Thing 1 

In October 2010, Jesse Steele, a bulldozer operator from Gould Construction Company, unearthed the tusk of a juvenile woolly mammoth while working on an expansion of Ziegler Reservoir above Snowmass Village. That discovery–which turned out to be the most complete mammoth fossil ever found at high elevation–led paleontologists and an army of citizen Indiana Joneses to recover a trove of more than 5,000 fossils from Ice Age fauna (bison, camels, ground sloths, horses, mammoths, mastodons, and mule deer) and flora. While all that Pleistocene bounty was donated to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Snowmass visitors can hike to a viewpoint overlooking the reservoir via the Ice Age Discovery Trail, or (starting June 14) take the guided Ice Age Discovery Talk & Tour, visiting art installations around the village, including life-sized mastadon sculptures made from recycled ocean plastic. 

Thing 2

If you missed the Food & Wine Classic, you can still seize summer like an influencer by imbibing with a flute of Vilmart & Cie Little Nell Grande Réserve Premier Cru Champagne, a private label The Nell produces exclusively with the maison, available by the glass ($35–$56) or bottle ($200) in guest rooms and suites or at any of the hotel’s restaurants and bars. Or for $8,000 (annual fee applied to cellar stocking), you can join the Little Nell Wine Club. After consultation with Wine Director Chris Dunaway, you can add 40 bottles of Vilmart (or, if you prefer, two $4,000 12-liter bottles of Moët & Chandon Imperial, or pretty much anything from the hotel’s 20,000+ bottle cellar recommended by Dunaway, who passed the Level III Advanced Sommelier exam on his first attempt in 2016 ) to your private collection stored for all to see in designated rows in Element 47’s all-glass refrigerated wine wall. 

Thing 3

When 421 Willoughby Way first changed hands in 2009, the 22,000-square-foot manse at the base of Red Mountain fetched $43 million, a record sale. When former NHL player Patrick Dovigi bought the place 12 years later for $72.5 million, again it was the highest price ever paid for a Pitkin County property. And when Dovigi sold his Willoughby Way home to billionaires Steve Wynn and Thomas Peterffy for $108 million in April, headlines proclaimed it Colorado’s most expensive. What’s the Midas Touch for real estate that appreciates by 150 percent in 15 years? “Even if you have resale in mind, build a home you really want to live in,” says Charles Cunniffe, the Aspen architect who designed 421 Willoughby Way in 2006 and oversaw its 2009 interior remodel. “Nobody has felt the need to change anything other than the look of some finishes because the house functions perfectly well.”