Ski resort empires tend to come and go over the years, particularly in North America. Companies like the American Skiing Company, Booth Creek and Intrawest have all started from small beginnings to operate ten or more of the continent’s biggest areas, before losing popularity and shrinking back down, in some cases disappearing altogether, sometimes in little more than a decade.
Vail has been one of the biggest names in American and, indeed, world skiing for five decades now, and in that time its parent company, Vail Resorts, has grown to become “the leading mountain resort operator in the United States”.
But, Vail Resorts’ expansion has been more measured and has none of the ”boom and bust” feel of those other corporate giants. For many years Vail just operated Vail in Colorado, and then it built luxurious Beaver Creek and acquired neighbours Breckenridge and Keystone. Most recently it has moved into California and added three more resorts to its holding – Heavenly Mountain Resort, Northstar, and, last winter, Kirkwood, all of which are around Lake Tahoe.
Vail presents a powerful united front across its seven resorts, in recent years particularly unified by the company’s Epic Mix programme, which it has invested in heavily and promoted relentlessly to drive the biggest social media fan base in the ski industry. Epic Mix connects the hi-tech electronic lift passes of skiers and boarders visiting any of Vail’s resorts with social media channels, in a myriad of cutting-edge initiatives, which now makes the once innovative idea of tracking your progress around the mountain seem positively passé.
But from the websites it can be difficult to get a grasp of the true scale and variety of Vail’s ski resorts, and how very different each is from the others. So it was that I went on the road in Colorado last spring to visit the company’s four original resorts and find out for myself.
First stop was Breckenridge, the most popular US resort for British skiers for many years and it’s easy to see why. The resort’s heart is an old mining town, oozing period character (there are some 400 registered historic buildings), and chock-full of the kind of quirky bars, shops and restaurants most of us prefer – housed within those original wooden mining town facades. Between the centre and the slopes there are the more usual modern hotel and condo complexes, so the skier is positioned between the après-ski and the skiing; the latter of which is world-class, spread over several mountains, which are among the highest (and, thus, snow-sure) in the world. Indeed, the world’s highest chairlift is here.
One day on it was time to depart. The second stop was Keystone, in some ways the antithesis of Breckenridge being only four decades old and entirely modern. Marketed as a family resort, although also boasting the largest night-skiing operation in western North America, Keystone is perhaps the hardest of the four to get a marketing angle on – it’s not as big as Vail, not as posh as Beaver Creek (my next stop), and lacks the history of Breckenridge. I arrived preparing to be underwhelmed. But I liked Keystone. It was a very short walk from the vast parking lot to the fast gondola up the slopes, through a village designed by Intrawest, the company behind Whistler. The resort was fairly bland, but very functional, as so many purpose-built ski areas are on either side of the Atlantic, but the skiing was the revelation. Unlike most ski centres, Keystone’s skiing doesn’t spread out around the resort village, but keeps going back, further and further away from the resort until you feel rather pleasantly remote. You can even jump into the back of a snowcat for a few dollars, in which you’ll be transported 10 minutes across the snow to untracked powder on the ski area boundary, from where there’s a glorious descent down through the trees back to the furthest lift base.
I would have liked more time to explore the town of Breckenridge, and more time on the slopes of Keystone, but there were 2 days and two resorts left to see; so next up was Beaver Creek, the gated community – the very concept of which is for some the antithesis of the free spirit of snow sports. But for many others, the fact that Conde Nast Traveler has ranked Beaver Creek one of the top three ski resorts in North America, and that the resort has won the Best Overall Customer Service Award from the US National Ski Association for 5 years in a row are the important issues.
Yes, everything about Beaver Creek is about quality, from the gourmet restaurants, designer boutiques, arts centre and luxury hotels at its base, to the beautifully-manicured ski slopes, which include arguably North America’s best known downhill run, the Birds of Prey piste, which will again host racing when Vail and Beaver Creek repeat their staging of the World Alpine Skiing Championships in 2015.
And so, finally, to Vail itself, where it all began. The resort’s meteoric success is such that it now stretches for miles, its resort base comprising a growing list of mid- to high-end properties sandwiched between the I-70 interstate motorway and the ski slopes – the largest single mountain ski area in the US.
Vail’s popularity speaks for itself, but for me the ski area was the eye-opener. The scale was not something those of us who have enjoyed the high quality ski experience common across North American resorts expect. Here there is not only that quality, but also the expanse felt at the larger resorts of the Alps – you just ski on and on. Blue Ski Basin is a particularly enjoyable and unusual option. Quite simply, from the top you can ski in pretty much any direction and you’ll most likely find yourself alone heading down. Then after a long descent, you are funnelled back towards the base of the lifts back out, and your fellow skiers and boarders begin emerging around you like magic.
Unfortunately I had just 1 day in Vail, as I did in each of the other three, but it was the resort out of the four where I would have liked to spend a week or longer investigating it all. It was also the place where it all became clear just why Vail Resorts has become the success it is.
