WHY VAIL WORKS : Despite High Prices and a Colorado Boycott, Famed Ski Resort Remains America’s Favorite

So much depends on where you sit. When some travelers look this direction these days, they’re likely to see high prices and a tourism industry under the cloud of a national boycott. If they look closely, they may notice that the resort’s owner filed bankruptcy papers last June.

Yet settle onto a bench at Bridge Street and Gore Creek Drive in the middle of Vail Village and you see America’s best-loved ski resort dashing into its 30th season with hotels full, restaurants abuzz and the usual beautiful suspects on parade. Skis lean by the score outside Pepi’s and the Red Lion, some $8.5 million in ski area improvements are newly done, and guests seem as giddy, gaudy and numerous as ever.

Duck into The Daily Grind coffee shop on a biting cold morning and you find a tall man in cowboy hat and hide jacket swaggering in as if he just completed a cattle drive. Then he leans forward and says, “Lemme have a cappuccino and, uh, one of those chocolate croissants.”

Or take a window table at the Sweet Basil restaurant. You may spy, as I did, a rich young mother in an ankle-length fur, flinging herself to the ground in sub-zero weather and flapping her arms enough to raise a small cloud of fresh powder. She was showing her child how to create an angel in the snow. The four of them (mother, child, angel and animal pelt), made a picture of well-heeled holiday abandon, bordering on outright decadence.

Then there are the skiers and snowboarders, who scream down from the peaks in rainbow colors, dusting novices with powder, stockpiling tales to be told about the jump undertaken on Riva Ridge, the speeds achieved on Kangaroo Cornice, the calamity down on Giant Steps.

“It’s a when-you-wish-upon-a-star kind of place,” effused Ski magazine writer Jeannie Patton in a piece last month on Vail’s continued popularity.

That’s the consensus. Ski magazine’s readers in October named Vail their favorite ski resort in North America. The following month--while Colorado’s voters were passing a ballot measure that bars local governments from enacting laws to specifically protect homosexual rights--another poll found that Vail was the favorite ski destination of travel agents, as well. Vail drew best-votes from 43% of the 200 members queried by the American Society of Travel Agents, followed by Aspen with 29%, Breckenridge with 24% and Park City, 15%. Last season, Vail sold more than 1.5 million lift tickets.

And this season, even with a “boycott Colorado” campaign rising in response to the state’s new law and Denver estimating millions in lost convention revenues, Vail business is on the upswing. Vail Associates, the company that runs Vail and the Beaver Creek resort 12 miles away, reports that December sales were 8%-10% ahead of last year’s. Calls to the resorts’ lodgings reservation line are running 20% ahead of last year.

And the bankruptcy declaration? Resort officials say it grew from bad cable television investments, and has brought no disruption to ski operations. (As part of a Chapter 11 corporate reorganization, the Apollo Investment Fund has purchased a majority share in Vail Associates’ parent company, Gillett Holdings Inc., and forecasts no substantial changes at the resort.) This may be Colorado’s winter of discontent, but for Vail and its devotees, it seems to be business, and pleasure, as usual.

I arrived at Vail on a stormy Wednesday in mid-December, shuttled by van from Denver down Interstate 70 past many thousands of expertly flocked pines. At one bend in the road, elk and buffalo stood sentry. On either side of the highway rose the Gore and Sawatch mountain ranges, and on them, deep drifts.

After 2 1/2 hours, we came upon the narrow, neo-Tyrolean freeway-side strip of civilization that is Vail. By Saturday, I had already heard a hat full of theories on the secret of the place’s success.

First, there’s the mountain, an 11,450-foot-high chunk of earth and rock sporting a stubble of pine, birch and aspen. The vertical rise is 3,250 feet. With nearly 4,000 acres of skiable area, Vail is the largest resort in North America. (Beaver Creek includes another 1,050 skiable acres.) The beginner’s and intermediate slopes, which make up 68% of the runs on the mountain’s front side, are said to be enough to keep a skier occupied for more than a week without a duplicated route. The expert, the intrepid and the foolhardy, meanwhile, have Vail’s 2,600 acres of back bowls to frolic in--a feature that Sports Illustrated says “has moved the place into a class by itself.”

I can speak about those bowls with absolutely no authority. This was my first time in skis in 16 years. On my first morning, I ponied up $75 for an all-day lesson (a one-day adult lift ticket runs $42) and set to studying the stem-turns of instructor Mike Dooher with a handful of other awkward intermediates.

Dooher, a retired pilot with 14 years of teaching experience, immediately displayed a deep practical knowledge of the landscape around us.

“Up on the mountain, there are trees and lawyers,” he counseled. “You hit either one of them, you’re in trouble.”

I struck neither, though I did share a lift ride with Connie Vossler, a Vail condo owner and fellow ski student who on working days is an attorney in Springboro, Ohio. I gave her plenty of room. And within an hour, I became the same skier I had been 16 years before--relatively quick, deficient in form and fear, but somehow able to reach bottom without falling. The speed was still intoxicating, especially when combined with the sound of the wind scraping through a million snow-laden branches, and the temperatures in the teens were no problem.

The following day, things got even more interesting. A foot of fresh powder lay on most of the mountain--a gift from the heavens for experienced skiers. I enjoyed the views and the trackless slopes, and got used to the idea of sensing but not seeing the precise position of my skis. But I slowed down considerably and tired out fast.

Vail’s slopes are said to be ideal for people like me. Authorities say the principal mountain at Aspen, known as Ajax, delivers its greatest satisfactions to experts (hesitant intermediates are more likely to enjoy neighboring Snowmass), but Vail offers most things to most people, and all on one mountain.

Mike Shim-Konis, media relations manager for Vail Associates and an advanced skier, unwittingly illustrated that versatility while I was in town. First Shim-Konis spent half a day with me on easy intermediate runs. Then the following day, skiing expert slopes without me, Shim-Konis found a path challenging enough to fling him to the ground, yank some ligaments in his knees, draw blood from his face, and send him to the emergency room. Hey, what fun is a sport without risks?

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Anyway, Vail Mountain is big and broad and, for those more interested in snacking than schussing, it also offers the recently expanded Two Elk Restaurant at one peak.

For many of the Vail faithful, the next selling point is service. Resort founder Peter Seibert, who attended hotel school in Europe, recalls that from the opening of operations in December, 1962, he aimed for an Old World ambience--not just Tyrolean architecture, but lift operators and hotel clerks who would remember the names of regular customers.

In the earliest days, when Vail had three lifts and no reputation, this wasn’t so tall an order. Now, with 24 lifts, 30,000 visitors or more in town during peak weeks and the resort dependent upon a seasonal work force of college kids and ski bums, the ideal of personalized and professional service is a more abstract goal. But Vail seems to succeed more often than it fails.

The resort’s oldest hotel, The Lodge at Vail, is not flawless (in a $330-a-night room, I couldn’t get the television’s remote control to work), but it is a haven with a warm hearth and a brave, bright floral decor, and it is run by the much-decorated Orient Express Hotels chain, whose employees are generally quick, courteous, and make a mission of matching guest names and faces.

Vail’s attention to service reaches far beyond its lodgings. A shuttle bus operator, upon hearing that a traveler was headed for the new restaurant in the Beaver Creek’s Chateau condominium building, made a detour to deliver him directly to the doorstep. At high-toned Beano’s Cabin, when the performing guitarist was besieged by requests from diners’ children, he cheerfully abandoned his adult contemporary repertoire in favor of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” When the Sonnenalp Resort opened its Bavaria Haus in mid-December after a $15 million renovation and expansion, owner-manager Johannes Fassler stationed himself in the lobby, not only greeting guests, but occasionally helping bellmen with bags.

“Mass follows class,” Seibert told me over lunch one afternoon. “I’ve never articulated this, but I think it’s the European association that’s kept things up.” Seibert, 68, now serves as a consultant to Vail Associates and remains a familiar and revered figure in Vail Village.

These various attractions have led over the years to all manner of good public relations; in 1989, Sports Illustrated called Vail “the busiest, the richest, the friendliest, the most popular and the most diverse” of America’s ski resorts. But Vail probably owes much of its profile to a pair of circumstances.

First, when Gerald Ford became President in 1974, the nation began seeing his family’s frequent vacations to Vail on television. (Ford, who once resided at the Lodge at Vail, now lives in Beaver Creek. He was on hand during my stay to light the community Christmas tree.)

Then in 1989, having already gained a substantial stateside reputation, Vail hosted the World Alpine Championships, gaining international exposure for its slopes and its climate. One day, heavy overnight snowfall forced postponement of a downhill race, and the competition’s televisors illustrated the situation by having a Vail ski patrol member come clambering out of the starting shack in thigh-high powder--a better advertisement for recreational skiers worldwide than money could buy.

Thanks in part to that kind of exposure, Vail these days sees thousands of international visitors, including, not surprisingly, the English leisure class and, more surprisingly, a large number of Mexican vacationers.

Mexico has no skiing to speak of. But since a handful of trend-setters discovered the place in the mid-1960s, privileged families from Mexico City have beat a path to Vail each winter, often outnumbering the Europeans who have slopes to practice on at home, and Vail has done all it can to encourage them. Last year, when the first direct international flights began landing at the Eagle County Airport near Vail, the carrier was Mexico-based Taesa, and the city of origin was Mexico City.

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All this success has made a rare beast of the town Seibert and company started building from nothing 30 years ago.

The police drive Saabs. The year-round population is only about 4,000, with another 15,000 or so residents in surrounding communities, but more than 100 restaurants and scores of high-end shops do business here. Window-shopping along the pedestrian-only streets of the village, you find furriers, Rolex watches, Tiffany lamp reproductions and an amazing number of interior design stores, the better to lavishly furnish your condo.

For $100, a four-hour, six-mile dog-sled ride can be had from Mountain Musher Dog Sled Rides near Beaver Creek. Three hot-air balloon outfits offer daily flights, charging roughly $175 per person for an hour in the air. Vail Bobsled, just below the Mid Vail building on the main mountain, offers minute-long, half-mile bobsled rides (yes, that works out to 30 m.p.h.) for $12 each. Bungee jumps from year-old Adrenaline Adventures begin at $79 for a 120-foot drop from a hot-air balloon. For $40 more, you can double the distance.

So great is the need for winter-season workers, and so limited the housing, and so high the cost of living, that the effective minimum wage is around $7. Many year-round residents work two or three jobs to get by, including one taxi driver who I found was also the Holiday Inn’s sales director.

So great is demand for lodging that hotels get away with requiring 100% non-refundable deposits as much as 45 days in advance. Beano’s Cabin restaurant in Beaver Creek charges diners for a full meal if they fail to cancel reservations a full 48 hours in advance. (These penalties could be one reason that I couldn’t find anyone on the mountain who had seriously considered canceling his or her trip in protest of the new state law forbidding specific protections for homosexuals.)

And so brief is the resort’s history that Beano’s, which opened just six years ago, can bill itself as a “dining tradition” without fear of reproach. Whether it’s traditional or not, the Beano’s experience is unique: No proper roads lead to the hilltop cabin, and diners get there from a Beaver Creek clubhouse via a 20-minute “sleigh ride” provided by the restaurant. Once you’re in the dining room--which is somehow simultaneously woodsy and elegant--the six-course dinners are excellent, and the fixed price of $69 a head doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. But the sleigh that delivers you is more accurately described as a 40-passenger snow-barge, dragged uphill by a roaring Snocat (which is not an animal) sometimes through sub-zero winds. The Beano’s experience may be optimum in summer, when the hills are green and transportation is sometimes provided by horse-drawn wagons.

One last thing about Vail history. Seibert recalls that on Jan. 10, 1963, 30 years ago to this day, the resort sold a total $60 worth of lift tickets. Since the going rate then was $5 for an all-day pass, that means 12 skiers had the mountain to themselves. A visitor can expect many things of Vail, but not to see that day again.

GUIDEBOOK / Unveiling Vail

Getting there: Continental and United airlines fly nonstop from Los Angeles to Denver’s Stapleton Airport, which is 80 miles from Vail. Several other airlines offer connections leading to Denver. Nonstop round-trip fares begin at about $280. Several companies run shuttle vans from the Denver airport to Vail, charging $35-$40 for the two-hour drive.

Delta flies one direct flight daily from Los Angeles to the Eagle County Airport (29 miles from Vail Village), stopping along the way in Salt Lake City. United and American airlines offer connecting flights to Eagle County, with restricted round-trip fares beginning around $400. (Shuttles run between Eagle County Airport and Vail.) United also offers a daily flight between Eagle County Airport and Denver, with round-trip fares beginning at about $200.

Where to Stay: There are an estimated 25,000 rentable beds in the Vail area, but visitors still need to reserve space well in advance, and may well have to pony up a big deposit to hold a spot.

I stayed at The Lodge at Vail and looked at three other hotels. The Lodge at Vail (174 E. Gore Creek Drive; 303-476-5011), oldest of the area’s hotels, offers 136 rooms, a pair of well-regarded restaurants and a prime slope-front location. Prices run $295-$1,275 through March, rising slightly during Presidents Week in mid-February. The European-flavored Sonnenalp Resort (20 Vail Road; 800- 654-8312 or 303-476-5656) offers 61 suites in its newly renovated and expanded Bavaria House, with rates of $290-$900 nightly through April 3. Rooms at the hotel’s neighboring Austria Haus and Swiss Chalet start at $225 for the same dates.

At the more affordable end of the scale, The Roost Lodge (1783 N. Frontage Road, West Vail; 303-476-5451) offers 72 rooms and a pool in a greenhouse, at rates of $80-$169 this month, and $108-$201 Jan. 30-April 3. The Days Inn (2211 N. Frontage Road, West Vail; 303-476-3890) includes 116 rooms, which now through Feb. 11 run $111-$236.

Where to eat: Beano’s Cabin (P.O. Box 915, Avon, Colo. 81620; 303-949-5750), isolated on a Beaver Creek hilltop, offers six-course dinners for $69 a head, $46 for children 12 and under. Sweet Basil (193 E. Gore Creek Drive; 303-476-0125), centrally located in Vail Village and very busy, offers entrees from $19 to $26. Chadwick’s at The Chateau (17 Chateau Lane; 303-845-8808), opened in December by veteran Vail chef Chad Scothorn, offers simple food in a formal setting, with entrees running $15-$28. Locals and rowdy visitors, seeking large portions and country music, fill Garton’s Saloon (143 E. Meadow Drive; 303-479-0607) nightly. Entrees there run $9-$17, lunch sandwiches, $5-$7. For caffeine in various guises, there is The Daily Grind (288 Bridge St.; 303-476-5856), where the coffee of the day costs $1.50. For beer, there is the Hubcap Brewery (143 E. Meadow Drive; 303-476-5757), which brews and serves ale in 22-ounce bottles, along with sandwiches and burgers.

Getting around: Free shuttle buses with ski racks run between Vail, East Vail and West Vail; Vail Village is strictly pedestrian. Most skiers don’t bother to rent cars. For those who want to range a little farther, a shuttle bus to Beaver Creek runs $2. (It pays to wait for the bus; a taxi ride over the same 10-mile distance runs about $22.) Rental skis and boots usually run $12-$15 a day. An adult all-day lift ticket runs $42. All-day group lessons run $70-$92, depending on skill levels. Snowboard lessons, increasingly popular, run the same.

For more information: Vail vacation package info: (800) 525-2257. Snow reports: (303) 476-4888. Vail Valley Tourism and Convention Bureau: (303) 476-1000.