail Mountain for 25 years. He’s fond of Sun Up Bowl because of the trees on it, and recommends Chicken Yard for those wanting a little adventure — its cliffs and trees are fun in the powder.
Manhole Covers A decade or so ago, Vail had a problem with its manhole covers. Emblazoned with the town’s logo, they were occasionally stolen for, presumably, heavily unique mementos. Once the town began selling more portable options the thievery stopped.
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P H OTO S by J ack A f f l e ck , D o m i n i q u e Tay lo r a n d T h e o S t r oo m e r
Sweet Basil When Kevin Clair opened Sweet Basil 30 years ago, people thought he was nuts for eschewing Bridge Street in favor of Gore Creek Drive. These days, some would argue that the restaurant is the heart of Vail. Always influenced by the West Coast’s culinary trends, the dining hotspot serves Colorado-style cuisine accompanied by racy cocktails and fantastic wine.
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The 10th Mountain Division Sculpture During World War II, the United States launched a new division of fighters, called ski troopers, who were trained to maneuver around on skis in the European mountains. They went to Camp Hale (located between Minturn and Leadville) and lived and trained at altitude before heading to Italy. The sculpture that sits near Gore Creek at Vail’s covered bridge depicts them as they were: wearing a white uniform that acted as camouflage against the snow, carrying seven-foot long skis with other heavy gear.
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P H OTO S by J ack A f f l e ck , D o m i n i q u e Tay lo r a n d P r e sto n Ut l e y
Cookie Time Somewhere along the line, Beaver Creek Resort became known for two things: the “Not exactly roughing it” tagline and chocolate chip cookies. Not only do they kick off the season with a competitive cookie festival, but all season long they serve chocolate chip cookies from silver platters to happy skiers and snowboarders at 3 p.m. And they’re free.
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The Covered Bridge Vail’s covered bridge is oftentimes the very first sight folks see when they emerge from the parking garage and hit the town. Beautiful and classic, it straddles Gore Creek and is the reason for the street’s name: Bridge Street. There’s also a covered bridge in Beaver Creek.
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The Golden Bear Opened in 1975, the Golden Bear became an unofficial symbol of Vail almost immediately. As popular with locals as they are with visitors, the bears come in a variety of sizes and adornments, including the original and classic Mama Bear pendant.
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Gorsuch Created by a former member of the U.S. Ski Team (and a current ski-racing advocate and Colorado Ski Hall of Famer), Gorsuch style is Vail style. The flagship store on Bridge Street has endless rooms of fashionable clothing, equipment, homewares and more.
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Helmut Fricker Bookbinder, accordionist, alpenhorn player and singer, Helmut Fricker is Eagle County’s own alpine vaudevillian. The selftaught musician began playing for the restless crowd on Beaver Creek’s very first opening day, and he’s been playing ever since. Find him in the Beaver Creek Plaza and request a tune or three.
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Pepi’s A favorite of the late President Gerald Ford, Pepi and Sheika Gramshammer’s restaurant serves up a wild selection of wild game in addition to après ski music, people watching and excellent beer. The adjacent clothing store has some one-of-a-kind options.
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Champagne powder on Vail Mountain; Beaver Creek’s ice rink in full glow; Sweet Basil’s bar
area; the 10th Mountain Division ski trooper statue. this page Twilight at Vail’s covered bridge; Golden Bear pendants; Helmut Fricker and his exuberant accordion.
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The Classic
Vilar Performing Arts Center More than a decade ago, the powers that be decided that Beaver Creek needed a theater —a decadent, delicious, beautiful theater with comfortable seats, woodpaneled walls and awesome acoustics. What happened was the Vilar Performing Arts Center. It’s the kind of place that makes seasoned performers look around and say, “Wow.” Each and every one of the 500-plus seats is a good one. Musical groups, Broadway touring companies, symphonies, magicians, acrobats, dancers, comics and other performers make stops at the Beav’ to play at the Vilar Center. In many cases they like to return again and again. Even those staying in Vail and beyond can make the most of an evening in Beaver Creek by starting at one of the resort’s many restaurants, such as the Golden Eagle, Splendido at the Chateau or 8100 Mountainside Bar and Grill.
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Ski and Snowboard Club Academy The home club of Lindsey Vonn, Ski and Snowboard Club Vail was established in 1973 to help train dedicated racers and (hopefully) future Olympians. For those who want to train full-time, the academy is a 10-month public school that accommodates young racers’ often-international travels.
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On-Mountain Dining Though plenty of folks enjoy eating on the mountain during lunchtime, dinner is a whole different experience. Accessed via snowcat-driven sleigh ride (or in Game Creek’s case, enclosed snow chariot), getting there is part of the fun. Zach’s Cabin in Bachelor Gulch, Beano’s Cabin in Beaver Creek and Game Creek Restaurant overlooking Game Creek Bowl in Vail all offer multi-course dinners for adventurous diners.
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Après ski Après ski is a timehonored tradition in Vail. In fact, there are some performers who have seen couples fall in love, get married, have children and start the cycle all over again. Both The Tap Room on Bridge Street and Bart and Yeti’s in Lionshead have garnered national recognition for their “ski bar mystique,” but The Red Lion, Pepi’s and The King’s Club in Vail all offer popular live music acts.
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Lunch and Ogle The spirit of Ski Town, U.S.A. is alive and well — especially from the comfort of a cozy table, an adult libation and a view of the ski hill. There is something invigorating about watching people zip and zoom while taking a break to refuel.
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Wild Game The mountains don’t just play home to wild game — its restaurants also serve it. Pepi’s and Up the Creek in Vail and The Gashouse in Edwards all have stellar wild-game offerings that can get downright exotic, though you’d be hard pressed to find a local restaurant that doesn’t offer elk or lamb.
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Street Beat Concert Series Presented by the Vail Valley Foundation, Street Beat brings free music to the streets of Vail on occasional Thursdays throughout the winter season. It’s not entirely unusual to see skiboot wearing folks boogying down, though it’s certainly more comfortable to change into street wear. Grab some mulled wine and heat things up with some moves.
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Face to Feet After a day in the mountains — especially if it’s spent on the slopes — it’s nice to treat yourself to some pampering. The Sonnenalp Spa offers a facial/foot massage package that focuses on the two areas that take the most abuse during a ski day. Arrive early to enjoy the light and airy spot, or visit any of the other local spas for a customized treatment: Allegria at Beaver Creek, Spa Anjali in Avon, and Aria Spa and Vail Mountain Lodge, both in Vail.
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P H OTO S by Z ach M a ho n e, D o m i n i q u e Tay lo r a n d k r i st i n A n d e r so n
for the kids Thursday Night Lights Every Thursday through the end of ski season, Beaver Creek hosts a free show. Though you can see it from several spots around the valley — including the front of the public library in Avon — it’s best seen from the base of Centennial in Beaver Creek. Once the sun sets, intrepid skiers (both kids and adults) can head up to the top of Haymeadow with a few instructors and many other participants. At the top they’re given a glow stick and are invited to ski down in a line. Those watching will see a glowing snake cruising down the
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hill, which culminates in an impressive fireworks show. Yep, just another evening in Beaver Creek… * Because the sun sets later as the year goes on, the time of the ski down and fireworks show changes. Check at Children’s Ski School for details and to register for the free event. S’Mores 29 Everybody loves s’mores, but you don’t have to go camping to enjoy them. The Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, the Ritz-Carlton in Bachelor Gulch and The Westin in Avon have outdoor firepits and s’mores fixings.
Tubing For those who still want a little adventure after the runs are closed, there’s always tubing. Adventure Ridge at Vail and the Haymeadow Tubing Hill at Beaver Creek both offer families an easy option for hard-core slip-sliding. Rope tows drag tubers up the hill, where they then slide down one of several lanes.
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Geode Busting By Nature Gallery in Beaver Creek is a wonderland for adults — but there’s a kids’ section, too. Fossils, rocks and more are there to explore. Buy a geode and cut it open with the shop’s special machine. The round rock will offer up some amethyst clusters for the lucky.
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Vienna Teng at the Vilar Performing Arts Center; Ski Club Vail alum Lindsey Vonn in Vail;
Chadzilla & the Asteroids play Street Beat. this page Thursday Night Lights at Beaver Creek; tubing at Vail’s Adventure Ridge; “seat service” at CineBistro in Solaris; custom bowling balls from bōl in Solaris.
P H OTO S by D o m i n i q u e Tay lo r , Da n Dav i s a n d Bo b W i n s e tt
CineBistro It sounds like a movie theater, but it feels like a private-jet version of a dinner theater. Moviegoers can choose their seats when they purchase tickets, and then head in and order a drink, a snack or a fullblown meal that’s delivered to the seats before showtime. Sure there’s popcorn, but the popcorn chicken is even better, served alongside actual popcorn with dipping sauces.
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Bowling Bowling never goes out of style. Whether it’s the high-class b l in Solaris or the bustling, sprawling Back Bowl in Eagle, both have lanes for the taking. Downvalley, the Back Bowl (named for Vail’s magnificent seven bowls) caters to groups large and small. With solid food, an arcade, a bar and a whole separate restaurant, it accommodates families nicely. Both a restaurant and a bowling alley, b l in Vail has designer balls, slick lanes and the most exciting “bowling” food anywhere.
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RKD owner and architect Jack Snow created the Green Fin home to be truly ecofriendly.
Local architects go beyond typical mountain-resort style By Traci J. Macnamara
P H OTO by G r e e r P H oto s
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Thirty percent of Green Fin’s living space is buried, as is the entire garage. In addition to a photovoltaic system that generates electricity and a solar hot-water system, there’s a cistern system for irrigating the yard and a green roof for water conservation and growing herbs and vegetables.
Midway through a conversation about his architectural philosophy and artistic influences, local architect Jack Snow spoke about getting his pilot’s license so he could fly a plane to his new work sites, which now extend far beyond the Vail Valley. He offered a few matter-of-fact reasons to explain why having a pilot’s license was necessary to his career, but the excitement in his voice belied such practicality. Sure, flying a plane allows Snow to get from point A to point B. But one gets the sense that this man’s work benefits far more from seeing the earth from a different perspective than from the increased mobility flying allows him as a busy architect trying to get quickly from one job site to another. The swooping lines and smooth, sculpted forms that surface in his work give that sense, as well. 68
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Jack Snow’s “fiveminute sketch” is the basis for Green Fin.
P H OTO s by G r e e r P H oto s
Even though we’re coming up with novel things, none of it is unrecognizable or in your face in an off-putting way. A final product might be something that no one’s ever thought of or seen before, but you look at it and think: that just fits here.
Snow and his wife, Sally Brainerd, established RKD Architects, Inc. in Vail in 1989. Since then, the small firm has designed numerous innovative residential and commercial spaces in the Vail Valley, Summit County and beyond — Tahoe, Telluride, Big Sky, San Francisco and Edina, Minnesota, to name a few. What doesn’t emerge in these projects is an established style; rather, what surfaces in them is the work of a person who ideologically puts a few sticks of dynamite next to an established style and lets it explode into an artistic frenzy. “I torture every carpenter as much as I can,” Snow jokes, talking about his penchant for sloping walls and sculpted, flowing forms. “RKD’s tagline is ‘sculpted from the elements,’ and even though we’re coming up with novel things, none of it is unrecognizable or in your face in an off-putting way. A final product might be something that no one’s ever thought of or seen before, but you look at it and think: that just fits here.” Creating spaces that fit within their natural surroundings is a hallmark of RKD’s design, and Snow cites British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy as one of his inspirations in this regard. Goldsworthy considers “raw nature” his artistic medium, often creating works out of stones or leaves or sand, knowing that they will eventually be whisked away by waves or dispersed by the wind. RKD builds its clients’ wants and needs into its designs, but Snow also seeks to create something that’s site-specific and fitting within its environmental context. The Green Fin House in Edina, Minnesota exemplifies RKD’s sculpted-from-the-elements ethic and Snow’s unique artistic approach. His genius sketch of the home and its environmentallyfriendly, or “green,” features are what give the Green Fin House its name. Snow scratched some simple black lines on a piece of white paper to represent his idea for the place. What emerged in his conception of this tear down, re-build home is a stunningly balanced form with angled glass walls — and what looks like a huge, sculpted fin cutting a path to the front door. The Green Fin Home is stocked with an array of innovative, environmentally-minded features including a solar hot-water system, a cistern system for irrigating the yard and a green roof for conserving water and growing herbs and vegetables. The masonry for the home was sourced locally, and the wood on the floor and ceilings was reclaimed from a flooded forest and recycled from old whisky barrels, respectively.
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Snow, who also designs furniture, often juxtaposes heavy and light elements in his work. In the Green Fin home, chunky stone walls bump up against enormous, slanting walls of glass. And in his Rocky Mountain Residence, a curved wood terrace lightens the heaviness of the exterior’s concrete blocks, bringing to mind the sculpted elegance of an Eames chair. Although each of his homes morph into strikingly different structures, Snow admits that a common DNA defines them. The nucleotide bases for his designs aren’t adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine; his double helix depends instead on sculpture, balance, natural harmony and an evocative spirit.
Everybody has some idea about what architects in the mountains should be doing.
BEYOND THE YODEL
Kyle Webb of the Vail-based K.H. Webb architecture firm also is moving beyond what he considers to be an established style in order to embrace the things that define his work: a natural palette of materials; a clean, of-the-land approach; and site-appropriate design. “Everyone has some idea about what architects in the mountains should be doing,” says Webb. “But I don’t think that every building around here needs to yodel. We take the time to get to know our clients and have realized that people are coming to us because they’re innovators, too. They want a home that takes them beyond what’s typical for this area.” Webb’s current work extends from Nicaragua to Los Angeles to Connecticut, but he still enjoys the freedom of working within the limits of the Town of Vail, which has more relaxed codes than other planned communities in the area. In this way, Webb avoids creating within the bounds of a clearly-defined or homogeneous style to craft one unique home after another. And at the heart of each project, Webb puts his respect for the land first. “Sustainability starts with how we treat our sites,” Webb says. “We could cut into the land and pump it full of concrete, but whenever possible, I try to create something that fits within its natural surroundings. I look at what’s there and then maximize the land instead of cramming a pre-planned design onto a space that it doesn’t fit.” With such an ethic in mind, Webb has concocted several inventive solutions. In a Vail home named 2010 Home of the Year by Mountain Living magazine, Webb designed a living room that seems to leap from the backside of the house. A cantilevered terrace 70
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Named by Mountain Living Magazine as the 2010 Home of the Year, the Vail abode designed by K.H. Webb Architects includes a “floating” living room that looks out at the Gore Range.
P H OTO by k i m b e r ly g av i n photog r a ph y
RKD’s Rocky Mountain residence illustrates Jack Snow’s penchant for sculptural forms.
juts out towards a wide-open view of the Gore Range and extends over a swimming pool. But he didn’t just design the home this way because it would look cool. He invented these features as a way to build around a tricky slope on the lot without leveling it. Webb admits that while the word sustainability seems to be en vogue, it’s something he’s always embraced. And it’s ultimately up to clients to determine how far they’re willing to go. “We ask them what they want. And if it’s more natural light, more solar gain, green or recycled materials, or any other environmentally-conscious effort, we’re right there with them,” Web says. This attitude has allowed him to design homes that reclaim gray water for irrigation and use an array of local, reclaimed and recycled materials. “We make a conscious effort overall, and we try to see what people are willing to do. The solution might cost more in the short term, but the end result feels better for everyone.”
P H OTO s by g r av i t y s hot s & g i b e o n photog r a ph y
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LESS IS MORE
Mike Foster designed this house on Forest Road to be nestled into the mature pine and aspen trees that surround it.
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In his effort to create functional, livable spaces, architect Mike Foster has seen a shift from the “bigger is better” mentality towards a focus on smaller, more intimate homes that contain the same — or an even higher — level of detail than that of their much larger predecessors. Foster began working with the Vail-based Triumph Development in 2007 to complete The Willows, a 19-unit condominium project. He worked with the initial design but then remained involved with the project until all of the owners moved in. Foster found it highly rewarding and insightful from a design perspective to be involved with a project from the time that the first line was drawn until the last picture was hung on the wall. “That project opened my eyes to several important design aspects that will remain with me throughout my career,” Foster said. “Functionality has always driven my work, but now it is an even stronger driving force. I understand more about how people develop spaces and connectivity and about how people actually live in spaces beyond their showroom appeal.” Foster is also currently working with Triumph Development on a project to create some important future connectivity within the Vail Valley. The Town of Vail, Vail Valley Medical Center, The Steadman Clinic and the Steadman Philippon Research Institute (SPRI) hired Triumph to develop a new municipal building in Vail that will house chambers for the Town Council and municipal offices, a new medical office building for Vail Valley Medical Center, The Steadman Clinic and SPRI. Foster will be the project’s managing architect, and he envisions a new pedestrian bridge that will connect doctors with their examination rooms in the new building and their operating tables across the road at the Vail Valley Medical Center. From Mike Foster’s less-is-more sentiment to Kyle Webb’s site-specific designs to Jack Snow’s sculpted, elemental forms, one common theme emerges. Each of these architect-innovators takes a single, simple idea and transforms it into a singular reality. Each in his own way, these architects embody what pioneering French pilot, artist, and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry meant when he said, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
P H OTO s by b i l ly d o r n
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The Tom Jacket is named for Tom Bowers, the man behind Tommy Bowers Ski in Vail and Aspen. Made in Italy for Authier, the line is designed by Bowers’ wife, Lee Keating. “We got tired of things that were expensive and not that special,” Keating says. “It’s nice, it’s really well made, and it’s perfect for what most people want.” Though it can be worn skiing, Authier jackets are easy to spot around town.
fashion forward In the heart of the Rockies Vail flaunts international style — By Kim Fuller —
P H OTO C O U R T E S Y o f To m m y B o w ers S k i
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“Fashion here is always classic and chic,” continues Cutts. “Customers are seeing timeless pieces that combine fashion and function.” Both Cutts and Bruno agree that their customers want clean lines and high quality — pieces that they can wear here and elsewhere, materials that never go out of style. “The hot look of ‘retro-heritage’ is being fashioned from the best international materials, including European leather, zippers and buttons,” explains Cutts. “High fashion starts with classic essentials, with trendy pieces that can be added for flair each season,” adds Bruno. “It’s important to look at your wardrobe as an investment. The best-dressed people buy classics and have just a few ‘pop pieces.’”
boots & jackets The fashion scene in Vail has always been somewhat laid back: A pair of jeans and a blazer for both men and women can take you anywhere. That’s part of the valley’s charm. In recent years, however, just as fashion trends keep changing, so have the tastes of the residents and our many visitors. Retailers have recognized the evolving fashion trends and although jeans and blazers still remain in the forefront, chic and trendy clothing has reared its beautiful head. “I think Vail fashion has come a long way in the last 10 years,” says Jenn Bruno, co-owner of DUE and Luca Bruno. “People — especially women — in the valley really do look at what people are wearing and make an effort to dress up when they go out. Vail has been taking more of a stride on the runway.” Dan Cutts, the director of Tommy Bowers Ski in Vail, agrees. “Vail’s fashion is catching up to Aspen’s,” he says. “But the two valleys have always had a different style.” 76
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Luca Bruno in Vail carries Blumarine shearling jackets. Co-owner Jenn Bruno recommends a basic three-quarter-length coat for both men and women. But for a second coat, be extravagant and opt for the Rocky Mountain tried and true: shearling.
When it comes to boots, Bruno suggests that one should have the basics — a pair of brown and another in black. Then to jazz it up, get some colorful printed and logo boots from top brands like Hunter, Fendi and Chanel. “Get Italian leather and choose black or brown or both,” says Bruno. “I’ve learned that if you find something you love and it fits well, buy more than one if you can.” Raymond Bleesz, co-owner of Brush Creek Dry Goods in Riverwalk, finds that colorful and unique Smoky Mountain boots are hot items for women. And when it comes to coats, Bruno suggests that both men and women have a basic three-quarters-length coat. For a second coat, be extravagant and find a fun coat with a pattern or print. However, if you are all about a true Rocky Mountain style, there’s nothing more chic than a shearling coat. Cutts likes the cashmere-merino angora pea coat in deep navy. With a Finnish mink hood, it’s a timeless and versatile coat, hanging just below the hips. P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y o f Luc a B ru n o a n d To m m y B o w ers S k i
Authier’s Camo jacket comes with or without fur. The brand was established in 1910 and specialized in skis, but launched its exclusive jacket line
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The Authier Blue Flower jacket is made in Italy. opposite: Blumarine is one of many brands exclusive to Luca Bruno and DUE in the Vail Valley, both of which are owned by Jenn Bruno and her husband, designer Luca Bruno.
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“A lot of pieces are coming from more sustainable sources and are being colored with organic dyes.�
P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y o f Luc a B ru n o
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style 2o12
jeans With jeans being an essential part of a Colorado wardrobe, it only makes sense to have at least two pair that fit just right: one pair to wear with heels, another to hem and wear with flats. However, according to Bruno, the cut is much more important than the price tag. “Friends help friends buy jeans,” says Bruno, who believes that this fashion essential is the hardest to shop for. “You need to invest the time to find the right cut and get someone else’s opinion. Once you find the right brand, stick with it.” Patti Weinstein, owner of Roxy in Vail and Beaver Creek, is excited about this season’s look for jeans. “Jeans this year are all about color,” says Weinstein enthusiastically. “The look is coming right off the runway and JBrand is really driving what’s going on. Designers are doing cool, new fabrications in denim. There’ll be sparkles, floral and Aztec prints and lots of pinks and purple. And the hottest look will be straight leg and lots of capris.” Bleesz carries jeans for men and women: Miss Me Jeans for women and the clean and classy Tommy Bahama or Scott Barber line for men. 80
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Jenn Bruno recommends spending some time figuring out which jeans work best for you, and then getting them hemmed in a couple different lengths to wear with flats or heels. Look ahead to summer, when color returns with a vengeance.
So what are the upcoming trends for 2012? According to Bruno, scarves are finally gracing necklines in American fashion and can be one of the most important additions to a wardrobe. “You can really change the look of an outfit with a scarf,” Bruno says. “In ten years, scarves will be as important in the United State as they are in Europe.” Cutts notes that many international fashion designers are weaving the organic movement in with their pieces. “A lot of pieces are coming from more sustainable sources and are being colored with organic dyes,” he explains. As well, menswear seems to be all about collaboration. Designers like Adam Kimmel combine different themes such as motifs of the American West and motorcycles while teaming up with the classic and masculine Carhartt brand. According to fashion forecasters, 2012 will see vibrant, dynamic shades and patterns that do not have a trace of last year. Color themes will revolve around a few pastel shades and tinted neutrals. Natural fabrics like organic cotton in various pastel hues will also be seen. At the same time floral patterns in rich, vivid colors will also be the craze. “This season is all about being bright,” comments Weinstein. “And it’s so refreshing after looking at dull colors for so long. Everything is vibrant and very alive. And if you’re frightened of the colors, you can always stick to the pastel and neutral shades, which are also en vogue.” In the end, it’s quality more than quantity that seems to be ruling the fashion world more than ever, whether it is a dress, a coat or a pair of jeans. With the right combinations, fit, fabric and unique touches, one can be on track for a stylish wardrobe that will take you anywhere. P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y o f Luc a B ru n o
PARK CITY SUN VALLEY JACKSON HOLE VAIL
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PHOTO BY PRESTON UTLEY
Vail’s dining scene has local style & international names
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By Lauren Glendenning
Nobu Matsuhisa won’t expand into in a new city unless he “feels good” about it. His restaurant in Vail is the second Matsuhisa in Colorado. As soon as the restaurant opened it began drawing guests from Denver as well as Vail and its surrounding communities. opposite: The kampachi crudo at Splendido at the Chateau is study in pristine fish, zippy roe and a vibrant pop from finger limes.
P H OTO S by k r i st i n a n d e r so n & d o m i n i q u e Tay lo r
In a place where we can ski a World Cup race course, stay in luxury hotels and experience first class services ranging from spa treatments to ski lessons, why shouldn’t we be able to find hand-cut pappardelle with veal Bolognese and Ligurian virgin oil in a first class restaurant? Vail’s dining scene has evolved since both the ski resort and town were founded in the 1960s. Restaurants and chefs have made names for themselves here — some restaurants have essentially become landmarks, while plenty of others have come and gone. That’s the thing about the valley: A reputation might fill your restaurant when you open, but that can only take you so far. There are plenty of recognized names from both regional and international restaurant industry fame that have recently landed in Vail — Nobu Matsuhisa and Richard Sandoval within the last few months alone — bringing a stature with them that won’t survive on its own. The food at these big-name restaurants has to live up to the names on the menus because the world-class travelers who choose Vail and Beaver Creek also have world-class palates, as do the locals. Vail’s staple fine dining restaurants like Sweet Basil, Kelly Liken, La Tour, Larkspur and Terra Bistro, to name a few, are always reinventing their menus, too, in order to continue to meet the high expectations that customers have grown to have. S P R I N G 2 012 G VAIL LUXURY
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Ski culture = food culture The Vail Valley has produced many of its own celebrity chefs whose names are recognized locally, and some even nationally, but there’s new star power in the valley. And that has elevated the game here. Wolfgang Puck was the first internationally known chef to open a restaurant locally with Spago’s opening in December 2007 at the Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch. At the time, the news was big and Puck’s decision to expand to the area solidified the world-class offerings here. For Puck, the decision was simple — he just wanted to open a restaurant in a place that he really liked to visit. He laughs as he talks about a restaurant he opened in Detroit, a place he’s not all that excited about visiting. Being from Austria, skiing has always been a part of Puck’s life. Since opening in Bachelor Gulch, Puck says he travels here with his family every year for Christmas and spring break. The ski culture, he says, fits in perfectly with fine dining. “I really think in Europe, the after-ski is as important as the skiing,” Puck says. “People take time to have a great lunch, take time to have dinner — you will eat more in the wintertime than when on vacation in a bikini.” Ski vacations offer people the perfect combination of indulgence and adventure. Skiing can be hard work, but people can put as much or as little into the physical exertion side of it as they 84
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Wolfgang Puck opened Spago at the Ritz-Carlton, Bachelor Gulch because he wanted to visit — and keep visiting — the valley. He and his family come out to ski at least twice a year, though he’s out more often than that. The restaurant’s extensive menu changes frequently, but signature items like the ahi tuna in miso cones are always available. below: The chefs at Splendido are masterful in their gnocchi preparation. The Italian dumplings are often on the menu .
please — and the same goes for the indulgence side of the ski vacation. There are skiers and snowboarders who consider only the sport when they come to a ski town, but in resorts as posh as Vail and Beaver Creek there are certainly plenty of visitors who want to be pampered when they’re off the slopes. “I think it’s a perfect place to have a great restaurant,” Puck says. The affluence of the residents and guests in the area help make this an ideal spot. David Walford, chef and owner of Splendido at the Chateau in Beaver Creek, says the Spagos and Matsuhisas “wouldn’t be here if this were Steamboat, for instance.” “There’s not as many spendy people up there; it’s a smaller community,” Walford says. “There has to be a certain demographic to support those guys.” And because of the nature of the real estate in Vail and Beaver Creek — think expensive and in high demand — there’s less opportunity for young startup chefs to give it a go up here, Walford says. The more established folks, however, can move in with ease. P hotos by Do m i n i q u e Tay lo r & K r i st i n A n d e r so n
Tyler Wiard, the chef who oversees operations at the two Denver Elway’s locations and now the new Vail location, says the wealthy clientele that comes through Vail is no doubt attractive to fine restaurants. Wiard says Elway’s is hoping to give those people a dining experience they expect to have in a place like Vail. He says places like Kelly Liken and Sweet Basil, which Wiard thinks of as the foundation of the Vail restaurant scene, help make the town more attractive for top-notch restaurants. Knowing that Matsuhisa is now in Vail, too, doesn’t hurt, either, he says. “We just felt coming up here and giving a new and hopefully great culinary experience and service, that we’re bringing a very good thing to Vail, too,” Wiard says. Matsuhisa didn’t just end up in Vail because of its wealthy guests, although that certainly played into the decision. Matsuhisa says he has to visit a town or city and get a feel for the place before he can approve the opening of a new restaurant there. If the so-called feel he gets is just right, then the project is a go. “I have to feel my feeling,” Matsuhisa says. “My feeling is I like or I don’t like it” And while Matsuhisa says he understands there are some differences among guests in Aspen, where he opened his first Colorado Matsuhisa restaurant more than a decade ago, from those in Vail, the clientele is also very much the same in a lot of ways. Vail gets its fair share of international guests, most of whom are well traveled and have deep pockets. And since Matsuhisa has nearly 40 restaurants around the world, from Tokyo to Melbourne to Dubai to New York, and just about every cosmopolitan city in between, putting a new location in a cosmopolitan ski resort like Vail made perfect sense. “This is a very energetic place,” Matsuhisa says. “I love it here.”
This is a very energetic place. I love it here.”
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At Matsuhisa, a variety of sashimi is always on offer. La Tour has been a staple on the local dining scene for decades. Chef-owner Paul Ferzacca likes to keep Colorado striped bass on the menu. above: At Restaurant Kelly Liken, the desserts utilize seasonal products as much as the savory courses do, as in the bostock with a butternut squash puree. left:
P hotos by Do m i n i q u e Tay lo r , K r i st i n A n d e r so n & A n d r e w r u p c z y n s k i
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Richard Sandoval has opened restaurants all over the world, including New York City, Washington, D. C., Scottsdale, Ariz., Dubai, Qatar and more. Boasting a strong presence in Denver, Sandoval has been expanding in the mountain communities. His Avon restaurant, Cima, serves Latin American cuisine unlike anything else served in the valley. below: The oxtail pizza at Cima includes lightly fried quail eggs, which give the dish a luxurious quality.
Healthy competition Kelly Liken, chef and owner at Restaurant Kelly Liken in Vail Village, says “this town is exploding from a culinary standpoint right now.” “It’s exactly what we were talking about seven years ago when we opened,” Liken says. “We said we want to be a part of raising the bar in the community. I’m proud to feel I’ve been a part of it.” Liken made it to the finals of Top Chef, an Emmy Awardwinning show on Bravo, in the show’s seventh season. She was also a James Beard Award nominee for best chef in the Southwest in 2009 and 2010, and has appeared on Iron Chef America on the Food Network. It’s because of the valley’s 86
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existing restaurant scene that such renowned chefs and restaurants move to town, Liken says. If chefs throughout the valley weren’t already working at the top of their game, the Matsuhisas and Spagos wouldn’t want to be here, she says. And the same can be said for the existing chefs and restaurants in the valley when the new big shots move in. Because those big-name places are pretty much already at the top of their game, the existing chefs start to think harder about the competition. “Having someone else in town at the top of their game, it makes you think about your menu and your service more,” Liken says. Liken says she doesn’t like to think of other restaurants as competition, and she doesn’t want her restaurant to be theirs, either. “The Vail restaurant community is very tight-knit. We have each other’s backs. Our goal is to create Vail as a dining destination,” Liken says. Richard Sandoval, a restaurateur and chef with restaurants in Denver, Los Angeles, New York, and Las Vegas, among other American and international cities, feels the competitive restaurant scene in Denver is slowly trickling up to the Vail Valley. Sandoval recently reinvented the former Avondale restaurant at the Westin Riverfront Resort in Avon into his latest restaurant, Cima, which has the Latin fusion fare that Sandoval has become known for. When Sandoval got to Denver 10 years ago, it was not considered a great foodie city, he says. But now, the city has landed on the culinary map in a big way. And just as Denver’s dining options have evolved over time, Sandoval thinks Vail’s will continue to evolve, too. “I think it’s only going to get better,” Sandoval says. And as more and more chefs step up to the challenge and produce quality food, restaurant patrons’ expectations will continue to become higher and palates more challenged, Sandoval says. More challenged palates in the valley is almost a hard thing to imagine. The fine dining options here are endless as it is, and now there are more. Walford says it’s great to see the celebrity chefs moving to town. Walford says the more the merrier. “A good food community doesn’t get that way from one or two restaurants, it gets that way because of a lot of good restaurants,” Walford says. Dining destinations like New York and San Francisco didn’t become known for food because of a couple of great places — it happened because of thousands of great restaurants, Walford says. “I welcome the competition,” Walford says. “I welcome their energy and ideas.” The food and restaurant industry is not unlike the auto or fashion industries, for example, Walford says. Everyone is always trying to stay modern and current, regardless of the industry. And, just like in any other industry, the leaders have to prove themselves. Walford says it’s fun to have these big name chefs moving in, but he’s not convinced it means anything just yet. “And it shouldn’t mean anything to anybody until they eat their food,” Walford says. “They’ve got to prove it on the plate day after day, just like the rest of us.” P hoto by B r i a n K l i n g b a i l
Jack affleck, vail summer
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A small town with great taste — a meander through Vail’s galleries shows a world of talent
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“Delay,” Bates Wilson
Vail International Gallery
“Wolf,” Carrie Fell
“So many galleries have so much good work to be proud of,” says Rayla Kundolf, director of Masters Gallery in Vail. “It’s not just what you’d expect. There’s some really special work around here.” Here’s a map to help you navigate some of the local art scene’s standouts, as seen in ART magazine. 90
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Sculptor Bates Wilson started hanging his work from the ceiling simply because he didn’t have room anywhere else. Now, he lets his sculptures dictate where they want to go — mounted on a wall, suspended from the ceiling, or elsewhere in a home. Made from discarded bits of aluminum and wood, Wilson reimagines vacuum cleaner insides and road signs into fish, planes, surfboards and other fluid-seeming forms. “I like the idea of a work having integrity,” he says. “A lot of conceptual work people do on a sense of irony rather than the aesthetic of a piece. Creating something new that’s not in the classic mold — I think that’s important.” His pieces are fluid and full of action, despite their static realities. “There’s joy in movement,” he says. The work looks heavy, its construction so solid and intricate, almost as if it needs its own will, its own volition to move. And yet they are lightweight, considering their size and scope. They’re made to last, both conceptually and technically. They’re made to live amongst. — WW
ter scene. It’s everyday. It’s life. Sometimes it can be political. It’s meeting people and hearing their stories and wondering how that relates to me.” For Fell, the art of painting isn’t about tearing through one canvas after another. When she’s creating work for a show, she thinks about the event as a whole, too. “It’s about making a bold statement that is then told in stories throughout my paintings,” Fell says. “They’re each an individual expression that leads you through the show. So there’s a story within a painting and then there’s storytelling throughout the show.” — BH
Carrie Fell Gallery Although most people think of painter Carrie Fell as an American Western artist, thanks to her images of cowgirls, horses and longhorns, her work can’t be so easily pigeonholed. “I suppose you can call me an unconventional Western artist,” says Fell. However, I don’t think that’s what my art is. I think my art is mostly gestural movements that show a statement through color and fluidity. What I paint doesn’t matter. It could be a café scene. It could be a win-
Rings Dan Telleen
Karats Dan Telleen’s wearable art goes beyond mere adornment and plays with ideas of time, culture and even destiny. The jeweler’s work is marked by graceful lines and, sometimes, unorthodox materials. He has been known to mix silver and gold and snake vertebrae, fossils, antique beads or anything else that tickles his fancy. “I like working with materials that have a story to tell,” he says. “Whether it’s a stone or a fossil or a bead, I always keep in mind that these objects have their own drama. And they combine to convey a new meaning to a thought.” Even his tools have historical significance. His oldest tools, which he calls “low tech,” are his ancient Roman and Assyrian seals used at one time as personal signatures. “I use seals that a wealthy merchant or perhaps even a ruler used every day,” he says. “All the seals I use are hand-carved gemstones and have a charm and simplicity about them, which creates a spontaneous, classic, ancient look.” — BH
“Chorus Time,” Luis Sottil
Galerie Züger
Vail Village Arts
When you walk into a room filled with his paintings, Luis Sottil wants you to feel as if you’re being watched. As if a hundred pairs of eyes are following you. That’s why he paints the eyes of his animal subjects so much bigger than they are in real life. “The painting is meant to interact with the viewer through eye contact,” says Sottil, a self-taught painter. “I wanted to paint emotions and not just paint the animal.” The effect of the large eyes is transfixing. The eyes drag the viewer in, and open up the soul of the animal. That connection between the viewer and the painter is a key element of Naturalismo, a technique that Sottil pioneered. “It’s about conveying the emotional experience” of what it’s like to be in the presence of the animal, Sottil says. Using pigments derived from nature, not chemicals, he’s able to create reflective surfaces that shine and gleam with depth. — CS
Vail resident Suzanne Schirra has put her degrees in painting, art history and graphic art to work in her bright paintings of dogs and cats. She mixes and matches electric colors to make her paintings vibrate and seem to pop off the canvas. “There are a lot of artists who create bright paintings of animals,” she says. “Some are abstract. Many are caricatures. I’m one of the only artists who does photorealistic portraits in bright colors because I don’t like the blacks and brown and beige and gray. Those colors are boring.” Schirra’s process begins with a photo that she crops from head to chest as “that’s where the soul comes from,” she says.
“Magnolia,” Suzanne Schirra
Schirra, with one hand holding the photo and a paintbrush in the other, starts with the darkest color and gradually layers up to the lightest. Once she’s moved all the way from dark to light to get the right depth, she paints with a very small brush to get all the details of the dog’s coat. When finished, she has a portrait that captures all the personality of an animal, albeit with blue, orange or purple fur. — BH
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C. Anthony Gallery
Claggett/Rey Gallery Jim Rey’s cattleman heritage fostered a love of ranch life. With that world as a backdrop, Rey’s paintings tell the story of cowboys as living remnants of a bygone era. “I’ve loved horses since I was born, I guess,” he says. “The horse has been my muse and that was fueled by my love of Will James’ books and the Saturday Evening Post. I used to look forward to the illustrations every week. And, at age 10, I became a voracious reader, because the illustrations went with the stories. Rey is a self-taught artist whose teachers once sent a note home to his parents asking them to tell their son not to do drawings of the students and “particularly the teachers.” At age 18, he enrolled in an illustrator’s correspondence course taught by the great artists whose work appeared in the Saturday Evening Post: Norman Rockwell, Albert Dorne and Harold von Schmidt. “You had an assignment, maybe it was on form, maybe on landscape or the human body, “ he says. “And they would critique the work and send it back. The main subject of my painting is the cowboy: He is the main focus of the painting as an illustrator would do it, because that’s what I respond to and that’s what I grew up with. I still like that point of view. And it is all predicated and instigated by my interest in those early illustrators.” — BH 92
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“Sandhills Spring,” Jim Rey
Giant ground sloth, By Nature Gallery
By Nature Gallery Most kids like bugs and rocks, and Rick Rolater was no different. He just never outgrew them. Truth be told, he doesn’t think anybody should. And if you walk into the Beaver Creek gallery he owns with his wife, Frances, and business partners Jim Godwin and Kim Robinson, you’ll see why. Apparently not all 500,000year-old giant ground sloths are in museums. And it’s not unheard of for him to have a pristine example of a Tyrannosaurus bataar skull dating back 65 million years — in fact he’s sold five of the dozen he knows are in existence, and has another in Beaver Creek right now. But Jurassic offerings are only a wee part of By Nature Gallery’s collection. Other areas include petrified wood, fossil fish, decorative minerals, decorative arts and a children’s department that has a little bit of everything.
“We are the best gallery of our kind in the world,” Rolater says. “Everything we sell is truly one of a kind.” Cruising through the widewindowed gallery is a little overwhelming and a lot of fun. The aesthetics of each piece are compelling — well-chiseled rock in relief around a petrified fish, a swirl of butterflies, a swoop and curl of banded onyx, glowing from within. Artisans refine and hone what Mother Nature created. — WW
Many artists dance between light and shadow, but few shine quite like Britten. The local artist’s new series of paintings and sculptures, titled “Illuminating 2012,” focuses on her love of light. The artist’s bold, colorful palettes beam brightly from the canvas, as though each one is secretly hiding a light bulb behind it. The series also showcases Britten’s use of color to represent one’s feelings and past experiences. “Each person has their own reservoir of memories,” Britten says. “There is an emotion that is linked to that memory, and color often triggers that memory bringing forth an emotion.” Britten’s painting process is multilayered. She starts with acrylic paint, then adds gold, silver and copper leaf, finishing with oil paint and resin. “The light is actually in the painting and what I do is just accent it,” Britten says. “The first layer creates the underlying texture and play of light. The next layer is the gold, silver and copper leaf, which creates the reflective light. The third layer is another form of light, the contrast of colors. Each layer bring its own light and creates depth in the painting.” Britten sparks a memory through her paintings and sculptures, making what first appears to be abstract tangible and personal. By creating canvases that radiate, she intends to enlighten the soul. — RT
“Isis,” Britten
Vail Fine Art Gallery First impressions are important. The Impressionists that occupy Jim Tylich’s Vail Fine Art Gallery desire to make an impact that lasts a lifetime. After 22 years as the owner of the gallery, Tylich has developed an eye for Impressionism, which invokes the artist’s point of view through colorful oil paints and strong brush strokes. His gallery has Impressionist art that stretches from such far-flung places as Australia, Peru and Azerbaijan. Tylich’s personal interest is Russian Impressionism, characterized by underlying gray tones beneath bright colors that add depth to a scene. In the Russian style, a shirt that appears white is in fact composed of a multitude of hues, reflecting the other colors in the painting. A rare acquisition for an art collector, Tylich has been able to purchase entire bodies of work of some Russian Impressionists.
“Under the Communist system, the Russian artists really couldn’t buy or sell art. They sold a little, but not much,” Tylich says. “An artist who painted 50 pieces a year, which is about normal for a major artist, they painted for 10 years straight without being able to sell very many at all. They would end up with two or three hundred artworks in their home. This is unheard of anywhere else in the world.” — RT
Masters Gallery
“Rachmaninoff, Gorky & Shaliapin, 1917,” Vail Fine Art Gallery
Sculptor Gib Singleton’s body of work is so wide and deep, so varied in subject and scope, it can be daunting to put a label on it. To be sure, the artist doesn’t want a label — he is who he is and he does what he does, every day. Every single day. But Paul Zueger, who’s represented Gib for decades in his family of galleries, knows just how to sum up the style of the sculptor’s work: emotional realism. “That means when you see them, you never forget them,” Zueger says. Life is not pretty, it’s not about knights in shining armor or touched-up photographs. It’s about the real moment, about reality, and that’s the kind of thing that stays with you. That’s emotional realism.” Singleton is the only artist ever to be represented simultaneously in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Vatican Museum and the state of Israel. There is a peculiar magic about his work. Nobody just shows up as the subject of a sculpture — everybody has a story, a reason, a goal. Whether it’s Jesus Christ wordlessly trying to assuage the guilt of the soldier nailing him to the cross, the winged Icarus plunging to earth on a trail of melting wax, or a Pony Express rider (and his mount) racing toward home delivery, every last one of them has something that propels them into action. — WW
“Pony Express,” Gib Singleton
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Cogswell Gallery
J. Cotter Gallery
For more then thirty years, Cogswell Gallery has been representing excellent artwork. Gallery owner John Cogswell has created a collection of painters and sculptors whose common denominator in the visual arts is an unrequited love affair with the beauty of Nature. Sculptor James Moore’s longtime interest in art and the natural world was the catalyst for his transition from a career in technology to fine art sculpting. Jim feels viewing wildlife in its natural environment is important to developing an overall sense of an animal. When most people observe wildlife, the focus is on the animal alone, the background becoming blurred and abstract. The intent of James’ work is to capture this blend of realism and abstraction in a three-dimensional wall hanging that forms a vignette of the animal and its environment. — SFC
According to Jim Cotter, it’s time for the cement era. Cotter is known for experimenting with new materials that aren’t often used in jewelry. His latest pieces have a lot of cement in them. “I’ve always been interested in taking the idea of industrial materials, such as the side of a bridge or a building, and reducing it down to a more intimate, more delicate kind of form,” Cotter says. Crafted from the same kind of concrete used to make roads and parking structures, Cotter molds, carves and manipulates the wearable art. He might embellish them with diamonds, gold, pearls — anything, really. “We’ve had the stone age, we’ve had the bronze age, maybe now we need to have the cement age,” Cotter says. — RT
The Shelton Smith Collection: The Spirit of America
“Diamonds in Concrete.” J. Cotter
“River Run,” James Moore
Collectors and critics agree that the work of G. Harvey, one of America’s master painters, allow one to experience the mood and feel of a scene — the drama of a special moment in time — an accomplishment unique to a great talent who creates important art. As Don Hedgpoth wrote in 1978, G. Harvey “paints not only with his eye and hand, but with his heart as well. A Harvey work does not restrict the viewer to a single response. Those who look at his work are invited to participate in the creative process to bring their own experiences and feelings into the painting.” Born in 1933 in San Antonio, Gerald Harvey Jones grew up in the Texas Hill Country listening to his father and grandfather tell stories about ranch life, frontier days in Texas and driving cattle across the Red River. With a host of awards and recognitions, Harvey’s work was chosen as the cover art for the Smithsonian’s 150th Anniversary book. He represents the true spirit of America. — SS Excerpted from ART, Vail Valley Gallery Guide, 2012. Contributions by Rosanna Turner, Brenda Himelfarb, Caramie Schnell, Shelton Smith, Simone Fodde-Crotzer and Wren Wertin.
“Land of No Fences,” G. Harvey
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Serene Drea m Mia Cooper glides across the Black Family Ice Rink in Beaver Creek. Photography by Theo Stroomer
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