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Vail, Colorado
Vail was founded specifically as a ski resort in 1962 by Pete Seibert and Earl Eaton, two former 10th Mountain Division soldiers who had trained in the surrounding mountains during World War II and returned afterward specifically to develop the terrain they'd come to know during military training into a ski destination. The resort's "Back Bowls," a series of open, ungroomed bowl-shaped terrain on the mountain's back side, gave Vail one of the largest single-mountain skiable terrain footprints in North America upon opening and remain one of its most distinctive features relative to competing resorts built around more conventional groomed-run layouts. Vail Resorts, the publicly traded company that grew out of the original resort, has since acquired dozens of other ski areas across North America and Europe, building the Epic Pass multi-resort season pass system that's reshaped how a large share of American skiers now plan their entire ski season across multiple resorts rather than a single home mountain. Vail's combination of its founding by World War II mountain-division veterans, its expansive Back Bowls terrain, and its parent company's transformation into the dominant force in North American ski resort consolidation has made it one of the most commercially and historically significant ski destinations in the entire country.
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Whistler, British Columbia
Whistler Blackcomb, formed by the merger of two adjacent mountains under one resort operation, hosted the alpine skiing and other events for the 2010 Winter Olympics in nearby Vancouver, an Olympic legacy that significantly raised the resort's international profile and drove substantial infrastructure investment in the years leading up to the Games. The resort holds one of the largest vertical drops of any ski area in North America, at roughly 5,280 feet from summit to base, and the Peak 2 Peak Gondola connecting Whistler and Blackcomb mountains holds the record for the longest unsupported span of any gondola lift in the world, stretching nearly two miles between towers. Whistler Village, the pedestrian-only base area built specifically to serve the resort, was designed from the outset around a walkable, car-free layout, a deliberate planning choice that's made it one of the more consistently well-regarded resort villages in North America for its ease of movement between lodging, dining, and the lifts themselves. Whistler's combination of its 2010 Winter Olympics legacy, one of the largest vertical drops in North America, and the record-setting Peak 2 Peak Gondola has made it one of the most internationally significant ski destinations anywhere outside the European Alps.
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