The Complete History of Vail: How It Became So Controversial
Background
Today, Vail is one of the most recognizable and controversial names in winter sports. To some, it is the crown jewel of American destination skiing and riding: the brand behind a massive Colorado mountain with legendary Back Bowls, a polished alpine village, and one of the most extensive lift networks in North America. But to others, it has become the face of everything they hate about the industry: exorbitant prices, corporate consolidation, crowding, and a sense that the sport has taken a ruthless turn towards maximizing revenue at all costs.
But how exactly did we get here? Have you ever wondered why Vail ended up in a position to grow so big, or how it fell into the hands of a leadership team that brought about so many cascading effects onto the entire industry?
In this piece, we’ll go through the entire history of Vail’s existence from its beginnings to the present, its extraordinary growth into the centerpiece of a global empire, and the dark chain of events that forced its original owners to give it up and helped take it down the controversial path it’s on today.
Era #1: 1957-1969: The Birth of a Purpose-Built Ski Resort
Vail’s origin story begins in the middle of the massive destination resort construction boom of the mid-20th century. In 1957, Pete Seibert, a World War II veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, and Earl Eaton, a local outdoorsman and rancher, hiked into the Gore Creek Valley and looked out over the terrain that would eventually become Vail Mountain. Legend has it that this hike showed them that Vail could be developed with a scale and identity few American ski areas would be able to match.
Seibert’s dream was ambitious from the start. Vail didn’t even exist as a real town at this time, and it was conceived as a destination from the beginning. The idea was to build a modern American ski resort with a European-inspired village at the base, a carefully managed guest experience, and enough terrain to compete with the best resorts in the world. The destination would take its name from nearby Vail Pass, which was named for Charles Vail, director of Colorado’s state highway department at the time of its 1940 construction.
Vail Associates was formed in 1959, and the company spent the next few years raising money, securing permits, and preparing to build on Forest Service land. Construction moved quickly. On December 15, 1962, Vail opened with a modest but symbolically important lift network: the original Vail Village gondola, the Giant Steps double, and the Avanti double. The opening setup was small by modern Vail standards, but the basic structure of the mountain was already taking shape. The resort had a primary base village, 2,500 vertical feet of terrain in just its first year, and a lift system designed to move destination guests into the mountains with a level of polish that was still unusual in American skiing.
The early years brought rapid expansion. In 1964, Vail added Hunky Dory, Mountaintop, and High Noon. While the former two lifts extended Vail’s footprint to the top of the front side, High Noon was especially important because it brought lift access into the Back Bowls, the terrain that would grow to become Vail’s signature. Within its first three years of operating, Vail had already established a scale and aesthetic that set it apart not just from the tighter, more forested ski areas of the East, but also the more mining-town-oriented resorts elsewhere in Colorado.
The village also played a significant role in the package. Vail’s Bavarian-inspired architecture was created with the intention of providing a fully packaged alpine environment, a place that looked and felt like a destination even before it had any actual history behind it. That was part of Vail’s genius, but it was also the beginning of the criticism that would follow it forever. Vail was beautiful, but it was curated. From the beginning, the resort’s appeal was tied to an image that, in some ways, felt artificially controlled.
In 1966, the Town of Vail incorporated, giving the community a formal municipal structure in the wake of the rapid growth. In 1967, Golden Peak opened as another front-side lift pod, strengthening the eastern side of the mountain and offering a third lift route out from the village. In addition to the mostly-intermediate terrain directly served by the Golden Peak double, this year marked the opening of the Prima run, which would go on to become Vail’s first double-black-diamond trail.
Then, in 1969, Vail took a major step beyond its original village base with the opening of the Lionshead gondola and the Game Creek double. Lionshead gave Vail a second base area, while the Game Creek Bowl expanded the resort’s upper-mountain footprint and became, at the time, one of its most important intermediate pods.
By the end of the 1960s, Vail was still young, but it was already showcasing an extraordinarily capable experience. It had grown into one of the most compelling ski areas in Colorado almost overnight, with a mountain layout that would already impress all but the pickiest of visitors, and the designed village experience made it hassle-free to take advantage of it all.
Vail’s Bavarian-inspired village was designed to feel like a destination from the start.
Source: Condé Nast Traveler
Era #2: 1970-1976: Rapid Buildout, and the Accident That Changed Everything
The 1970s began with Vail gaining even more national attention. Denver had been selected to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, and Vail was expected to play a major role as the alpine venue. For a resort that had opened less than a decade earlier, this was a remarkable international validation.
But Colorado voters rejected public funding for the Olympics in 1972, and the Games were moved to Innsbruck. Vail lost its Olympic moment, but the episode still raised the resort’s profile. So did the increasing presence of Gerald Ford, who owned a home in Vail. When he became president in 1974, it brought another surge of national attention to the town, further cementing it as a symbol of upscale Rocky Mountain leisure.
On the mountain, Vail continued aggressively filling in its frontside lift network, with both the Lionshead and skiers’ right areas receiving particular attention. Born Free and Minnie’s opened in 1972, Highline followed in 1973, and Northwoods and Gopher Hill opened in 1974. In 1975, Vail added Sourdough and Little Eagle.
The 1974-75 season also saw the introduction of a controversial policy that would eventually become commonplace at major destination ski resorts: paid village parking. Before then, cars were free to drive around the village core, but as traffic had grown to overwhelm the road network, the town of Vail decided to build a 1,000-space parking garage to make the village more pedestrian-oriented, relocating the bulk of the parking there. After a free first hour, paid parking during the inaugural season would cost between $1 and $2 for a typical ski day, or roughly $7-$13 adjusted for inflation today. The policy drew pushback immediately. The town ended up backing away from charging during the summer, and eventually expanded its transit system to service free outlying parking alternatives. But paid winter parking in Vail Village continues to this day.
By the mid-1970s, Vail had grown to offer something for just about everyone who could afford to vacation there, with multiple compelling lower and upper-mountain terrain pods, an unparalleled terrain experience in its High Noon Back Bowls, and one of the most state-of-the-art lift networks on the continent, with two gondolas and over a dozen lifts in total.
But in 1976, that lift network would bring about a tragedy that would alter the course of Vail’s trajectory permanently.
Gerald Ford, who owned a home in Vail, brought another surge of national attention to the town.
Source: The Denver Post
On March 26 of that year, the Lionshead gondola suffered a catastrophic accident. The lift’s track cable frayed and unraveled, ultimately causing two fully-loaded gondola cars to crash into each other and plunge more than 100 feet to the ground. The incident led to four people losing their lives and injured eight others, becoming one of the worst accidents in American ski resort history.
The impact of this terrible accident went well beyond the Lionshead side of the resort. In the aftermath of the incident, safety investigators found that both of Vail’s gondolas shared the same design flaws that had contributed to the Lionshead accident. Ironically, the Lionshead gondola was the lift that eventually got a new lease on life. It did stay closed in the immediate aftermath of the crash, but it was retrofitted with major safety changes, including a new track cable, stop button, and emergency phone, and it eventually reopened in March 1977.
On the other hand, the original Vail Village gondola was removed entirely. After closing the lift while its safety problems were investigated, Vail determined that the modifications necessary to address them were not cost effective, especially because the increasingly busy Vail Village base needed greater uphill capacity. For context, at the time, gondola lifts simply did not have the throughput that a chairlift could offer. In the village gondola’s place, the resort installed two double chairs: the Vail Village chair and the Upper Mid Vail chair. Together, they more than doubled the uphill capacity of the old gondola, increasing it from roughly 500 people per hour to about 1,200.
The accident also coincided with a broader regulatory shift in Colorado. The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Act of 1976 increased lift oversight and doubled the number of annual lift inspections. Vail’s tragedy became part of a statewide reckoning over lift safety.
But the accident brought far more than the first major changes to Vail’s original lift system. It also provided the catalyst that effectively ended Vail’s founder-led era. Facing lawsuits, liability concerns, and mounting financial pressure, the original ownership group lost control. And in late 1976, Texas oilman Harry Bass acquired a controlling stake in Vail Associates. Pete Seibert, the visionary who had helped create the resort, was pushed out of the company he had built.
From that point forward, Vail would increasingly be shaped by the priorities of outside capital, with enormous consequences for the years to come.
The original Vail Village gondola was removed after the 1976 accident.
Source: Colorado Snowsports Museum
Era #3: 1976-1985: Harry Bass Ownership + Beaver Creek
Harry Bass took control of a resort with a huge reputation, an ambitious future, and serious legal exposure. The latter of these issues was handled by private, out-of-court settlements with the Lionshead gondola victims and their families, each negotiated by Vail Associates attorneys. But when it came to the future, Bass’s tenure was not defined by major new investment into Vail Mountain itself. After the immediate post-accident lift changes, the only major Vail lift upgrade of this period was the replacement of the original High Noon double with a triple in 1979.
Instead, the major capital focus during Bass’s tenure shifted west, about 10 miles down Vail Valley. And this time, the focus was real estate.
The centerpiece of Bass’s ownership was the realization of Beaver Creek, which opened in 1980 as Vail’s sister resort. For context, Vail Associates had sold off much of the early Vail Village real estate to finance the original resort, meaning it had not fully captured the long-term real estate upside of its own success. But Bass and his team were intent to not make that same mistake. With Beaver Creek, the company would still sell real estate throughout the footprint, but it planned to retain ownership of much more of the commercial core, creating substantial recurring revenue from lodging, restaurants, and other village activities on top of the skiing itself. If successful, this would create significantly more long-term upside than the company had retained at Vail.
But creating a luxury destination capable of supporting those real estate values required enormous upfront investment. And with the ski industry far more competitive than it had been nearly two decades earlier, the buildout was more aggressive than even Vail’s inaugural years. Beaver Creek opened with an extensive lift network, including Centennial, Haymeadow, Stump Park, Upper Horseshoe, and Drink of Water in 1980. Strawberry Park followed in 1981, and Larkspur in 1983. Compared with the relatively quiet lift record at Vail during the same period, Beaver Creek was clearly the big development project.
This all meant that despite the greater emphasis on retaining long-term revenue streams, Beaver Creek’s business model still heavily depended on selling enough real estate during its expensive early years to support development. And the timing was brutal. Beaver Creek opened into the early-1980s recession, high interest rates, soft ski demand, and a difficult real estate market. Its first season also got off to an almost comically bad start: after opening ceremonies on December 15, the resort had to close after just one day because of poor snow, and the entire inaugural season produced only 122 inches.
The mountain itself would eventually establish a strong reputation for luxury, but financially, the development struggled. Luxury real estate was central to the model, and sales did not materialize at the pace the company needed. By the mid-1980s, Vail Associates was reportedly carrying years of unsold Beaver Creek condominium inventory, and the financials were not looking good.
Combined with internal family and trust dynamics, Bass was no longer able to maintain control of the company, and the company was pushed toward a sale. In 1985, George Gillett bought Vail Associates from the Bass interests, and Vail entered one of the most transformative periods in its history.
Era #4: 1985-1992: George Gillett and the High-Speed Revolution
George Gillett’s arrival in 1985 marked the beginning of modern Vail. The most visible change was the resort’s rapid and industry-leading move into high-speed lifts.
In 1985, Vail replaced several major fixed-grip lifts with high-speed detachable quads, including the Vista Bahn Express, Mountaintop Express, Game Creek Express, and Northwoods Express. The Vista Bahn Express was North America’s first detachable bubble chairlift. This was a massive capacity and comfort upgrade, and it helped define Vail’s emerging identity as a technologically advanced mega-resort.
Vail also complemented these lift upgrades with a couple of changes to the trail network. The resort added the Trans Montane traverse to connect the top of the new Vista Bahn Express with the new Northwoods Express, improving skier and rider flow across the upper front side. In Game Creek Bowl, where the lift had just been upgraded to a high-speed quad, Vail reworked the trail network almost as much as the lift itself, cutting the new Baccarat and Dealer’s Choice blue trails, formally designating Ouzo Glade as an advanced run, and adding Wild Card as a black-diamond route. In 1987, Cascade Village received its own lift access with a fixed-grip quad.
1988 marked the debut of one of the biggest and most significant investment hauls in Vail’s history. First off, the resort added the Born Free Express, which provided a secondary lift route out of the Lionshead base area. But perhaps much more consequentially, 1988 marked the year that Vail more than doubled its Back Bowl footprint, expanding into the Tea Cup, China, Siberia, and Mongolia Bowls with the addition of the Orient Express and the Mongolia platter.
This was also a landmark year for Vail’s access policy, with 1988-89 marking the first full season the resort allowed snowboarding, following a two-month trial run the prior year.
In 1988, Vail more than doubled its Back Bowl footprint with the addition of the Orient Express.
During the inaugural season for this massive expansion, the Back Bowls were still exclusively designated as advanced terrain, as they had always been with the original High Noon footprint. The following season, Vail started making some changes to open up the bowls to a wider audience of its destination skiers and riders. Oolong Traverse was renamed Sleepytime and marked blue. And in an effort to provide intermediate bowl terrain that wasn’t just a traverse in nature, Poppyfields East and the newly designated Poppyfields West became blue groomed routes through China Bowl. In the 1990-91 season, the Silk Road traverse, which looped toward the far-left boundary of the Back Bowls via the Mongolia platter, was also rebranded as a blue route.
To complement the substantially expanded footprint, Vail made a significant on-mountain dining investment as well, opening the original Two Elk Lodge on the ridge between the front side Sourdough lift and the China Bowl, which replaced a much smaller lodge in the same location. At the time, Vail had no idea just how prominently the lodge would make national headlines less than a decade later.
The Gillett years also brought prestige. In 1989, Vail and Beaver Creek hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, confirming the Vail Valley’s international status. And the resort was thriving. Skier and rider visits were reaching record levels, and Gillett Holdings had increased Vail’s annual profits from about $5 million in 1985 to more than $45 million in 1991.
But the financial empire surrounding Vail itself was far less healthy. Gillett had built a sprawling collection of businesses using enormous amounts of debt, particularly through his media acquisitions. As those businesses weakened around the turn of the decade, the debt became impossible to sustain. Despite Vail itself doing quite well as a business, Gillett Holdings defaulted on more than $450 million in debt in 1990 and entered bankruptcy the following year. During the restructuring, financier Leon Black—yes, the same one in the Epstein files—accumulated enough leverage through his investment firm Apollo to ultimately take control in 1992.
Two Elk Lodge sits on the ridge between the Sourdough lift and China Bowl.
Era #5: 1992-2000: Apollo, Corporate Expansion, and Blue Sky Basin
Apollo’s takeover in 1992 set Vail on the path from major resort operator to corporate ski empire. Under this new ownership, Vail Associates became increasingly aggressive, both on the mountain and beyond it.
On Vail Mountain, the early 1990s continued the process of refining terrain. The Sun Up triple opened in 1992, relocated from Beaver Creek, substantially improving direct access to some of the Back Bowls and adding relief for the High Noon and Orient lifts. Wapiti and West Wall, two platters that eliminated some flat traverses to the Two Elk Lodge, also arrived that year. In 1994, Chopstix debuted as another blue trail in China Bowl, continuing Vail’s effort to make portions of the Back Bowls more intermediate-friendly. In 1995, several expert chutes debuted off the Vista Bahn lift line. Some of these were later renamed or gradually closed off, although a few remain today.
But 1996 marked one of the most consequential years in Vail’s history. Starting with the on-mountain investments, Vail made several important lift upgrades that especially helped with base area flow. The old Lionshead gondola—the same one that had been home to the tragic accident 20 years earlier—was finally removed and replaced with the Eagle Bahn Gondola, giving Lionshead a modern and much-higher-capacity machine. The same year, Golden Peak’s original lift was replaced by Riva Bahn Express, a high-speed quad with an angled midstation, which ended significantly higher up and provided a direct connection to the Northwoods Express.
On the trail side, Sleepytime received an official spur to the Sun Up lift, allowing intermediates a formal route to return uphill without skiing or riding all the way back to the Orient Express. That same year, Westin Ho, the trail returning to Cascade Village, was renamed Cascade Way after the Westin property was sold and rebranded.
But 1996 also marked the beginning of a corporate strategy that would come to define Vail for years: acquisition-driven growth. That summer, Vail agreed to purchase Ralston Resorts, owner of Breckenridge, Keystone, and Arapahoe Basin. Federal antitrust regulators ultimately required the company to divest Arapahoe Basin, but Vail completed the acquisition of Breckenridge and Keystone in early 1997, giving it control of four of Colorado’s largest destination resorts. A month later, the company went public as Vail Resorts, officially creating the ski company we all know today. The IPO resulted in a new kind of growth-oriented incentive structure that continues to influence the company’s strategy to this day, and one increasingly focused on building a portfolio rather than simply running a singular mountain or set of mountains.
Under Apollo’s ownership, Vail Associates became increasingly aggressive, both on the mountain and beyond it.
At the same time, Vail was moving ahead on perhaps its most significant expansion project yet. In the late 1990s, the resort announced it would be embarking on the addition of Blue Sky Basin: a long-planned project beyond the existing Back Bowls, one that had existed in master plans for decades, which would add a more backcountry-style gladed experience to the resort.
However, these plans generated significant controversy. Blue Sky Basin would push the resort into a particularly remote area of USFS land, and opponents raised concerns that the project would disrupt a potential habitat for the Canada lynx, whose status in Colorado was already a major conservation concern. The conflict escalated through protests and legal fights, until, in 1998, it came to a head with an event that made national headlines.
On October 19 of that year, members of the Earth Liberation Front set fires on Vail Mountain. The blazes completely destroyed Two Elk Lodge, the upper-mountain ski patrol headquarters building, and a nearby day shelter. They also caused significant damage to four nearby lifts. The attacks thankfully didn’t cause any injuries, but they ended up resulting in millions of dollars in damage. Members of the group took credit for the attacks shortly after they were carried out, explicitly citing the Blue Sky Basin expansion as the reason for executing them. Even today, many consider the fires to be the worst eco-terrorism attack in U.S. history.
However, the attacks were not successful in thwarting Vail’s plans. On January 6, 2000, Vail debuted the first phase of Blue Sky Basin expansion. The resort added the Skyline Express and Earl’s Express, which would serve some of the best advanced-intermediate glade terrain on the mountain, as well as the Tea Cup Express, which not only offered direct egress from Blue Sky Basin back to other resort areas but also provided direct lappable access to the Back Bowls’ Tea Cup Bowl for the first time. Later in 2000, Pete’s Express opened, adding more intermediate-friendly glades and officially completing the Blue Sky Basin expansion. The same year, Vail introduced a new VistaMap trail map, a design that it still uses to this day.
Blue Sky Basin was the last truly major terrain expansion in Vail’s history, and it came with significant controversy that attracted international attention. But this would be far from the last controversial situation Vail and its leadership team would find themselves in, as the company entered the 2000s with an increasingly different definition of what “expansion” would mean.
Blue Sky Basin added a more backcountry-style gladed experience to the resort.
Era #6: 2000-2010: Village Renewal and the Epic Pass
The 2000s were a decade of upkeep for Vail Mountain itself. With Blue Sky Basin complete, the resort had essentially reached its modern terrain footprint. Instead of pushing farther outward, Vail increasingly focused on refining the mountain it already had, rebuilding aging parts of its villages and on-mountain infrastructure.
Blue Sky Basin itself continued to evolve after opening. In 2004, Resolution and Montane Glade were reclassified from blue to black, as Vail continued fine-tuning how the new terrain was rated based on how guests actually experienced it.
That same year also marked the effective end of the Apollo era. Apollo Ski Partners sold its remaining stake in Vail Resorts holdings during 2004, ending the company’s dominant ownership role more than a decade after it had taken control from Gillett.
Meanwhile, the village complex entered a major redevelopment era. Lionshead, which had aged considerably since its early-1970s buildout, was remade around the new flagship Arrabelle at Vail Square, completed in 2008. The project brought a luxury hotel, residences, shops, restaurants, an ice rink, and a more polished pedestrian plaza to the base. In Vail Village, projects like Solaris, the Four Seasons, and the Ritz-Carlton Residences were designed to maintain the resort’s status as a first-rate luxury destination.
Lionshead was remade around the Arrabelle at Vail Square, completed in 2008.
On the mountain, Vail continued making infrastructure changes. The earlier part of the decade saw some life-cycle-related adjustments; in 2004, the resort removed the bubble covers on the Vista Bahn lift after years of wear, and in 2006, Giant Steps, one of the original 1962 lifts, was removed with no direct replacement. That same year, the Blue Ox trail off the Highline lift was reclassified from double black to single black. But tangible capital investments picked back up in the back half of the decade. In 2007, Highline and Sourdough were upgraded to high-speed quads, while the Little Eagle learning lift was reworked as a triple. Cady’s Cafe, a natural gully below Mid-Vail that feeds into Riva Ridge, became an official black-diamond trail in 2007. That same year, the West Wall platter lift was removed, as the Sourdough lift’s realignment made it obsolete.
But perhaps the most consequential development this decade for Vail, and Vail Resorts as a broader company, came in 2008. That year, Vail Resorts introduced the first iteration of the Epic Pass. For a relatively low upfront price, skiers and riders could get unlimited access to Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Heavenly, which it had acquired in 2002. The model was revolutionary for the ski industry, shifting revenue earlier in the year, reducing dependence on day-ticket weather risk, and encouraging skiers and riders to commit to Vail Resorts before the season even started.
Before the Epic Pass, Vail was expensive, but access was still largely controlled by traditional destination travel and high day-ticket prices. After the Epic Pass, Vail became both more accessible and more crowded. A skier or rider who might never have considered paying for multiple Vail day tickets could now justify a season pass. That made Vail more democratic in one sense, but it would also start to put more pressure on the mountain, the village, and the guest experience.
In 2009, Roger’s Run off Highline was reclassified from double black to single black, continuing the gradual softening of some official expert ratings. In 2010, High Noon was upgraded to a high-speed quad, dramatically improving circulation in the Back Bowls. By the end of the decade, Vail had modernized much of its lift system, rebuilt key parts of the village, and introduced the pass product that would eventually make Vail Resorts the most powerful company in skiing and riding.
After the Epic Pass, Vail became both more accessible and more crowded.
Era #7: 2010-2019: Lift Upgrades and the Peak of Vail Resorts Power
The 2010s were the decade when Vail Resorts became a true empire. The company acquired Northstar and Kirkwood in Tahoe, Park City and Canyons in Utah, Perisher in Australia, Whistler Blackcomb in Canada, Stowe in Vermont, and later a large network of smaller regional feeder mountains through the Peak Resorts acquisition. The Epic Pass grew from a Colorado and Tahoe product into a true global skiing and riding platform.
For Vail Mountain itself, the effect was complicated. The resort remained the flagship, but it was no longer the company’s only major asset or even necessarily its only symbol of prestige. Still, more Epic Pass holders and more regional feeder resorts meant more people with a reason to visit Vail, especially from the Midwest and East Coast. And with their visits, they brought more revenue to continue upgrading aging parts of Vail’s on-mountain infrastructure.
Indeed, the 2010s brought continued capacity and comfort upgrades, with major projects happening nearly every year through a good deal of the decade. In 2011, The 10th opened at Mid-Vail, adding an upscale on-mountain dining experience tied to the 10th Mountain Division legacy. In 2012, the 10-passenger Gondola One replaced Vista Bahn Express, restoring gondola service from Vail Village to Mid-Vail for the first time since the post-1976 removal of the original Vail Village gondola. This was both practical and symbolic. The village base finally had a gondola again, but now it was high-capacity enough to provide the throughput the original machine could never achieve. Gondola One was also the first gondola lift in the United States to have heated seats, with Wi-Fi available throughout its cabins as well.
In 2013, Mountaintop Express was upgraded to a six-pack, and Gopher Hill was replaced with a relocated triple from Beaver Creek. In 2014, Tea Cup Glade and WFO became official runs after unofficially existing in the Back Bowls for decades. In 2015, Avanti Express was upgraded from a high-speed quad to a six-pack, increasing capacity on one of the resort’s most important front-side corridors. In that same period, Vail and Beaver Creek hosted the Alpine World Championships again, reinforcing the valley’s international stature.
The 2010s brought continued capacity and comfort upgrades to Vail’s lift network.
In 2016, Sun Up Express replaced the old Sun Up triple, helping to improve circulation in the Back Bowls. In 2017, Northwoods Express was upgraded from a high-speed quad to a six-pack, increasing capacity on one of the mountain’s busiest upper-front-side lifts.
The following year, Vail made another round of notable Back Bowl trail-rating changes, reclassifying Red Zinger in Tea Cup Bowl, The Slot in Sun Up Bowl, and Sun Up Catwalk from black to blue. This fit the broader pattern that had started around the Back Bowls decades earlier: as more people flocked to visit the mountain, Vail increasingly prepped and presented more Back Bowls routes as intermediate terrain. On the other hand, that same year on the front side, the lower half of Cady’s Cafe was officially changed from a single-black to a double-black trail.
In 2019, Vail added its last expansion to date, installing the Golden Peak T-Bar, reshaping its race and training terrain. The project realigned the Golden Peak Race trail and added two new trails served exclusively by the T-Bar. But the lift has been primarily race-focused and only sporadically open to the public, reserved exclusively for training except during public access windows once a week, typically on Fridays.
By the end of the 2010s, Vail Mountain had arguably never been more complete. It had its huge terrain footprint, luxury village, and a more modern lift fleet than ever. And its success was bolstered by a parent company that had achieved some of the fastest growth in ski industry history. But the same forces that made Vail so powerful were also making it more controversial than ever.
From the late 1980s through the end of the 2010s, Vail increasingly presented Back Bowls routes as intermediate terrain.
Era #8: 2020-2026: Epic Backlash and the Modern Reputation Problem
The 2020s began with a hugely consequential event: COVID-19, which shut down ski resorts across North America in March 2020. Like all other ski resorts in Colorado, Vail was forced to shut down for the season after March 14 of that year, wiping out a significant portion of the spring skiing season.
Because of the thousands of customers who had paid for access they could no longer use, Vail offered 2019-20 passholders credits toward the following season ranging from 20 percent to as much as 80 percent, depending on how much they had used their passes. Combined with a $49 renewal deposit, extended early-bird deadlines, and free Epic Coverage, Vail’s moves here were widely praised in ski communities as a surprisingly generous response.
Vail Resorts then made one of its boldest moves in 2021, cutting Epic Pass prices by 20 percent. The decision was framed as a way to make skiing and riding more accessible, as well as to drive commitment after a disrupted pandemic season. Combined with the move to a super cheap deposit, the move worked, but almost too well. Epic Pass sales surged, and the following season brought a wave of crowding complaints, staffing problems, and operational criticism across the Vail Resorts portfolio. At Vail itself, enormous lift lines drew widespread attention, most notably at the High Noon lift, which, at the time, provided the only access out of several hundred acres of Back Bowls terrain.
This was also around the time that to drive people towards its Epic Pass products, Vail Resorts started jacking up the prices of its lift tickets. And as the flagship resort, Vail saw the highest prices of all. By the early 2020s, a 1-day window ticket could go for over $200, a rate that had simply never been a factor in American lift ticket sales in years prior. Regrettably, Vail’s move would be a harbinger of things to come, with countless other resorts following in its footsteps shortly thereafter.
On-mountain changes continued, but they slowed somewhat compared to the 2010s. In 2020, Montane Glade in Blue Sky Basin was renamed CJ’s Glade after Chris Jarnot, Vail’s recently retired operations director. For the 2022-23 season, Vail added two important lift projects, one of which would directly address the controversial lift lines of the prior two seasons. The Game Creek Express was replaced with a six-pack, upgrading a lift that had served the bowl since the 1985 high-speed upgrade spree. That investment was paired with the new Club Walk green trail, designed to bring guests to the members-only Game Creek Club. But perhaps more consequentially, the Sun Down Express also opened in a completely new alignment, adding direct lift service within Sun Down Bowl and providing an alternative to the High Noon Express, finally relieving what was arguably Vail’s worst chokepoint.
In the years since, much of the investment focus at Vail Mountain has turned toward technology and customer experience. In 2023, the resort introduced hands-free tickets and passes, along with skier and rider tracking and lift line wait estimates via the MyEpic App. The next year, the resort became one of the flagship resorts for My Epic Gear rental program, which allowed guests to reserve specific premium skis and snowboards for the season and pick them up slopeside. In the same season, the resort added My Epic Assistant, an AI-powered mountain information service. And for this upcoming season, Vail will see the introduction of Epic Ascent, a new high-end private-lesson program with a dedicated concierge, transportation and dining coordination, and white-glove equipment service.
But since 2023, no significant infrastructure investments have been made at Vail Mountain. As of this writing, this marks the longest period since 2007 where there hasn’t been a new lift or notable piece of infrastructure built. And that arguably falls in line with Vail Resorts’ financial state, as the company’s fortunes began to take a turn in 2023 with weaker growth and a declining stock price, and very little success in reversing those issues since.
Epic Pass sales surged after Vail Resorts cut pass prices by 20 percent in 2021.
The resort also continued to see black marks on its reputation, as highly controversial events under the leadership of its parent company, Vail Resorts, continued to unfold at other mountains in its umbrella. Long lines and inconsistent terrain openings at Vail-owned mountains, combined with Vail’s strategy of using “Vail Resorts” branding liberally at most of these mountains, led to a wide derision nationally of the Vail name. And as the decade went on, things culminated with two catastrophic chairlift accidents—one at Heavenly and one at Attitash—and a ski patrol strike at Park City, leading to substantial terrain closures during a peak holiday period before the dispute ended with significant raises awarded to many patrollers.
But just because Vail Resorts as a company was generating significant controversy didn’t mean that Vail Mountain itself wasn’t attracting less-than-positive attention. In January 2026, the resort had a lift incident of its own, when two passengers were thrown from the Little Eagle triple chair after a mechanical malfunction. Thankfully, neither was injured, but a subsequent state investigation found that a component of the lift’s sheave assembly had been installed upside down when the lift was constructed in 2007, eventually contributing to the accident nearly two decades later. The resort also found itself in a legal battle with the town over building employee housing, although that was eventually resolved later on in the decade.
And while the mountain had fixed many of its flow issues from earlier in the 2020s, 1-day lift ticket rates continued to increase dramatically for those who hadn’t bought an Epic Pass before the ski season started. Top lift ticket rates rose past $300 a day in 2024, and those peak rates have continued to skyrocket since, reaching as high as $356 in 2025-26 and a reported $374 for the 2026-27 season—and that’s before tax.
To give the resort some credit, Vail has made a few changes to make lift tickets more affordable if you buy them more than a month in advance, with some off-peak dates dropping back to $199 last winter, as well as new Epic Friend tickets that offer as much as 50% off the window ticket rate if you visit with an Epic Pass holder. The resort has also recently introduced the “Turn In Your Ticket” program, where one can apply up to $175 of a lift ticket cost toward an Epic Pass purchase the following year. But even those “discounted” rates leave an enormous pricing gap between customers who commit to the Epic ecosystem before the early December deadline and those who decide to visit Vail at a later time. In other words, for skiers and riders who haven’t planned out their vacation well before the season starts, the economics of simply accessing the mountain can still be difficult to make work.
So where does that leave Vail and its investment timeline today? While no major projects currently have concrete construction timelines, it seems likely the resort is going to move forward with developing the West Lionshead area into Vail’s fourth base village. The project is envisioned to include a new lift, several hotel and restaurant facilities, and parking, among other things, although no final development plan has been approved yet.
There are also several more traditional mountain projects that have moved surprisingly far along. In 2025, the Forest Service approved Vail’s proposal to replace the aging Orient Express in China Bowl with a six-pack, replace Little Eagle with a high-speed quad, remove the Wapiti platter, and regrade terrain near Two Elk to make it easier to move through that part of the mountain without the surface lift. The same approval would expand and reconfigure the beginner area at Eagle’s Nest, replace some bunny hill conveyor lifts, and convert the Outpost building into a small dining facility. The Forest Service said those projects could technically begin as early as 2026, although Vail Resorts has not yet publicly committed the capital to constructing them.
Vail’s top window rate reached a reported $374 for the 2026-27 season.
Conclusion: Why Vail Became So Hated
It is easy to blame Vail’s modern reputation entirely on Vail Resorts, the corporation. And to be clear, the company’s broader corporate decision-making has driven a large share of the criticism. The Epic Pass helped make winter sports more affordable for frequent skiers and riders, but it also concentrated enormous numbers of customers into the same resort network. The company’s acquisition strategy turned Vail into the centerpiece of a global portfolio, while increasingly making the mountain feel less like a singular place and more like the flagship store of a corporate chain.
But focusing only on the corporation misses something fundamental about how that company was able to become so powerful in the first place. Vail Resorts could not have grown into the force it is today without Vail itself being an extraordinarily successful resort first.
Vail had a combination that few ski areas could match. Its enormous natural footprint allowed it to grow into one of the largest ski resorts in the country. Its lift network repeatedly pushed the technological limits of the industry. Its purpose-built village gave it a level of destination appeal and real-estate potential that a typical regional ski area could never replicate. And over decades, Vail took remarkable advantage of those strengths, turning the mountain into both an internationally recognized brand and an enormously valuable business.
That success provided the money, credibility, and cachet that made everything that followed possible. Beaver Creek could be developed because Vail had already succeeded. Breckenridge and Keystone could be acquired because Vail Associates had grown into something much larger than a single ski area. The Epic Pass could eventually become a national and global product because the Vail name already carried enough weight to anchor it. A mid-sized regional mountain or even a decently competitive destination almost certainly could not have provided the same platform.
And that is what makes Vail so fascinating. It is genuinely one of the most important ski resorts ever built in the United States. Its terrain is enormous. Its lift system helped define modern resort skiing. Its village changed what an American destination ski town could look like. And many of the enormous consequences associated with Vail Resorts today—both positive and negative—ultimately trace back to just how successfully this one mountain capitalized on its natural advantages.
