I can tell you that in my travels I have found that to many people around the world, John Denver IS Colorado. Certainly if you held a poll in my country that asked the recipients to name as many famous Colorado-ians as they can,most would only be able to name John Denver. (Dan Fogelberg would probably garner a handful of votes.) The first time I ever even saw what Colorado looked like was in a Denver Christmas special in 1975, in which the singer performed in a specially built glass dome in wintry Snowmass,and was filmed skiiing, skating and toboganning in the beautiful snowy scenery of your gorgeous state. As a 10 year old who was living in the subtropics and had never seen snow, I was fascinated, and vowed to go there someday. Which 5 years ago I did & had a wonderful time attempting to learn to ski ('attempting' being the operative word-LOL!). Also,Denver wrote a song called 'Whispering Jesse',which is also the name of an Aspen ski run.So yes-Denver and skiing are inextricably linked.
Well, I guess it's better than Dan Fogelberg.