To begin, I'd like to explain that I recently experienced two epiphanies. An epiphany used to have a religious connotation, but nowadays, an epiphany means a sudden insight, a new, mind-blowing realization.

The first epiphany I experienced was that we male pioneers of Vail, as important as we thought ourselves, could not have accom­plished most of what we did without the daily support of a whole “angel chorus” of female pioneers. There are so many of you that we won't try to name you all. You know who you are and the important roles you played.

You are secretaries, assistants, phone opera­tors, nurses, girlfriends, wives, teachers and family members. We haven't located all of you, but before I continue, I'd like to bow, deeply, to those here tonight and thank you all for your important roles in Vail and Beaver Creek.

My second epiphany was espe­cially startling for a masculine, Anglo-oriented, white male person.

That was the realization that Vail and Beaver Creek had been, and still are, truly international enterprises. Looking back, I rec­ognize Austrian, French, Italian, Swiss, German, Greek, Spanish, Hispanic, Mexican, Jewish, Dutch, Belgian and Basque origins along with Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Croat, Hungarian, Lap, Russian and, more recently, Filipino, Tibetan, African, Nepalese and other names and races I can't recall.

So, before continuing, I must give credit to all these nations and races for their huge contribu­tions to pioneering in this valley. It looks as if we few Anglo-Saxons, plus a sprinkling of Aus­tralians and New Zealanders, are definitely in the minority here in Vail Valley.

Let's recall some little-known stories about Vail and Beaver Creek. They illustrate a seldom­heralded but important fact about pioneering. Nobody pioneered alone. We modern pioneers needed wives and children and dogs and cars and trucks and machines and a long list of oth­er humans. I'm going to try to celebrate a few. Speaking of children, my Kathearine and Guy are here tonight.

One day in the summer of 1962, going over some documents in our Denver office, I discov­ered that the Bell Gondola contract specified delivery of gondola components in February or March of 1963. But Vail was set to open Dec. 15, 1962!

I pointed this out to Pete Seibert.

He mulled it over briefly.

“Morrie (Shepard) and I are too busy to take this on. Could you try?” he asked.

In those days, this was as good as a formal request from Pete, so I agreed, even though I, too, was busy.

May I introduce two of the three unknown pioneers of Vail. By telephone, I found an expe­ditor in Brussels, Belgium, who agreed to rearrange Bell's shipping in Europe. Also on the phone I located a Colorado trucker who wasn't working: “Could he meet boats on the East and South coasts and truck gondola gear to Vail?”

“ That should be easy!” he said. “ Tell me where and when, and I'll get the gear.”

So we began an extraordinary reshaping of Bell's careful arrangements. Our European expeditor located Bell's shipments on Rhine River freight boats, in Rotterdam Harbor and on the high seas.

I gave this information to the trucker, who met ships in New York, Charleston (S.C.) and Houston. Meanwhile, the expeditor and I arranged for freight aircraft to pick up last­minute gondola parts. But now we needed the third unsung pioneer, a young customs agent in Denver. There were no customs procedures for clearing foreign goods in Denver in those days. It was too far inland!

So this young agent took it upon himself to create such procedures so he could clear the unexpected gondola items arriving by aircraft while other customs agents did the same with strange gondola parts in New York, Charleston and Houston. Ship captains and union steve­dores looked the other way as our trucker “ille­gally” lifted gondola machinery from the decks and holds of ships.

Anyway, we got the gondola approved for our Dec. 15 opening. Vail was more or less off and running thanks to a European expeditor, a Col­orado trucker and a Denver customs agent. Talk about your unsung heroes!

Another little-known Vail pioneer was Leonard Ruder. Recall that Vail had experi­enced a 6-foot snowfall on Labor Day weekend in 1961, so snow lay deep on the mountain that year. Leonard was in charge of building and clearing our one mountain road (now called Gitalong) so we could get lift, gondo­la and Mid-Vail materials up the mountain.

He soon discovered pushing all that snow (and rock and roots and trees) with bulldozers uphill was impossible, so he decided to work downhill from mid-mountain.

But how to get up the mountain? There was one old logging road, now called Skid Road, but it was deep in snow and crossed a thousand-foot-drop forest slope.

This didn't stop Leonard. Working first with his small caterpillar (I think they called it a D-5), Leonard carved a narrow track to the future site of Mid-Vail. Then with his big cat (I think a D-9), he inched upward. Most of the time, the cat's blade hung almost halfway over the precipice. But he persevered. As soon as he reached mid­mountain, he started blading Gitalong, this time more easily downhill.

With typical Vail luck and perseverance, Leonard finished Gitalong just in time for it to dry out enough to get steel and wood and con­crete to Mid-Vail, and for lifts and roads and slopes to be built, in time for first snows.

One of the fun things about my job was nam­ing all the trails and roads and streets in early Vail. I had a lot of help: Earl for the old-time stuff — Cookshack, for example. Chan Welin, he was on the mountain every day. Don Almond for the obvious that wasn't too obvious to us. And Pepi Gramshammer for one special slope!

Chan, or one of the patrolmen, named Bighorn because they found a bighorn sheep's horn on the trail. Don named the easy alterna­tive to Tourist Trap (what else?) Compromise. Rod Slifer looked down the steepest slope on Riva Ridge and mused, “ That's gonna be a real tourist trap.”

How many of you have skied Cow's Face? How many of you even know where it is?

When Pete Seibert was working at Aspen Highlands, there were several mountain men from Appalachia on the crews. When one of them looked down the backside of the High­lands, he described it perfectly: “ That slope's steeper ‘n a cow's face, and her a'grazin!”

Not many city folks nowadays have even seen a cow. But Pete had and determined he'd use that name, Cow's Face, somewhere at Vail.

Before Lift 5 was built, we were trying to inter­est Pepi Gramshammer into being our special ski pro. Morrie, Pete and Pepi had skied down a long Back Bowl slope on perfect spring snow. Earl Eaton and I waited at the top with the Christi-cat.

When the three skiers finally walked up to us, they were exhausted. Pepi was the first to say anything.

“Ja, dot's maybe da best spring skiing I've effer had,” he wheezed. “Da only trouble vas, it took foreffer to walk out!”

It's been named Forever ever since.

Have you heard the story of Rod Slifer's fire crew?

Rod, a young ski instructor from Aspen, was our Vail office manager. When he heard there was a fire on the slopes near Minturn, he got on the phone to alert John McCollister, our fire warden.

We had an eight-party telephone line that summer. Rod discovered it was busy, two talka­tive ladies gossiping.

Rod tried and tried to reach McCollister, but the ladies wouldn't quit talking.

Finally one of the ladies spoke sharply to Rod. “ Young man,” she said, “get off the line so we can talk!”

Rod had had enough. “Lady,” he said, “you'd better get off the line before your house burns down. There's a forest fire, and I have to alert the fire warden.”

Well, the ladies quit talking, Rod rang McCol-l­ister, and — you guessed it. John was away in Denver, shopping.

But Rod hesitated only a second. From his rickety trailer office, he grabbed a shovel and the nearest pickup truck and started rounding up every man in sight. Soon, armed with picks and shovels, brooms and axes, Rod's crew head­ed for Minturn, climbed the steep slope and helped put out the fire.

Rod and his crew had probably saved Vail from a terrible fire!

We can't discuss early Vail without describing the beginning of the Vail Resort Association. One day, Gaynor Miller, of the Nightlatch Lodge; Ottie Kuehn, builder of Vail's first gener­al store; and I sat on the stone steps outside the lodge.

“Why not,” I posited, “bring all of Vail's busi­nesses together in one strong marketing organization?”

“Sort of a Vail Chamber of Commerce,” Gaynor said.

“No!” Ottie responded. “Chambers of com­merce too soon become political entities. What we need is a true cooperative marketing group, no politics allowed!”

Thus was born the Vail Resort Association, the first of its kind anywhere in the ski world. The VRA was not only successful but was imi­tated from Maine to California and overseas.

Much of its success was due to two women, Doris Bailey and Brook Meyer. Doris, as our first director, skillfully brought together a varied contingent of Vail business characters. Brook, as executive director for many years (under sever­al appointed male presidents), managed the VRA, which in my humble opinion was and still ought to be the primary marketing arm of this resort.

We in Vail had also some early and very suc­cessful environmental victories. Again, our unsung pioneers are little known today.

They are Diana Donovan and Merrill Hastings.

The first victory was against the U.S. govern­ment, the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service had proposed to build a logging road into a then-primitive area called Eagles Nest. A group of environmentalists, sparked by Diana and financed by Merrill, took the issue to the 10th Federal Court and won. The issue was who had the right to declare “a wilderness.” It was Con­gress who won, and so we have this great and valuable wilderness next door to Vail.

The next question became whether the new­ly proposed I-70 highway should split this wilderness in two via the Red Buffalo tunnel or follow the existing highway over Vail Pass.

Again, a group of environmentalists took up the issue. Merrill and Diana knew there were big environmental and economic problems with the proposed route up Main Gore Creek to the tunnel.

Merrill agreed to finance a group pack trip following the route, involving the U.S. and Col­orado highway departments and the U.S. Forest Service. He took me along as a second “moun­tain expert.”

The Colorado and U.S. engineers had identi­fied I believe six or seven avalanche problems on their route. We clearly identified 26 or 27 major avalanche routes versus two on Vail Pass. As a result, they backed down. They chose Vail Pass, where the seldom avalanche-blocked I-70 highway runs today. I hope today's environ­mentalists have success as we did with their Hidden Gems program.

My talk was supposed to be about some of the unsung heroes of early Vail and Beaver Creek. But I can't help but pause and talk about four of the people who held Vail together in the middle years.

Harry Bass, our company chair­man, is a man who just doesn't get credit where credit is due. When he arrived at Vail, he told us, “I am not an entrepreneur. I am a con­servator of wealth.” What he actu­ally accomplished was to con­serve and save Pete Seibert's dream so the rest of us could enjoy Vail and Beaver Creek to this day!

Back in 1978 or '79, Vail's back­country known today as Blue Sky Basin was already proposed. We called it Super Vail.

I laboriously put together the skier statistics we needed and got permission from the Forest Ser­vice to expand into the Back Bowls. Chan Welin, Joe Macy and Bill Brown designed a lift and slope configuration almost exact­ly like today's Blue Sky Basin. At one of our 7 a.m. staff meetings, we presented our ideas to Harry.

It was Harry's chance to shine. Super Vail would make Vail the nation's biggest resort. Harry studied our proposal carefully. Then he decided.

“ We can't afford it,” he said. Then he explained, regretfully, the company's difficult financial situation.

It was typical of Harry Bass. With the same decision, he vetoed Super Vail but saved Vail and the company's future.

Another little-known pioneer is this evening's choice of ski patrol­man, Chupa Nelson. There are many other ski patrolmen who have been here longer than Chu­pa. But he, after all, was the patrol­man who climbed the tower, crawled out on the cable and chained safely a gondola filled with scared people so these same people would survive our first and most terrible accident.

May I ask Chupa and all the other patrolmen and women present to stand? All of you please applaud these guys.

Another unsung pioneer, this time, is a woman, Pam Conklin, or Pam Pettee, as she is known today. On that fateful March day in 1976, I was not in Vail. I was in Denver, attending one of those necessary Ski Country USA meet­ings. And Pam, whether she knew it or not, was the only publicity and marketing person there.

As I drove quickly and fearfully back to Vail, Pam took over. It is seldom that an executive caught away from an emergency can return and find his job handled so superbly. But in this case, every­thing was taken care of quickly and well.

The results of the accident, of course, involved many people. But coordinating it all calmly, effi­ciently and professionally was the person best prepared, my retiring but deserving associate, Pam (Conklin) Pettee.

Finally, one more unsung hero, and there are a thousand more we don't have time for. None of the modern snowboarding terrains, halfpipes and such would be pos­sible without snowmaking. Look­ing back, it's hard to believe one of Vail's biggest problems used to be where to get water for snowmak­ing. On Vail Mountain, there was no network of pumps and genera­tors and pipes as there is today.

Even though I was an indoor office guy, I'd spent a lot of time outdoors on Vail Mountain. I'd spotted springs and a swamp on one of the mountain's benches. I told Bill Brown and Paul Test­wuide I thought it a good location for our snowmaking pond.

With a lot of digging, and a waterproof membrane to hold water, the swamp became our pond. Now to fill it with water!

Joe Macy, our mountain plan­ner, looked at the problem, then solved it the easiest way: Run a pipe west from the pond, then straight down Simba Trail to Gore Creek. Simple?

No, it took months before we could count on snowmaking water. While we were involved with other problems, Joe had to carefully negotiate to pin down the snowmaking water. First with the state, then the Forest Service, then the county and finally with the town of Vail. He had to find just the right place on Gore Creek to build a take-out chamber. Then he had to crawl through brambles and aspen up the rugged moun­tain to clear the pipeline.

Finally, one day in his quiet way, Joe came into my office.

“Well, we've got the water,” he said. “Now all we need to do is to spray it on the mountain!”

Here, I should reorganize the importance of photography and photographers in early Vail. Barry Stott, Shorty Wilcox, Peter Runyon and others.

Now, I've lost track of the years, but it is 1974, and Beaver Creek was going nowhere. So our com­pany president, D. Peterson, gave me a new job. The county, the state, Gov. Lamm, the Forest Ser­vice, Fish and Wildlife and every environmental organization were doing everything in their power to stop Beaver Creek.

Several of our quiet unsung pio­neers had to go work. Most of you are not aware of the importance to Beaver Creek of Ron Alred and Avon, but let me fill you in. Beaver Creek, environmentalists were saying, would ruin the wildlife in the area. Ron and another quiet hero, Dave Mott, put their heads together. Ron volunteered 2,000 acres of Stone Creek adjacent to Beaver Creek. Mott got me to agree to another 1,000 acres of Beaver Creek land.

“How about a 3,000-acre wildlife refuge?” (another Beaver Creek first), these two announced. With this adjacent refuge, that wildlife question went quietly away.

Another problem was the baby­elk birthing area on Beaver Creek's western slopes. Mott involved mountain manager Bill Brown: “Could we agree not to build anything in that area until the elk babies were out of the way?”

Sarge Brown shrugged.

“ No problem,” he said. So we had addressed another issue.

But the state's Fish and Wildlife people were adamant: “ You can't build Beaver Creek and provide domestic and snowmaking water. It will ruin the riparian areas along the creek, draw down the water and kill all the fish!”

I knew a little about the water we owned, so I spoke to engineer Dave Mott: “Can we build a pump at Eagle River and a pipeline up Beaver Creek and add to the flow if we need to?” Dave, of course, could and did build that pump and pipeline. I don't believe we have ever needed that Eagle River water. But we had silenced our stream critics.

And there were other issues. The state air-quality people were sure we'd create an air-pollution problem. So Dave designed an early-warning and fireplace sys­tem that satisfied them.

But there was one last issue that the environmental organizations would not forget: “What if we OK Beaver Creek, then you people turn around and decide to build a ski area on Meadow Mountain?”

Well, of course, that had been part of Pete Seibert's dream. But Beaver Creek hung in the balance. We quietly negotiated with the environmentalists. Then we took the ski-area issue to the board of Vail Associates, and they decided to sell Meadow Mountain back to the Forest Service. So the Meadow Mountain ski-area idea was canceled.

We traveled to Washington, and I pounded on the chief forester's conference table.

“We've answered all their ques­tions. Why can't we start on Beaver Creek?”

In March of 1976, close to the time of the gondola accident, the U.S. Forest Service finally granted an operating permit for Beaver Creek. Looking around at the giant buildings of today, it's hard to believe that architectural ques­tions could be debated. In fact, the first building contracts let in Beaver Creek were for Spruce Saddle, the handsome three-story building at the top of our first ski lift designed by Hen­rik Bull.

But the larger issue of economics won the day, so taller, many- roomed hotels, homes and lodges of a different architectural style became the norm. Nonetheless, Bull's charming Alpine­style Spruce Saddle continues to be admired.

While we're talking about Beaver Creek, let's remember who the Beaver Creek village planners used to be.

Perhaps you've noticed the street layout. The bridges and sidewalks and cul-de-sacs. If and when you do, recall that Graham Woodhouse was the architect that laid it out.

Today, it is almost exactly as he cre­ated it, but the buildings are taller than he wanted. The architecture is differ­ent than Henrik Bull would have hoped. But Beaver Creek, in spite of its early planners, marches on!

We had one more concern. If we built the place, would the skiers discover it? Transportation issues to and from Beaver Creek loomed ominously.

As Sarge Brown used to say, “No problem.” Tiny Rocky Mountain Air had the answer!

So Graham Autry, of Rocky Moun­tain, with Ron Alred and the Notting­ham family, began negotiations. Was the gravel pit in the way of an STOL airport? Could the planes fly over Avon? Could they transport enough skiers?

The upshot of this is probably for­gotten. Bill Nottingham agreed to the STOL port. The people of Avon said the planes could fly overhead. Skier numbers who'd fly on STOL (mostly 30-passenger DeHavilland Otters) were never enough. But Beaver Creek opened anyway.

There are a thousand Vail and Beaver Creek stories left to tell. But this should give you an idea. Let's hear it now for Vail and Beaver Creek's many unsung pioneers.