There's always something going on. For instance, every Friday night from mid-February Snowmass hosts the Bud Light Big Air Fridays and Fireworks. Top professional and amateur skiers and boarders let it rip with their hottest moves off a 12m jump, entertaining the crowds with their heroic stunts.
This is followed with a spectacular fireworks display over the snow in the evening: not to be missed.
But it's not all showbusiness. Aspen Mountain is the expert skier's paradise. With a lifetime's variety of runs, and enough bumps to ensure you'll need at least one knee reconstruction at the season's end, the word bored will be permanently erased from your vocabulary.
This is a place where speed demons gather. Aspen Mountain hosts the women's world cup in November. It has a mean downhill track, not for the faint-hearted: a great way to blow out the cobwebs.
If you manage to slow down enough to take in some of the finer details of the mountain, you'll find shrines to famous Americans and local heroes hidden among the trees everywhere. John Denver's is a popular meditation spot, with people constantly passing through to pay their respects.
From the top of Aspen Mountain on a clear day, you look across to the Highlands and the world-renowned Highland Bowl.
The bowl reaches 3777m (higher than Mt Cook) and is a notch every self-respecting skier or boarder must have in his or her belt.
From the top of the Loge Peak lift at Highlands you catch the snow cat for a short distance and then hike about 45 minutes to the top of the bowl. The hike is steep and the oxygen is pretty scarce, so you need to be fit and determined.
But with so few willing to take it on, the first tracks in the virgin powder are unbeatably exhilarating as you carve your way down. And just like a drug, you can't help yourself going back for more.
The rest of Highlands is pretty tame in comparison. Of course, there are super-steep tree runs down Steeplechase and Temerity, but the groomers are gentle, with plenty of wide, open spaces for beginners to practise the legendary pizza move. Highlands is more of a locals' mountain - it's not so high-maintenance and pretty relaxed.
Almost as important as the on-snow activities is the apres ski drinking.
Sky Bar in Aspen boasts hot pools, cold beer and a bar full of goggle-branded, snow-obsessed, seasoned boarders and skiers, all looking for their next fix (of snow, that is).
As you pass them by, the conversations all seem pretty similar.
They vary from comments about how much snow came last night, to how much is coming tonight, to how they're going to get out of work in the morning.
Aspen Snowmass received record snowfalls of 11.5m over the 2007-08 season. When it comes, it's in inches or feet - that's how they measure things in the US - at a time. It floats from the heavens with unceremonious ease, landing on the mountains and rooftops like a gift from the gods. It feels like Christmas at Aspen Snowmass all season, and who's complaining?
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Air New Zealand flies twice daily to Los Angeles and daily into San Francisco with connections via Denver into the Colorado ski resorts of Aspen, Eagle (Vail) and Hayden (Steamboat). For personal assistance contact the Air New Zealand Contact Centre on 0800 737 000 or visit your Air New Zealand Holidays Store.
Further information: See coloradoski.com.
Sarah Ivey skiied at Aspen Snowmass as guest of Colorado Ski Country USA.
