Dozens of couples get hitched at snowy Colorado ski resort on Valentine's Day

LOVELAND SKI AREA, Colo. (AP) — There is nothing like dozens of couples saying “I do” simultaneously to warm the crisp, frigid air that grips the Colorado Rockies in the heart of winter.

Loveland Ski Area west of Denver lived up to its name once again on Valentine's Day as it hosted its 34th annual Mountaintop Matrimony on the gentle slope of a snowy beginner's run just shy of 12,000 feet (3,658 meters) above sea level.

Surrounded by snow-covered trees, craggy wind-swept peaks and curious onlookers, a record 130 couples converged on the Forest Meadow run near the Continental Divide on Friday, clicking into skis and strapping on snowboards for the mass wedding ceremony. Some wore traditional wedding attire like tuxedoes and gowns, while others dressed in all manner of wild costumes — colorful tutus and veils, heart-shaped sunglasses, even a T-shirt resembling a tuxedo — to mark the occasion.

At the direction of an officiant, the couples said their vows and smooched and party music played.

“They love the idea of being able to celebrate their love, celebrate their significant other, while also spending the day on the slopes doing what they love in a place that they love. And so I feel like it combines so many aspects of the people’s life that they cherish into one special day,” said Sage McCririck, Loveland’s marketing and events manager.

Sander and Kelley Wyjad renewed their vows Friday on the mountain where they were married 20 years ago. Kelley Wyjad wore the same homemade wedding dress and veil with embroidered snowflakes she wore on that Valentine's Day.

They met in 2003 skiing at a different resort in Colorado.

"We met on skis. We might as well get married on skis,” Kelley Wyjad said.

The mountaintop matrimony event is special because skiing is such a big part of who they are as individuals and a couple, Sander Wyjad said.

“Just being in the mountains, being around all these people who are sharing this day with us, and they all have a passion for being outside and in the snow,” Kelley Wyjad said. “That's what makes it really special.”

Loveland Ski Area, which got its name from nearby Loveland Pass, was founded in 1937 as the Loveland Ski Tow Company and held its first Valentine's Day wedding ceremony in 1991, when one couple got married on the deck of the Ptarmigan Roost cabin, a low-slung wooden structure with sweeping views of the Rockies. The appropriately named ski area saw an opportunity to hold a fun, lively gathering during what is normally a cold, snowy part of the season, and a tradition was born.

Only a few couples participated during the first several years, but many more now gather every year for the opportunity to get hitched or to renew their vows on Valentine's Day.

“It continues to grow. We continue to kind of add in a handful of couples. Word of mouth has definitely spread,” said McCririck, who has worked at Loveland for about a decade.

At least 300 couples have been married during the ski area's Valentine's Day nuptials. Many participants are repeat customers, and about 80% are renewing their vows.

“One reason that the guests love it so much every year is because they may have gotten married here 20 years ago. They’ve come to renew their vows every year in the past 20 years, and it’s the same event that they know and love,” she said.

More or less.

The pandemic shuttered Colorado's ski resorts in March 2020, and mountain employees had to get creative the following Valentine's Day as skiers and snowboarders were required to wear masks and to socially distance. The ceremony was moved from the Ptarmigan Roost cabin to the more spacious Forest Meadow run. Each couple stood in a red heart painted in the snow at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart, and signs read, “Love is forever. Social distance is temporary,” McCririck said.

The modified ceremony was the only event Loveland organized that season, McCririck said, proving that love indeed endures.

Now, with the pandemic in the rearview, there is very much a sense that the party must go on.

On Friday, newlyweds gathered at a cabin at the base of the mountain, sipping cider and beer while munching on wedding desserts as heavy snow fell.

And, of course, a wedding wouldn't be complete without party favors.

“I do” and “Love” were printed on the lift tickets, and couples also took home a Loveland-branded photo frame and bottles of Coors Banquet beer with a custom logo.

Alex Frank and Allie Bamber of Arvada, Colo., pose for a photo before exchanging vows at the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Couples gather during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Xiaolin Chen wears a message on her ski helmet after she married Carter Paquette of Denver during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Couples gather during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Sander and Kelley Wyjad of Longmont, Colo., arrive to renew their wedding vows during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, near Georgetown, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Xiaolin Chen and Carter Poquette hug after being married during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Alex Frank and Allie Bamber of Arvada, Colo., prepare for their wedding during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Bride Julia Wicks, center, of Minneapolis, waves as her wedding party pose for a group photo at the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Kristina Hill and her husband of 16 years, Justin, kiss at the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Sami and Mike Matson of Superior, Colo., renew their wedding vows for the third time during the 35th annual Marry Me & Ski for Free Valentine's Day mountaintop matrimony ceremony Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at Loveland Ski Area, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)