Aspen's extended welcome: Colorado's iconic resort embraces Winter X Games and a green ethos as it casts net beyond the super-rich, baby boom crowd.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: Company overview

SNOW was falling hard in Aspen, a welcome sight given the imminent arrival of ski season, and excitement inside the Aspen Skiing Co. offices was palpable. The evening before, 68-year-old Pat O'Donnell, the chief executive officer since 1996, had announced that, instead of waiting until spring to retire as had been previously announced, he was out the door.

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His successor, O'Donnell said, was ready to take the reins of arguably the most trend-setting ski company in Colorado or, for that matter, the nation.

That successor, Mike Kaplan, 42, had been aiming for just this job for the better part of 20 years. A native of Chicago's upper-crust Highland Park neighborhood, Kaplan grew up skiing in Colorado and New Mexico's Taos Ski Valley.

After completing college, Kaplan moved to Taos to teach the sport of skiing and learn the business. It was a good place for learning. Taos had been founded in 1955 by one of the ski industry's pioneers, Ernie Blake.

When Kaplan arrived, Blake was still alive and conducting all job interviews--over cups of coffee. During his second year, Kaplan confided that he someday wanted to own or operate a ski area. His mission blessed, he was offered hands-on experiences: snowmaking, patrolling and grooming, among other things. In 1993, he moved to Aspen, where he rapidly rose through the ranks: ski instructor, ski-school supervisor, manager of mountain operations and then, in 2005, separated by only two glass walls from O'Donnell's office, the chief operating officer.

Patiently telling his story during an interview in November, Kaplan studied a bird flitting in the falling snow on an aspen branch outside his exterior window. Married, with four children, he was wearing khaki pants, a comfortable shirt, and snow-resistant lace-up boots. Such utilitarian dress falls within a dress code that in ski towns is sometimes called Rocky Mountain casual, Ties and slick shoes may be dragged out for funerals and weddings, but mostly they mark out-of-towners.

The Aspen Skiing Co. is not one of those. After some difficult years in the 1980s, the company has again risen to prominence in Aspen and statewide. And Kaplan has some rather large boots to fill.

Under O'Donnell's supervision, Aspen Skiing has been cultivating its strengths and repairing its weaknesses. Its strengths include a loyal customer base, with a 75 to 78 percent return rate, among the best in the ski industry. Returning destination visitors tend to buy ski lessons--an important source of revenue for every ski company. Certainly not least, Aspen has a strong claim on the extremely wealthy. Among the most lucrative are foreign visitors, who tend to stay for extended periods. Altogether, international visits were responsible for 20 percent of business at the four Pitkin...