You can play with the Resort's beat up discs for free. The view is pretty dramatic. Some cool holes. I parked the Kiss the Sky shot but missed the putt. Bummer. A few very long downhill drives. A couple punishing uphill shots.

I drove to Aspen to play this course. Ouch! Expensive gondola ride. Expensive Food. Where you are met by a lot of foot traffic. Tourists, kids, people enjoying the splendor of the top of the mountain and your some weirdo throwing plastic around and through the crowds. Not a big fan of the lets give the sport exposure idea because in these public places I found myself irritated and angry and the public angy and confused with me. Not sure that promotes the game. The course despite its location is pretty bland except for maybe 6 holes. The others are more filler or slapped up for the season. Boring essentially. When the course is boring and your annoyed by spending money and so much traffic. Bad Karma. Also you never feel like your playing on a disc golf course. With the gondola and the ski lifts interrupting the sky so often. I was more than ready to finish my round. By the way I was really trying to enjoy myself.

The mountain is nice but like many wonders of nature too many tourists spoiling the moment. Imagine any of our wonders with a disc golf course present. Niagra Falls, Grand Canyon, Badlands, Banff and now imagine the course is built where all the tourists congregate. Instant buzzkill. If the course was maybe a short hike from the gondola lift and played through some woods and then used some of the slopes rather than insisting on beginning and ending at the lifts I might have been less disappointed. The temporary nature of the course makes it seem haphazzard, like an afterthought. I like courses that are a few people's labor of love and not some corporate moneymaker.

If you are playing Aspen you are experiencing quite a view as you are on top of a mountain. The gondola ride to the top is long, and full of wonder. The ride down is long and relaxing after a grueling round. There are a few signature holes, one next to a cliff, and one that has a monster drop and is over 1500 feet long. You get massive exercise playing this course. Your friends will love the pictures you get. There are maps available at the top and there are signs throughout the course.

When I played there were kids running all over the place unaware of the course. What goes down must come back up, on foot. Hiking up a ski slope beats you up a little. If you think walking up a steep but wide open jeep trail would make a good back nine than this is the place for you. Make sure you bring water, maybe even a lunch and an Asprin for the elevation. The gondola fee of $20+ is a little steep considering that there is really nothing up there in the summer time. Its even expensive to park your car in Aspen. The astonishing scenery does not equate to a disc golf round with a high fun factor. I did loose a disc on the "kiss it goodbye" hole and I just climbed down like 70 feet and retrieved it. The tee areas are dirt, uneven and sometimes rocky, most of the fairways are wide open in the middle of the slopes. I know the whole idea seems hard to resist, and I know you're going anyways, but you will feel suckered, and you can't say I didn't warn you.

Aspen should scrap the course on top of the mountain thing and be more like Steamboat who put their course on the base of a side mountain. Both Aspen and Steamboat are a lot of work, but the payoff in Aspen just didn't feel worth it. Aspen might also be improved by getting into the woods a little bit more. I get the feeling that people want to remember a breath taking trip to the top of a mountain, which is ok because that is what you will get here. The vistas fall short of making up for a disc golf round that has a relatively low fun-factor. The local area disc golfers I met the day before tried to draw me a map to the top, and didn't have much praise for the course. I should have taken that as a hint.

If you need to stock up on discs before heading up, there is some selection at the Miners Building (a hardware store) on Main St. You might even be able to get the 411 about driving up the road instead of having to take the gondola.