Kaya Williams/The Aspen Times
A skier approaches the finish line during the slalom warm-up race at NASTAR national championships at Snowmass on April 5, 2021.
Kaya Williams/The Aspen Times
Staff prepare the race course before the slalom warm-up race at NASTAR national championships at Snowmass on April 5, 2021.
Kaya Williams/The Aspen Times
Tom Kennedy is something of a legend around these parts: The 69-year-old Aspen local is a regular at the long-running Aspen-Snowmass Town Race Series and has been competing in ski racing for nearly 50 years, he said at the base of the slalom warm-up course during the National Standard Racing (NASTAR) alpine racing national championships Monday morning.
Amanda Rae
On the last sunny, snowy Saturday in March, Tom Kennedy and friends are posted up on the deck at Bonnie’s. Make that Bonnie’s Beach House, the pseudo pop-up that slings zesty Mexican flavors at 10,400 feet above sea level on Aspen Mountain. For about four or five weekends, hot tacos have heralded a much-anticipated season: springtime. After a long, strange winter, locals and visitors are ready to flock socially distanced, of course and feel transported to an exotic locale that for most of us is but a distant memory: pre-COVID normalcy.
Kennedy strikes a new acquaintance as a diehard skier and genial, seen-it-all kind of guy. Having recently wrapped the Aspen Snowmass Town Race Series, at 40 years considered the oldest ongoing recreational competition series among ski areas in North America, Kennedy sports a silver racing jacket covered in logo patches, flowing white locks, and an inviting smile. He’s lived in Aspen for five good years but has been coming here t