An early pre-Christmas blizzard, with nighttime temperatures plummeting to zero and below and snowfall totalling twenty inches, did not stop the scheduled December 17th kickoff of construction on the Clifftop Hotel project.

Jordan Thorne flew back from his mother Dolores Thorne's funeral in California to watch with partner Vanowen Wong and visiting officials of the Hong Kong--Shanghai Bank as the earth-moving equipment sliced through snowy Aspen groves and frozen meadows at dawn, carving out the site of the huge complex. By nightfall, in the words of construction foreman Beezley Moog, "Even if you were God Almighty, you wouldn't have recognized the place. We didn't just let daylight in the forest, we kicked the ****ing forest's ancient Old Growth ***, and you can quote me."

When asked about predictions that weather through February will be unusually cold and snowy Thorne commented, "I don't give a damn what the weather does. If we have to, we'll bring in five hundred Mexicans with flame throwers, jack hammers and shovels to keep the site prepped." (Thorne later insisted he was misquoted- that he really said "five hundred technicians." The Avalanche stands by its original quote.)