Beyond

Around Aspen, the term “heavy metal” is not bandied about lightly. Here, it does not mean that Judas Priest is in town for a set, although of course this little town in the Rockies attracts more than its fair share of big music acts, both to perform and to enjoy some downtime. Nor is it a reference to high-carat bling at the Golden Bough jewelry store, though Aspen is one of the wealthiest spots on the planet. Or to the 2,350lb silver nugget pulled from the Smuggler Mine in 1894, during the town’s early prospecting days, when Aspen was a place where people came to find their fortune in the newly-discovered silver lodes, rather than to enjoy it. No, around Aspen, “heavy metal” chatter means that the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport is gearing up for a steady stream of A-listers jetting into town. Known locally as Sardy Field, the airport is one of the busiest small airports in the country. Fleets of GulfStreams, Challengers and Citations can fly in on any given day, especially for the Fourth of July or New Year’s Day. At the same time $20 million trophy homes in the elite Red Mountain neighborhood are being primped and polished, likewise those lovingly restored “painted lady” Victorians in the historic West End. And across town, chefs, personal assistants and private shoppers are put on high alert. Invitations go out from Aspen’s high-society hostesses (Ivanka Trump, Glenda Greenwald, Soledad Hurst, Paula Crown) for everything from big charity bashes to “cosy” suppers feting a visiting artist or media mogul.

What is it about this luxe little town in the Colorado Rockies that inspires such an influx? “Aspen is like no other place,” says local real estate broker Joshua Saslove of Joshua & Co., part of Christie’s Great Estates international network, who has been accommodating the whims of a moneyed and powerful clientele for more than 20 years. “The wealth of the world is drawn here not only for its natural resources, but for the character of the town, its passion for intellectual activity and its cultural amenities.” Proximity to all of the above doesn’t come cheap. Indeed Aspen is one of the most expensive real-estate markets in the USA, with people paying “a lot of money for city penthouses with views. Up here at this altitude, we have a 7,000ft advantage.” A veritable who’s who of famous faces (Kevin Costner, Goldie Hawn), tech wizards (Amazon’s Jeff Bezos), media moguls (Michael Eisner) and corporate billionaires (Charles Koch, Roman Abramovich, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, Sam Wyly) have added big-ticket properties to their portfolio of homes.

Aspen got its first real taste of wealth in 1879, when silver prospectors flocked here to the summer hunting grounds of the local Ute Indians to mine the recently discovered silver lodes. During this boom time, the area’s mines produced nearly $100 million worth of silver ore. Aspen’s next boom was the result of another valuable product of Mother Nature: snow. In 1947, the Aspen Skiing Corporation cranked up the mountain’s first chair lifts and, three years later, the FIS World Skiing Championships packed the town with celebrities and Olympic skiers. Aspenites and visitors alike rejoiced by riding horses into bars and Aspen Crud (a milkshake laced with bourbon) flowed like water. The town’s reputation as a world-class ski – and party – town was set.

Right from those early days however, intellectual ambition was a key part of the Aspen mix. In 1945, the Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke visited the Bauhaus architect Herbert Bayer in his minimalist home outside town. Together they discussed how to make the resort somewhere artists and thinkers could gather to exchange ideas. Paepcke proved adept at attracting both generous sponsors and cultural heavyweights to his endeavors, and he quickly launched the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Center for Physics and the Aspen Music Festival. The Festival continues to attract major performers and music fans every summer, and while the Institute’s HQ is now in Washington DC, in 2005 it spawned the Aspen Ideas Festival, helmed by Walter Isaacson, which aims to stimulate debate with a series of talks and forums attracting global opinion formers such as the Clintons, media entrepreneur Arianna Huffington and author Thomas L. Friedman. All of which means that, like Davos in Switzerland, today Aspen can claim to be as much about cultural or “thought leadership” as it is about great runs. What’s more, given all of that cultural ambition, the wealth, and the fact that some of the world’s leading collectors have homes in Aspen, it should come as no surprise to hear that there is also a concentration of high-end galleries here.If Calders and Lichtensteins are to your taste, they can easily be found at Casterline Goodman Gallery.

If you’re after a Ross Bleckner painting or a Bruce Weber limited-edition print, then perhaps you should head over to the Baldwin Gallery. Or for the kind of fine art collectible that can be shipped home effortlessly, Pismo Fine Art Glass will have a Chihuly or two. Meanwhile, the ultra-contemporary, 30,000 sq ft Aspen Art Museum, designed by Shigeru Ban and under construction in the heart of downtown, has benefitted from some starry fundraising events (most of its $65 million cost has been privately funded). Culture aside, the extraordinary setting of Aspen remains core to its appeal. In summer, a seemingly endless chain of back-country trails beckon for hiking, mountain biking and horse riding, and there are trout-filled waters, where rafters and kayakers can also get their kicks. In winter, naturally, you can enjoy some of the best skiing in the world – on four distinct mountains – plus of course that après ski: the private mountaintop parties up at the cosy Cloud Nine Alpine Bistro on Aspen Highlands or the champagne bar of the private Caribou Club. Less exclusive, but sometimes even more fun, there is a buzzing live music scene at venues like the famous Belly Up, or Music on the Mountain concerts on Aspen mountain. Then there’s the food.

If Cloud Nine’s appeal is homey Alpine cooking, elsewhere, Aspen also has one of the most competitive restaurant scenes in the United States – from the freshly sourced sushi Robert De Niro enjoys at Matsushisa to the ever-changing menu of the Chefs Club at The St. Regis Aspen Resort. There, innovative dishes by up-and-comers from Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs program are whipped up by executive chef Didier Elena, who has spent the past 20 years working alongside the world-renowned Alain Ducasse. For Didier, the opportunity to come to Aspen was too much to pass up. “Aspen is unique,” he says. “People from all over the world come here to live, to enjoy this place – and to eat.” Naturally Aspen’s year-round enthusiasm for all things foodie is reflected in yet another major festival, the popular Food & Wine Aspen Classic every June. It is worth noting, though, that despite its fancy restaurants and lively social scene, Aspen isn’t a town for Manolos. Heels do not mix well with cobblestones, and though furs are worn year-round, the billionaires who own those modernist penthouses and exquisite 19th-century houses are often to be seen wearing cowboy boots.

Curiously, one man who spotted Aspen’s potential early on also played a major role in the making of Utah’s Deer Valley Resort, another globally-recognized ski destination. The New Orleans real-estate entrepreneur Edgar Stern developed Aspen’s first gated enclave, the 1,000-acre Starwood. Over the years, Starwood has been home to many famous residents, perhaps the most celebrated of all being Country music legend John Denver, who referenced his idyllic 7-acre property in many of his songs. Stern then followed his instincts to Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. After scouting around the rough-and-tumble Park City Ski Resort, and eventually purchasing it and the acreage around it, he initiated the concept of a top-notch ski resort operated like a 5-star hotel. Deer Valley Resort is all that and more. Like Aspen, it’s on the radar of the country’s upper crust, who fly in to rub shoulders with an international collection of likeminded revelers in luxe hillside homes. Also like Aspen, it’s a delightful summer destination, especially for those with a proclivity for outdoor adventure, gallery-hopping, or performances at an outdoor amphitheater during the Deer Valley Music Festival, which is the summer home of the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera.

For, just as in Aspen, high culture is also a key component of Deer Valley’s appeal – for many visitors, as important as the mountains. Each January, the streets are studded with Hollywood’s finest, up for the annual Sundance Film Festival, a launching pad for independent films. Between screenings, stars gather at Robert Redford’s Zoom for chef Ernesto Rocha’s wood-fired artichokes and steak frîtes, or at Bill White’s Grappa for lobster ravioli and osso bucco. March brings a week-long fête called Red, White & Snow, with ski-in wine-tasting events on the slopeside Astor Terrace at The St. Regis Deer Valley. Of course Aspen and Deer Valley have their partisans. But as tempting as it may be to join in the bacchanalia of high season in the high country, local knowledge in both destinations has it that it is the days after the lifts close, or when the golden aspen leaves have fallen, that can be the most rewarding. Perhaps the most special time to capture the essence of America’s mountain playgrounds, then, is when you can have it all to yourself.

Your address: The St. Regis Aspen Resort; The St. Regis Deer Valley
 

Images by Denver Post via Getty Images, 4 Corners, Rex Features

Early sixtysomethings Cathy and Larry can tell you the names of almost any capital city airport in the world (“Yangon – that’s Mingaladon – right?”). If they haven’t landed there, they plan to, and if they don’t then it’s not worth seeing. Larry’s business IPO’d two years ago and they’ve been “on the road” ever since. But theirs is a travel schedule with a mission. Amid the five-star “breaks” in places as varied as Lhasa and Aspen, this couple want to “make a difference”. Their Mandarina Duck carryons (no luggage-checking ever) have seen the inside of start-ups in Armenia, orphanages in Haiti and temporary schools in Kenya. Every so often they’ll dive into something more indulgent, but not without “an experience” attached. They have hiked to Taktsang Monastery in Bhutan, taken the Trans-Siberian railway and journeyed on an icebreaker to the North Pole. Not that their expeditions are all geographic.
 
In Pondicherry they spent two months visiting the Sri Aurobindo ashram. A silent retreat run by monks in Wales was a truly “spiritual awakening” for a couple with more air miles than Hillary Clinton. But do they miss anything on their lengthy trips overseas? “Not really,” says Cathy. “We have each other, Skype the children when we can, and take our own stash of Green & Black’s, graham crackers and Yogi Positive Energy tea wherever we go.”

Your address: The St. Regis Lhasa Resort

Jacqui and Tod have a taste for the exotic. “We were born this way,” they shrug, remembering their own childhood vacations, student adventures and early married meanderings. Now the kids are that bit bigger and business is going well, they’re keen to indulge their wanderlust, little darlings in tow. It’s quality family time, after all.
 
Their first trip is to the Galapagos Islands. So educational! Into the luggage goes the J. Crew khakis for Tod along with plenty of reading material for the children, although given the number of activities they have arranged for the juniors, time will have to be strictly scheduled. Jacqui and Tod are insistent on the children journaling every day and plan to self-publish the results on their return. They are already wondering if any of their bookish offspring has “Darwinish” potential. If they are brutally honest, Jacqui and Tod are rather looking forward to the beach break in Puerto Rico that they have organized on the way back. The kids will learn to surf and go zip lining through the rainforest, and the adults will sip cocktails, content to have found the perfect formula for parenting in style. Over dinner they’ll start planning the next of many “family trips of a lifetime”.
 
Your address: The St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Puerto Rico
 
With Family Traditions at St. Regis, each hotel and resort has hand-selected experiences that are custom-tailored to please each member of your family.

George and Bitsy (real name Elizabeth Victoria) are about to have their first child, Robert William James Arturo (aka Bobsy) in a few months. They need the break before the little one arrives – when Josh’s business will also be merging with that California tech company and Bitsy will be getting back into shape, while squeezing in a bit of interior design. They are going all-out: Bora Bora, no expense spared. The last time they did this was three months ago, on their “we’re pregnant” celebration in Mauritius. Bitsy packs her Melissa Odabash kaftan; George packs his tropical Vilebrequins because Bitsy thinks his bottom looks cute in those.
 
They of course pack yoga kit for their private prenatal session, and lots of tropical evening wear. They don’t plan to leave the hotel, but love to change for dinner every night, because other than their regular Friday-night table at the Bedford Post Inn, they’ve hardly been out since Bitsy started her pregnancy diet. Bitsy has bought lots of “darling floaty things” from Net-A-Porter and George is relying on his “trop trousers” – linen cargo pants which he had made in every available shade of putty, last time he was in Bangalore. Of course they’ll miss putting the final touches to the nursery. But then again, catamaran sailing, diving, and salt scrub massages might just take their minds off those little details for a moment or two.
 
Your address: The St. Regis Mauritius Resort; The St. Regis Bora Bora Resort

You see the black Tumi luggage of the New Grand Tourist before you see them. Mostly it’s loaded on to a baggage cart or stacked in a chic, discreet pile in a hotel lobby. Somewhere in the vicinity lurk Mark and Melanie, speaking quietly into their iPhones, sporting watches by Patek Phillipe and an impeccable selection of clothing by Martin Margiela, Commes des Garçons and Tom Ford. M&M go wherever the art is. Miami-Basel-Venice-PAD-Masterpiece-The Armory and Frieze – their lives are a breathless loop of openings, auctions and gallery visits. They will slavishly trek to the East End of London, the nether lands of North Dakota or the sleaziest back street in Beijing in search of new “talent”.
 
They spend prodigiously but judiciously, but are, nonetheless, on Christie’s and Sotheby’s pre-auction dinner lists, whereby potential buyers are treated to teensy culinary delights as they view the art and sip champagne. They are consumed by their creative mission, but it doesn’t stop them from expecting the very best in luxury accommodation. That said, an art collection in a hotel, as at The St. Regis Singapore, is a mixed blessing. M&M like it, but then again it’s not theirs... Still, as they sweep out towards their waiting car and driver, their thoughts are already focused on whether this studio visit will yield the next Damien Hirst, Sophie Calle or Jeff Koons.
 
Your address: The St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort; The St. Regis Beijing

It takes place in those empty lands that have fascinated men for millennia, a seemingly soundless world of sand and solitude. Sighting its prey with eyes round as dark marbles, the bird reels and swoops, diving at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour before rising again into the azure sky that canopies the desert. So it has been throughout centuries for the longwinged and shortwinged in this world of lures, snares, jesses, hoods and blocks.
 
The language of the Arabian falconer, like that of his counterparts across the globe, is as time-worn and universal as the sport of hawking itself. Most of us, to borrow a line from Hamlet, wouldn’t know “a hawk from a handsaw”. That, however, has not prevented a perennial fascination with what has been called the real sport of kings, no matter how much a pauper or commoner we might be. Who hasn’t caught sight of a hawk or falcon soaring on currents above the countryside and not been struck by its imposing appearance and mastery of flight? As a journalist who has spent much time in Afghanistan, a country with a long and fine tradition of falconry, I have often watched birds of prey in the mountains and deserts of that beautiful but troubled land. In his majestic book, Falconry in the Land of the Sun: The Memoirs of an Afghan Falconer, the legendary Sirdar Mohamed Osman, grandson of the King of Afghanistan, recalls his adventures across India, Pakistan and Central Asia in pursuit of his passion. But it is perhaps in the Arab world where this sport is most deeply and fervently pursued, binding man and raptor in an intimate dance of life and death.
 
In visits over the years to places as diverse as Iraq, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE, the sight of a falconer whirling a feathered, baited lure has become familiar as he teaches his bird to strike again and again at its quarry before swooping down to land on his gauntleted arm. And nowhere has this sight been so indelibly etched on my memory than in the reddish-orange desert dunes of the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter, which sits little more than an hour and a half’s drive south of Abu Dhabi. It was here in the late 1940s and early 1950s that the great British Arabist, Wilfred Thesiger, accompanied Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi for months on camel back, sleeping in the open, feeding on hares and bustards that were the quarry of their falcons. “It was very still with the silence which we have driven from our world,” wrote Thesiger in what was to become his classic book, Arabian Sands.
 
The visitor to Arabia is often told that the desert life is over, and to a great extent it is true. But the silence that Thesiger speaks of can still be found, as can the Arab falconer. In these high-tech internet-dominated times, in this part of the world there remains a self-conscious defence against the tide of modernity. A region flush with petro-dollars and opulent lifestyles still has a burning need, it seems, to preserve a tradition that provides an ageless communion with nature. In this, the Arab love of falconry continues to play a vital role. Indeed in many Arab lands, the falcon has become part of contemporary iconography, its sharp-beaked, taloned image appearing on everything from company logos and cap badges to dirham banknotes. As another British Arabist and former MI6 spy master, Sir Mark Allen, points out: “With the camel, the Arab horse, the black hair tent and the Saluki [Persian greyhound], the hawk is a symbol of the desert Arab’s way of life... which he has cherished through all the traumatic changes of the last few generations.” Since he was 14 years old, hawking has played an enormous part in Allen’s life, allowing him as a Westerner to become accepted and to live and hunt with the Bedouin nomadic tribesmen of the Arabian desert.
 
For the Bedouin, raptors were originally used for hunting to supplement their diet of milk, bread, dates and rice with meat from hares or houbara, a large bird of the bustard family. These hunting expeditions were also a useful means by which tribal sheikhs could “tour” their territory and keep up with events. In cities such as Baghdad and Damascus, falconry used to have a rather grand following. Much of that has now gone, lost, as Allen says, “with a vanished world of pomegranates and sherbet”. For the layman, the world of the falconer is a mysterious one. To all but those with some knowledge of birds there is often confusion about the differences between a hawk and a falcon. Put simply, the birds used in falconry fall into two types: the falconidae, or longwings, comprise the dark-eyed hooked-beaked falcons that power dive on their prey from above; then there are the accipitridae, shortwing yellow-eyed true hawks, such as the sparrowhawk, which run down their quarry by “binding to” or grabbing them after a hectic chase. These days in the UAE the two main species of falcons to be found in the dunes of the Empty Quarter are the saker and the peregrine.
 
Historically, the Bedouin believe that the saker has more powerful eyesight than the peregrine. Sharing the cunning temperament of a cat, Arabian falconers swear by the saker’s intelligence and tell of how it will often lie down between driver and passenger for better balance on the front seat of a 4x4 bumping over the dunes. Such stories say much about the working intimacy that develops between falconer and bird. Buying the finest birds can command vast sums with prices of $20,000 not uncommon, and some fetching as much as $250,000. It’s hardly surprising then, that traditional as many aspects of Arabian falconry continue to be, birds often have GPS transmitters attached to their tail feathers to track them should they go missing. But first, the falconer must acquire his bird, and historically, the methods and ruses used by Arab trappers have been varied and ingenious. These range from pigeons used as bait with slip nooses on a light frame attached to their backs, to deploying smaller decoy hawks also with nooses attached. This makes them appear as if they are carrying a kill, which then becomes a target for larger birds, which inevitably become entangled in the noose themselves. Hides and nets, too, have been used to capture these elusive creatures.
 
In countries such as the UAE today, however, there are strict controls on trapping falcons as well as their use in hunting the king prey of houbara. Indeed many falconers have now become committed conservationists. The Falcon Passport, a scheme started in 2002 in Abu Dhabi, prevents the illegal trading of falcons, with the bird’s country of origin, permit number and date of last export or import forming key data in the document. But the same rules do not always apply in other parts of the world, especially when it comes to hunting with falcons. As a result, many Arab falconers now travel overseas, purchasing permits to hunt in places such as Pakistan. The legal supply of raptors from many of these countries remains a substantial business. Some years ago while working in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province along the border with Afghanistan, I met a Pathan trapper in the city of Peshawar, who regularly acquired birds for Middle-Eastern clients. A keen falconer himself, he and his friends would frequently gather for meals at the hotel he owned. With them they brought falcons and hawks, which they habitually leashed to the nearest furniture in the absence of a proper “block” or wakr. I became fascinated with the elaborate paraphernalia of the falconers’ trade.
 
The jesses or short thongs that attach to the birds legs; the leash that, in turn, runs from the jesses to the block where the hawk spends most of its time when not in flight; and, of course, the hood, or burka in Arabic. Kept in pitch darkness, the bird will sit motionless with no thought to fly for fear of breaking feathers. The hood keeps the bird calm, avoiding any stress. Where Japanese falconers once believed that hawks were afraid of the human voice, Arabs have traditionally taught their hawks to know their names, which are short and easy to call, such as Dhib, (wolf) or Sabah (morning). At a time when Middle Eastern countries such as Qatar and the UAE are experiencing a dislocation from the past due to accelerated economic change, falconry remains a tangible link to another way of life. But it would be wrong to over-romanticize this passion. While in the West hawking is regarded as a sport, in the Arabic language there are no equivalent words for that notion. Of course it has words that mean pastime or exercise, but in the case of falconry its roots and the words used to describe it will always be associated with hunting.
 
Given today’s hunting restrictions, however, hawking has taken on a new significance ever since the first International Falconry Conference (IFC) was inaugurated by Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi in 1976. Since then, falconry has played an increasingly significant role in the much wider heritage, culture and identity of the UAE. It is a measure of how seriously the Arabs of the Emirates take their falcons that the country has created a world-renowned veterinary clinic, the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital (ADFH), which opened in 1999. In its first 12 years more than 50,000 “patients” have passed through its doors. Whether it’s disease, diet or broken wing feathers, falconers go to great lengths to maintain the health of their birds. Today in Abu Dhabi men dressed in what were once clothes of the desert but are now national dress can be seen queueing with their birds on temporary blocks at the city’s famous falcon hospital. “The bird is part of my life, my identity, and for that reason it deserves whatever loyalty I can offer it, when it is in need,” is how one Emirates falconer described his decision to visit ADFH. Every year the UAE further highlights its commitment to the hawking tradition when it holds the Abu Dhabi Falconry Competition and Festival as part of its national day celebrations. Some 600 falconers and more than 1,100 birds participated in the contest towards the end of last year, split into three disciplines. With up to a million dirhams ($275,000) on offer in prize money, the biggest pot goes to the owner of the falcon covering 400 yards in the fastest time.
 
In another event, birds follow a model plane with a “bait tail” trailing behind it, the winner being the falcon that flies the longest distance and time. “It’s a new technique,” explains Mohammed Al Mahmood, general secretary of the Abu Dhabi Sports Council. “It’s the first time it has been done in a competition.” In the final event the birds are timed from the ground to a balloon more than 600 feet in the air. Speaking at the finale of the competition, President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan said that he hoped that the event would promote genuine heritage from which “valuable lessons” might be learned by youngsters, especially in “patience, courage, generosity, heroism, challenge, endurance and other noble principles”. It was Sir Mark Allen who, on one occasion having difficulty with a restless peregrine, was given the advice of a Bedouin falconer: “Take off his hood, let him watch the Arabs and be content.” In the past, a generation of Gulf Arabs was content with the fact that the noble art of falconry provided a means of feeding their families, but clearly they believed that hawking meant more than just that. Today, as Allen has observed, the Arabs may no longer fly their birds with “the careless ferocity and zest of the past”, but few would deny that there still remains something utterly majestic in this magical aerobatic display of grandeur and tenacity.
 
Your address: The St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi; The St. Regis Abu Dhabi. A tour of the falcon hospital can be arranged for guests.