SPECIAL SKI ISSUE: Western Ski Resorts : Lofty Heights Can Be Recipe for Trouble

At a restaurant high on a snow-covered mountain, even turning out chili and burgers can be a challenge. When the food gets fancier, the problems multiply.

Chefs reach Bonnie’s, on steep Aspen Mountain in Colorado, via gondola and a 10-minute ski down from the summit.

“We’re first on the gondola at 8 a.m.; it’s 8:30 before we’ve got our boots and parkas off, and lunch is only three short hours away,” says Bonnie’s co-owner Peter Greene. Baking is a problem because at two miles up, breads dry out quickly and recipes require major adjustments to compensate for the lowered air pressure.

Greg Gallavan, food and beverage manager of Sunspot in Winter Park, Colo., recalls the time a chef spent three weeks trying out variations of a Spanish flan. “We eventually put a request out on e-mail for ideas. Several chefs responded, but the solution came from a chef working in the Peruvian Andes.”

Getting the supplies up the mountain is another hurdle, particularly at Alpenglow Stube, which tops the altimeter at 11,444 feet in Keystone, Colo.

Food is trucked from Denver, then repackaged in 650-pound pallets that snow cats then pull up Keystone Mountain, a 75-minute ride often in subzero temperatures. At the summit, the pallets are loaded onto the second-stage gondola for the ride to North Peak. There they are downloaded to an elevator and enter the lodge via a tunnel built for food transportation.

The final challenge is one borne by the guests, particularly lowlanders not adjusted to the altitude.

“When guests turn green before they’ve opened the menu, I know it’s not the wine,” jokes Alpenglow’s maitre d’ Ron Wolfe.

Colorado resorts caution guests to drink water by the quart and be sparing with alcohol. And to wait a day or two before sitting down to a two-mile-high meal.