Castle Creek Road, since it was re-surfaced a in 2013, has become my number one favorite ride in the valley. Rising from the hospital, at about 8000-foot elevation, it winds 2500’ in nine miles to the crest at Koch’s Elk Mountain Lodge. From there, another 3-4 miles flows past Ashcroft ghost town, the Pine Creek Cookhouse, with the pavement ending at 10,000’. Coursing along a remote corridor, flanked by Aspen Mountain’s Richmond hill to the east, and Aspen Highland’s Loges Peak to the west, the road slices a tongue of asphalt into the Maroon Bells wilderness area. Newly paved, the downhill trip felt like skiing on 6 inches of fresh powder, made all the more luscious by the lack of any real traffic.
Until last June, when on my uphill trip, I was repeatedly passed by dump trucks, and several semis carrying what appeared to be scaffolding. Half way up, they turned left, towards the top of Richmond Hill, grinding up the rutted dirt surface of Little Annie Road.
Over the next couple of weeks, local papers sprouted headlines exclaiming, “Aspen Wedding Gets No Love From Pitkin County, Residents”. Apparently, all those trucks were hauling material – scaffolding, trees, shrubs, tables, chairs, kitchen equipment, tents – meant for a wedding to take place up on the ridge, at 10,000’, in an area designated as “rural, remote,” where no permanent structures or on-going commercial activity is allowed. The owner of the plot, John Miller, gave a convoluted explanation when asked about all the activity.
He routinely rents his land out for small get-togethers, outdoor weddings, and advertising photo shoots. When money exchanges hands, he has to get a permit from the county, which had always provided one before. This time, when he submitted the permit as completed by the wedding planning firm who contacted him, the county staff told him it seemed a bit excessive, so they would kick it up to the director, and the planning and zoning commission. That promised to be a slow, and very public process, neither of which boded well for approval.
Then the folks who lived along lower Castle Creek Road, and the few who owned land near Little Annie, started calling the county and the papers, complaining of all the heavy traffic, in particular its impact on the fragile dirt road. Miller wondered, “Just who is putting this on anyway?”
He was surprised when he learned the bride was Alex Steel, daughter of Robert. Miller had known her for years, and knew Steel as a high powered business executive and local philanthropist. Steel (to quote the Aspen Times) “of Greenwich, Conn… owns a $12.2 million home on Red Mountain, is the current chair of the Aspen Institute board of trustees, is the incoming CEO of the New York investment firm Perella Weinberg, and is a former deputy mayor of New York for economic development [in the Bloomberg administration], where he oversaw the city’s planning department.” Miller’s response: “Robert and Gillian Steel are the salt of the earth,” Miller said. “And I’ve known Alex for a long time.”
To the wedding planners, Miller said, “I would be honored to let Alex have her wedding on our property at no charge. I will keep the money that you have given me as a damage deposit, and will return it if the grounds are left in proper condition.”
Well, that seemed big of him, but there probably was an ulterior motive. Since no money was changing hands, this became a private, not a commercial event, and obviated the need for the permit process. The wedding, in all its ostentatious gluttony, proceeded apace.
Following the wedding, the parade of trucks reversed course, and the once pristine mountain meadow appeared gutted and scared, save for the seeding and watering the wedding crew left attempted as “restoration”.
Townsfolk rallied, and the county commission implemented a more vigorous permitting process for rural and remote. But the psychic damage had been done. Once again, a wannabe billionaire had shown he could do what he wanted, wielding both personal and economic influence to bend the rules and remake the landscape as he saw fit.