Aspen Skier Wiley Maple Finds Kitzbühel Home

Aspen —A five-star hotel room in Kitzbühel. Twenty-plus breakfast options. Seven yogurt choices.

Aspen skier Wiley Maple calls it “home-from-home.” I call it a test of endurance.

I spent 24 hours in the Austrian town this week, riding a “Herbert Huber” gondy up to the top of the Streif. The cab was named for a local winner, though I didn’t see one named after Bode Allen. I did spot Dave Rydings’, a U.K. skier Maple knows well enough to mention by name.

The town is contiguous and charming, in that specific Aspen way where you can walk from the mountain top to the bottom without ever seeing a car. It’s small, packed with preserved historic buildings, and feels like history arrived before the tourism boom. Bronze age miners dug for copper here long before modern skiers bought second homes. You’ll find Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque churches tightly packed together.

But let’s talk about the cost of that charm.

I stayed at The Schlosshotel, a five-star pad that looks like the offspring of Aspen’s Little Nell and Maroon Creek Club had a baby. The grounds are verdant, featuring a golf course and dining that sits over a water feature. It’s a temporary distraction from the main restaurant buffet, which commits you to overeating at every single meal.

There are no food whims overlooked here. You can grind your own seeds for morning yogurt, choosing from seven types. The meal stretches to hours if you want it to. Mornings offer a bread selection that induces anxiety for anyone who believes they must try all European carbs by their own rules. Even a teenage-boy appetite struggled to get through 20-plus options for Austrian breakfast baked goods in just three days.

If you need a theme change, there’s a sushi restaurant in the upper lobby. If you need sugar, free mini-Magnum ice creams arrive magically on trays poolside around 3 p.m.

Dining options in town range from modern to traditional. At Rosis Sonnbergstuben, the matriarch holds court in full pink dirndl. She is as fun as Das Reich, a chic restaurant across the street offering Tuna Tartare Asian specials and sorbets. Catty-corner from Das Reich sits The Londoner, a Red Onion doppelgänger where skiers celebrate after the big race.

The Hahnenkamm is ski racing’s “Super Bowl,” as Maple put it. Ten years ago, at a party at Bonnies in Aspen, I congratulated him on his 19th place finish there. He told me he was headed for a summer visit. I went.

The town feels like Aspen, but the prices tell a different story about who actually lives here versus who just visits. The Schlosshotel offers free ice cream, but you pay for the privilege of staying in a place that treats every meal like an event.

Maple’s attitude lifted my spirits, and his notes on The Londoner helped me navigate the post-race crowds. But for locals watching from home, the real question isn’t whether Kitzbühel is pretty. It’s whether we’re willing to pay five-star prices for a town that feels exactly like our own, just with better bread.

The numbers don’t lie. The Schlosshotel is a luxury product. The food is abundant, the service is fast, and the ice cream is free if you’re already inside. It’s a lot of value for a lot of money.