In mid-December 1962, Pete Seibert walked on a newly cut road in the middle of embryonic Vail, Colorado, two hours west of Denver, crushed gravel popping and twisting under his feet.

Seibert, the founder of Vail Ski Corporation., was a five-foot-eight whirling dervish of energy.  It was the opening day of his new ski resort, one slated to be the largest in the country.  There were several other ski resorts in Colorado in 1962 – Aspen the most famous – and many thought there wasn’t room for one more, especially a mega resort.  Seibert disagreed; he and his fellow investors envisioned the greatest skiing destination America had ever seen, with on-mountain European ambiance and five-star hotels at the base. 

Seibert thrived on the frenetic scene in front of him.  Shiny gondola cars lined up like taxis in the base station waiting to take people 2,000 feet up to mid-mountain.  Up the hill, Swiss engineers in tasseled caps checked the stability of the slightly tilting gondola towers, a new design that left them perpendicular to the slope of the mountain.  Nearby, men checked on the sewer pipes buried seven feet below the surface – a necessity to fight off frost at the 8200-ft. altitude.  Others clad in tool vests put the finishing touches on Austrian-style stucco and timber-frame lodges that would soon lead led to a local’s nickname for Vail:  “Instant Austria.”  Seibert monitored everything, including some of the wilder on-mountain construction workers who had a habit of taking shortcuts in their trucks down the newly cut ski trails. 

Seibert kept up appearances with his signature left-leaning smile – some confused it with a sneer – and ever-present cordiality, but on the inside he was anything but calm. There was barely any snow, and the U.S. Ski Team was due to arrive in five days as part of a publicity stunt.

Seibert, frustrated, gritted his teeth and looked to the sky.  Sometimes the clouds would begin to dance just before a major snowstorm.  After arriving from the Utah plain, they would push themselves up onto the tops of the Rockies and puff up their bold, sheet-like chests as if to announce their stormy intentions.  Then they would begin to duck and dive across the tops of the rugged granite and metamorphic peaks in search of mountains upon which to dump their treasure.

The high, cotton clouds that littered the sky offered no answers.  A warm, 40-degree breeze brushed Seibert’s face.  Colorado was stuck in a warm and dry pattern; the previous six months had been the driest on record in nearby Denver, and October and November saw near-record-low precipitation at Vail.

Seibert glanced back at the gondola and looked for skiers, but instead saw mostly “down valley” folk – the rural farmers and ranchers who lived down the hill to the west – wearing their cowboy hats and enjoying the new view.

A few brave skiers were present.  Those with enough chutzpah to glide around the exposed rocks at the top of the mountain were allowed to do so for free.  Some of them could be found in new, form-fitting Bogner stretch pants that sold for a then-eye-popping $40.  The pants, named for their German-born designer Maria Bogner, looked great, especially on athletic young women.  The Bogner catalog featured stunning, leggy models leaning over in precarious positions that presumably suggested the flexibility of the skiwear.

The tights-bound skiers, unfortunately, could ski only halfway down the mountain before having to ride a chairlift back up to the top and then the gondola back down to the base of the ski hill in order to get to their cars.

Seibert turned and walked back to the small, one-room mountain headquarters and found gravely-voiced Bob Parker, the former editor of Skiing Magazine whom he’d just hired as his new marketing director.

“Parker,” he said, “Are we going to get any snow?”

Parker shrugged.