Vail to Aspen, Aspen to Vail

When I'm not behind the wheel of a Suburban, I'm usually somewhere on a Yamaha.

Want this drive without doing the driving? Our Vail to Aspen private car service runs it at a published flat rate, both directions.

I've ridden this bike across most of the country, long stretches through the Dakotas, the Pacific Coast Highway, New England when the leaves were turning. There's a particular kind of quiet you only get from a motorcycle on an open road, and I've been chasing it for years. When I take a day off from chauffeuring, that's usually where I am.

Wednesday was a day off. So I rode the route I drive every week. Vail to Aspen, and Aspen back to Vail. 104 miles down, 101 miles back, the long way home, by way of every front door I've ever pulled up to.

Eagle Airport, 9 a.m.

I started where I start most workdays, the curb at Eagle County Airport. Elevation 6,547, the sign says so right on the building. EGE is the easiest commercial airport in Colorado. No 200-mile DIA crawl, no mountain passes. You walk out, you're on Highway 6, and a few minutes later you're at the on-ramp for 82.

Half our Aspen business comes through that terminal. Guests headed for the Ritz-Carlton Club at Aspen Highlands, the Viceroy at Snowmass, the Limelight Snowmass for the families. I've made the airport pickup so many times the gate agents know me. Wednesday morning I was just there to take a picture and keep moving south.

Glenwood Canyon, mid-morning

I-70 west out of Eagle drops you into Glenwood Canyon, the Colorado River below, red rock walls climbing nearly two thousand feet overhead, the kind of road that makes you forgive interstates. In a Suburban I'm watching the lane lines. On the Yamaha I was watching the canyon walls.

At Glenwood Springs you exit south onto Highway 82 and start climbing the Roaring Fork Valley, past Carbondale, then Basalt, then El Jebel and Old Snowmass. The Roaring Fork River runs alongside the road the whole way up. Trout fishermen working the riffles in May, the water still cold from the high snow.

From my driveway in Vail to Upper Snowmass it's exactly 104 miles. I know because I tripped the odometer in Eagle and watched it tick over outside the Viceroy.

Mt. Sopris does this thing.

You come around a bend somewhere between Carbondale and El Jebel and there it is, two twin summits over 12,000 feet, dropped right onto the valley floor like a piece of stage scenery. I pulled the bike over and stood in the gravel for ten minutes just looking at it.

I tell my guests about Sopris on every Aspen run. Most of them are looking at their phones when I point it out.

I get it. But that mountain is the reason this drive is the prettiest hour and fifteen minutes in Colorado.

Past Every Front Door

Highway 82 rolls into Aspen as Main Street, and from there the front doors I've pulled up to all my career stack up one after another.

The turnoff to the Inn at Aspen at Buttermilk goes by on the right, the families staying there for X Games week, the kids in ski school across the road. A few miles farther, the road to Aspen Highlands and the Ritz-Carlton Club climbs up to the left, same place I dropped guests last week, Highland Bowl skiers and Inspirato members both. The Aspen-Pitkin County Airport sits between them, runway parallel to the highway, the Atlantic Aviation FBO ramp full of Gulfstreams and Citations.

And then you're in town. Aspen, slow speed, brick and stone. Main Street narrows and the hotels line up.

The Hotel Jerome on Main, Auberge Collection now, but still the same red brick saloon-era building from 1889. The Little Nell at the base of Aspen Mountain, gondola right out the door, the address every serious skier knows. The St. Regis a few blocks over, copper roof glowing in afternoon sun. The Limelight Hotel Aspen on Cooper, family-run-feeling even though it's a chain. The W Aspen with its rooftop pool. The Mollie Aspen up the hill, newer and quieter. And on Durant Avenue, the Aspen Square Condominium Hotel, old guard, the kind of place guests come back to year after year.

I've delivered guests to every single one of those addresses. Wednesday I rolled past all of them in riding gear, helmet under my arm, and parked the Yamaha at the corner outside the St. Regis. Brick wall, copper roof, the old hospital bridge across the way. I bought a sandwich and sat in the sun.

The Ritz, on the way out.

On the way out of town I rolled up to the Ritz at Highlands for old times' sake. The bell staff didn't quite know what to do with a guy on a motorcycle in riding gear, but they let me park out front long enough for the picture. I'd been there a hundred times in the Suburban. First time I'd seen the porte-cochère from a saddle instead of a steering wheel.

Aspen to Vail.

From the Hotel Jerome it's 101 miles back to Vail. Past Sopris on the left this time. Through Basalt at the speed limit, just to be safe. Into Glenwood, east through the canyon, and home to Vail by dinnertime.

Same destination. Different ride. Same road we know every mile of.

That's the part I want you to know. When we tell our guests we know this route cold, when we mention the speed traps in Basalt, the construction zones in Carbondale, which exits get backed up in summer, where Mt. Sopris first appears on the right, we mean it. I drive this road in the Suburban most days of the week. On my day off, I rode it.

Because after thirty-some years of riding bikes across this country, it still ranks among my favorite stretches of pavement anywhere.