Snowmass history: High Alpine restaurant

“It’s a big change to go from sea level to 11,000′ in altitude,” explained The Aspen Times on Feb. 23, 1978, “It was a big change in attitude and altitude for Kemp ‘Cajun’ Dubea who lives at the High Alpine Restaurant located at the top of the Alpine Springs ski lift at Snowmass Resort. As his nick name suggests, Dubea is from Louisiana. Cajun works for the restaurant and lives at the restaurant, spending long serene nights up on top of a mountain with only a few small samples of animal life to keep him company….. Cajun at 25, said he has found ‘inner peace within myself since I’ve been up here. I’m always in a good mood, the people I work with are beautiful people and I enjoy living here.’ Restaurant manager Chuck Tower explained that the building was designed to be expanded in the future. ‘This is only phase one, the second phase will add room for another 150 people so we can serve about 350 at once,’ Tower said. Phase two is tentatively scheduled to be constructed this coming summer when the new lift above Alpine Springs will be installed. Aspen Skiing Corp owns the building, but Tower leases the concession from the corp and runs the restaurant. ‘We have had around 1,500 people up here on our busiest days,’ Tower said, which takes about 30 employees working a minimum of 20 hours in the restaurant’…. High Alpine and Alpine Springs is still relatively unknown and unskied by the masses, but when the new lift goes in above High Alpine, Tower said, ‘we will have expert skiing here and we will definitely become a hot area.'”