Vail

Vail Mountain is the resort that built the template for destination skiing in North America. Spread across 5,317 acres in central Colorado's Gore Valley, with 31 lifts, a peak elevation of 11,570 feet, and 354 inches of average annual snowfall, Vail's scale is hard to overstate. But what sets it apart isn't just size — it's the Back Bowls. Seven massive open bowls stretching across the mountain's south-facing side offer more than 3,000 acres of wide-open skiing that changed how people thought about what a ski resort could include.

Pete Seibert and Earl Eaton founded Vail in 1962 after Seibert — a World War II veteran who served with the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, just down the road — spent years scouting the perfect mountain. The 10th Mountain Division connection is more than footnote history; the unit trained soldiers for mountain warfare during WWII, and many of its veterans went on to build Colorado's ski industry. Vail was Seibert's vision of what that wartime mountain experience could become for civilians, and the resort opened with a single gondola and a handful of runs on what is now the front side.

Today, Vail is the flagship resort of Vail Resorts and the home base of the Epic Pass. The front side delivers some of the best groomed intermediate skiing in Colorado, with long, well-maintained runs off the Northwoods Express and Game Creek lifts. The Back Bowls — Sun Down, Sun Up, China, Tea Cup, and the others — offer a fundamentally different experience: open, ungroomed, and exposed. Blue Sky Basin, added in 2000, pushed the skiable terrain even farther into backcountry-style glades and bowls. Vail draws a crowd because it has earned the right to, and Mtns Co carries official Vail gear because no conversation about skiing starts anywhere else.