Ski holidays in Vail - USA

Ski holidays in Vail - Vail has great skiing for all standards and it's all on one mountain so you don't need to take shuttle buses to get about - unless you want to use your lift ticket at another of the Vail Resorts owned ski centres in the area. Vail mountain is the single largest ski area in the US and it has the most high speed quads on a single mountain - useful queue gobblers with the resort being so popular. Electronic signs located at key points on the mountain advise of areas where there is queue build up at peak times so you can avoid them. The lift system is very well designed so it's easy to move about quickly and to organise rendez-vous with party members if you split in to smaller groups to tackle different terrain.

The 47% of terrain that is easy or intermediate standard is mostly on wide open trails that are unintimidating and are north facing with, of course, state-of-the-art snow-making to cover any failure on the part of mother nature. The treeline is high - at 11,000 feet (3,353 metres), much higher than the Alps, so the slopes are often cut through pleasant woodland and forest.

The key access route on to the mountain outside Vail town itself is the new Lionshead Gondola, installed in 1996 with a 14 million dollar investment. Typical of the resort, the cabins, originally designed to hold 15, have had capacity decreased to 12 people each - giving a "higher quality uplift experience." Each cabin is heated, has music and lighting. Apart from the regular skiing terrain the lift accesses a night-time activity centre.

During the daytime beginners will find state-of-the-art ski tuition programs, naturally, and a dedicated beginner skiing area, as well as long easy runs from the top of the mountain as soon as you have a little confidence. Intermediates have the biggest single mountain ski area in North America to enjoy - and one of the world's largest. Intermediate skiers can safely tackle some of the easier runs in the Back Bowls (see below) also. With just over half and the largest chunk overall of Vail's terrain graded advanced - expert, Vail is an essential stop on the tour of skiers who spend their lives checking off the world's top destinations.

Vail's status as the ski racing capital of North America has been underlined by it being chosen as the venue for the World Alpine Skiing Championships twice in 11 years - 1989 and '99. The resort has also hosted world cup finals in recent years and is a training base for the US Ski Team. However the main magnet for most good skiers are the "legendary Back Bowls" (Vail has trade-marked the words 'Back Bowls'). Six miles (nearly 10km) wide these snowy expanses a world-away from Vail resort have dozens of black trails and off-piste routes down in to them, with lifts serving to return skiers and 'boarders to the top of the bowl and back down the front of the mountain to the resort. The expansion in to a further large area of terrain, originally known as the Category 3 expansion but renamed 'Blue Sky Basin' was partially opened in January 2000, the remainder in the 2000 - 2001 season. Four quads serve this newest area, envisaged though it was 40 years before in Vail's original development plan.

Few visitors to Vail of more than a few days will miss the opportunity of skiing the resort's other ski centres all on the same lift ticket. Breckenridge and Keystone remain the new aquisitions whilst Beaver Creek and Arrowhead, both 'purpose built' by Vail itself are now only the second 'European-style' lift-linked pair of ski villages in North America (Smugglers and Stowe in Vermont being the other two). This achievement follows the linking of the two ski areas by the Bachelor Gulch Express in 1996. It may be considered 'cheating' by some to build the ski area and the ski resort yourself in order to have something to link the other resort to, but that's really being rather petty - the idea is a nice one!

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