The weather was one concern.  Investors – powerful ones – were another.  Vail represented something entirely new in America:  the idea that an outdoor adventure center could be an enticing opportunity for venture capitalists.

Before, American ski areas were generally built by small groups led by individuals with personal fortunes; the work of Yale Skull & Bones alum and Union Pacific chairman Averell Harriman of Sun Valley being the most famous example.  Vail, however, relied on a labyrinth of personal investments, shady dealings and Securities and Exchange Commission limited partnerships arranged by powerful oilmen and their Ivy League oil-and-gas lawyer friends. 

Seibert was married to money – his wife, Betty, was an heir to the East Coast Pardee lumber fortune – but he had little of his own.  He had to rely on his rich friends from his days as a ski instructor in Aspen for help.  The men, who would later help influence Colorado to change its business laws in order to further their interests, weren’t just interested in Vail as a place to play.  They intended to make money, and lots of it.

Chief among them was George Caulkins, an effervescent, eternally tanned young oilman from Oklahoma.  Caulkins, along with his wife and their fur coats, would fly to Aspen several times a year for ski lessons, and they had become friends with the Seiberts.  When Seibert first approached Caulkins about an investment in his fledgling ski resort, the notion of leaving the Aspen social scene appalled him.  Then, at a 1958 New Year’s Eve party, Caulkins complained to the president of Aspen Ski Corp. about locals crashing the festivities.  “If you don’t approve of the action, you are welcome to decamp to Winter Park,” he replied, referring to another trendy Colorado ski town.  That comment was enough to make Caulkins reconsider Seibert’s proposal. 

Caulkins became one of the original partners and put up $7,500 of his own money, but, more important, came up with the “Vail formula,” a plan to get 20 select investors to each put up $5,000.  Those people would then lead others in their communities to invest in the new venture.  Caulkins’ one stipulation:  The investors had to be “high class” – he was of Yale and Harvard Business School stock – and he wanted to deal with people just like himself.

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Seibert tried to figure out what to do.  A small sign on the highway read:  THIS IS VAIL, OPEN FOR SKIING DECEMBER 1962, but with barely any snow on the mountain, there was no reason for people to stop.  The roads were so dry that women walked in pointed shoes and skirts.  Some of them wore sunglasses and carried stylish black handbags.  Their children, clad in the thin pants and spring jackets, held their parents’ hands and bounced up and down.  The scent of pine filled the air as trees expanded in the warmth of the sunshine.

Seibert was by nature a social creature, and he could often be found in a silk ascot at the bar.  He was tempted to walk around and congratulate everyone for opening the resort by the target date, but there wasn’t time for that.  The mood that day was given more to flannel work shirt than silk adornment, and there was still plenty of work to be done.

During the first week, Vail attracted so few paying customers that the instructors skied alone on the scant snow on top of the mountain.  Despite the marketing blitz and hard work to prepare the mountain for skiers, so few tickets were sold that the days’ receipts were carried in brown paper bags.  Had they been stolen, it wouldn’t have mattered. 

When the U.S. Ski Team finally arrived five days after the opening, there still wasn’t any snow.  The skiers and mountain workers formed a long line and hauled snow out of the woods in bushel baskets and then packed it onto the race course.  Reporters watched the scene and got great material for their stories.  Everyone posed for pictures.  Eventually, the racers stepped onto the course and dodged the exposed rocks as they netted their required 30 miles of daily skiing.

Seibert watched it all and smiled his sideways smile.  He hoped it wasn’t a harbinger of things to come.  Seibert worried about what Caulkins would think; Caulkins in fact was worried about his investment, but just not the one that Seibert thought he was worrying about.  Earlier in the year he’d invested in a 3,000-acre citrus farm and had encouraged many of his friends to do the same.  Ironically, as sunshine warmed Vail, snow fell on his oranges in Florida. 

Caulkins did wonder about his Vail investment, too.  He and his partners were eager to benchmark their potential for financial success against similar business models.  They couldn’t do it, though.  None existed.  No one had experimented with such a complex financial scheme for a place like this.

For the first time, a mountain was about to become part of a Wall Street portfolio, and no one – not even the investors themselves – knew how to handle it.

SETH CLARK WALKER, a 2005 graduate of the University of Oregon’s literary nonfiction program, is working on a book about the growth of environmentalism and the outdoor adventure in America.