Vail
A Purpose Built Ski Resort Opened In 1962 By Tenth Mountain Division Veterans, Now Among The Largest Single Ski Mountains In North America At Roughly 5,300 Skiable Acres, With Seven Back Bowls And The Blue Sky Basin Beyond Them. · Vail, Colorado
Vail did not grow out of anything - it was built from nothing on a sheep pasture in 1962 by Pete Seibert and Earl Eaton, veterans of the Tenth Mountain Division who had trained in these mountains during the war and come back for the skiing. The mock-Tyrolean village was designed as a resort from the first survey peg, which is why it looks the way it does and why some people find it artificial. What is not artificial is the mountain: roughly five thousand three hundred acres, among the largest in North America, and the Back Bowls behind the front face are seven open bowls of terrain that have no real equivalent in the United States. It sits directly on Interstate 70, a hundred miles from Denver, which makes it the most accessible big resort in Colorado and the most congested on a Sunday afternoon, when the eastbound queue back to Denver routinely adds two hours to the drive. The village sits at 8,150 feet and the top of the mountain at 11,570, which arrivals from sea level feel immediately.
Vail Village, Interstate 70 exit 176, Vail, Colorado, 81657, United States
The ski season runs roughly mid-November to mid-April depending on snow. Summer operations - gondolas, Epic Discovery, hiking and biking - run from about June to early September. Late spring and late autumn are shoulder seasons when the lifts stop and much of the village quietens. The village and its free bus service run year-round. INTERSTATE 70 is the access and its Sunday afternoon eastbound congestion towards Denver is a defining feature of a Vail weekend.