1924 Pete Seibert 2002: An Appreciation
By that day in the autumn of 1959, when he walked into my office at Skiing Magazine, Pete Seibert was already something of a legend. The sport’s in-crowd in those days, especially the many 10th Mountain Division veterans, knew all about Pete’s brush with death in the mountains of Italy in 1945, and how he had somehow recovered from his wounds to become a ski instructor in Aspen. How, essentially on one sound leg, he’d won the Roch Cup at Aspen in 1947, and three years later was named to the U.S. FIS Alpine Team for the Aspen World Championships.
Many of us knew that Pete had assisted Whip Jones in building Aspen Highlands, and had become general manager at Loveland Basin, materially turning around that struggling Colorado Front Range ski area. A few of us were aware that, alone, and with his old friend Earl Eaton, Pete had been scouring the ranges of the West in search of the ski mountain he had dreamed of since his boyhood in New England.
So I was only a little surprised when Pete sat on the corner of my crowded desk, unrolled a USGS map, and announced that he and Earl had discovered the perfect ski mountain, and within just 100 miles of Denver!
A few weeks later, Pete, Earl and I jeeped as far as we could, and walked in thigh-deep powder to the summit of this unnamed mountain. When we gazed, awestruck, into the treeless bowls, we knew we were sharing an historic revelation. This was, indeed, a dream mountain. Thousands of skiers had driven by this place going from Denver to Camp Hale, or headed for Aspen, and never bothered to look up at the massive, snow-covered slopes behind the steep cliffs of Gore Creek Valley.
It took Earl Eaton’s intimate knowledge of the Colorado back country, and Pete Seibert’s visionary grasp of the mountain’s skiing potential, to recognize this hidden, skier’s treasure, later to be known as Vail.
The ability to almost instantly recognize Vail Mountain’s potential was the kind of skill and vision that separated Pete from the rest of us. We saw rock and snow; he saw a mountain swarming with skiers. We saw a narrow road and a sheep pasture; he saw a picturesque, European-style village replete with gourmet restaurants, chic shops and fashionable hotels and lodges. In Pete’s mind, it was just a matter of when and how—never of “Is it possible?”
By any standards, Vail’s early years were, if not barely possible, at least extremely difficult. From the first, there were hassles with the Forest Service, with acquiring sufficient financing, with attracting pioneer businesses. The elements sometimes failed to cooperate: first too much snow, then mud, then dust, then a forest fire, then no snow at all on opening day. Yet Pete never despaired, never doubted that Vail would open, and then succeed. It was this unwavering belief in his dream that inspired the many disparate personalities that gathered around this apparently quixotic ski project and worked toward its completion.
As the biggest new ski resort ever, Vail naturally needed a multi-skilled team to build it, and then operate it after it was built. Lawyers and bankers and investors and surveyors and lift builders were needed. So were hotel operators and restaurateurs and shopkeepers and ski instructors, and even a preacher or two.
An amazing variety of people showed up in Vail’s earliest months and years, attracted by Pete Seibert’s charisma and by the very unlikeliness of the boom town in the wilderness. A Michigan banker built and operated a restaurant. A millionaire oilman’s son started out as a bartender. An English lady tourist stopped by and became Pete’s secretary. Most of these unlikely endeavors succeeded because all the early pioneers were infected by the “can-do” spirit that permeated early Vail, personified by the project’s cheerleader, ski-bum-turned-entrepreneur, Pete Seibert.
The winter before Vail opened, in the midst of the staff’s frantic planning, building and baby-sitting of investors, Sports Illustrated ran an article by their ski guru, Willy Schaeffler, saying Vail would never be a major ski resort because it didn’t have enough expert ski terrain. All the lawyers and bankers and investors panicked and demanded if Pete had an answer for Schaeffler and S.I. Pete responded, “That’s the best thing Willy could have written. Wait ’til the phone starts ringing!”
And the phones began to ring—skiers from all over America who were frankly leery of the existing slopes at the big resorts, the likes of steep Aspen Mountain, precipitous Baldy at Sun Valley and Stowe’s frightening Nose Dive. These skiers wanted to know if Vail really was a gentle mountain where the whole family could ski without being scared.
“Of course!” Pete and the staff would reply. “That’s what we’re building, the biggest family mountain in America!” Schaeffler’s article, perhaps, assured Vail’s future. It wasn’t until later, after Willy had become one of Vail’s biggest fans, that skiers learned of the wonderful steeps of Prima and Riva and the Back Bowls.
The Sports Illustrated incident was typical of Pete’s essential grasp of the realities of skiing. As an instructor, he listened to his client’s concerns. As a planner, he tried to give the skiing public what they really wanted. As a builder, he designed Vail for families first, later for the racers and the hotdogs. It proved an unbeatable formula.
Like many another entrepreneur, Pete Seibert had his share of defeats and failures. As perhaps the leading advocate for the 1976 Olympic alpine events at Beaver Creek, Pete and the Denver Olympic Committee were defeated by a coalition of budgeteers and environmentalists led by future Colorado Governor Dick Lamm. Never mind that the commercial sprawl Lamm feared happened anyway. Nor that the Beaver Creek resort Pete envisioned was later a resounding success. All this happened after Pete was gone from Vail.
Another of Pete’s valiant efforts, Snowbasin resort in Utah, was stymied by a soured economy and by quiet resistance from Utah’s Mormon community. But in February 2002, when the world’s great downhill racers were shattering records on Snow Basin’s magnificent downhill, few of the millions of Olympic spectators were aware that far-seeing Pete Seibert had conceived of that very downhill more than 20 years before!
Pete got a lot of things right. He realized that Howard Head’s metal skis would allow average skiers to enjoy Colorado’s powder snow. He recognized that Klaus Obermeyer’s down ski clothing made winter sport more comfortable. Over the objections of the bottom-liners, he ordered an expensive gondola for Vail instead of just a chairlift. The gondola automatically placed Vail in a new, upscale category.
Pete Seibert will be remembered because he successfully conceived of, built and operated the very first, and only, major ski resort ever created in a wilderness, and from nothing. It was financed by a hand-to-mouth, sleight-of-hand partnership scheme without major corporate backing. There were days when there were more employees than customers on the mountain, days when creditors’ telephone calls crowded out the calls from potential customers.
Through it all, however, the project’s fundamentals guaranteed eventual success: the right mountain, with dependable snow; flawlessly designed trails and lifts; the world’s best mountain staff, communications and ski school; a charming village at the base, where local cowboys mingled with movie stars and all of them felt at home.
These fundamentals were not arrived at by accident. They had been conceived of, and accomplished, by a charming ski instructor-racer-soldier dreamer from New England who had fantasized about this place as a boy, and then made it happen.
The title of Pete Seibert’s book about Vail tells it all. “Vail—Triumph of a Dream.”
Indeed!
Gordon Dewey of HEDCO, 79
A Staff Appreciation
The ski industry was saddened by news of the death of Gordon Chipman Dewey, CEO, HEDCO Division of The Dewey Electronics Corporation. Dewey died peacefully at the age of 79 on May 30, 2002 at his home in New York City.
Dewey was one of the pioneers in the airless snowmaking industry. Trained in nuclear physics, and with a World War II background in radar, his whole career was with Dewey Electronics, which acquired Hedco, Inc. in 1971. Hedco, Inc. had been a developer and manufacturer of snowmaking machines for ski areas and had developed a key technology and held the patent for it. After the acquisition, Dewey used his scientific and engineering experience and brought to market models such as the H2D in 1971, Standard in 1975, up to the current oilless models of the Snowcub NT in 1993 and its variant, the Tower Mounted Snowcub NT.
The board of directors of Dewey Electronics recently elected Dewey’s son, John H.D. Dewey as acting CEO. John Dewey has been a director since 1999 and actively providing consulting services to the company.
A Cultural Challenge
by Roger Lohr
In today’s business climate, it’s all about the numbers. The stock market normally responds negatively when corporate profits are not growing, and even when those profits are increasing but not meeting expected growth. We compete and all too often, only winning counts. In our industry we compare this year’s statistics to last year’s and we have reason to be optimistic if we report an increase—even if last year was way below the average year.
It is interesting, though, that there are no barometers for companies that improve customer trust and loyalty or enhance employee attitudes. And these are the things that will pay higher returns in the long term. If we devised ways to quantifiably improve results in those areas, we could guarantee that everything else—including profits—would work out positively.
A number of years ago, the ski industry embarked on a “Quality Counts” initiative, which focused on a high level of customer service. This program attempted to audit each department of a business in a “secret shopper” fashion. It applied a rating to each department that could be used as a benchmark for future comparisons.
Other shining programs, such as employee-oriented workers compensation efforts, revealed a concern for the staff that was returned in spades in company loyalty. Staff loyalty becomes obvious in how it well it deals with customers, which in turn results in increased customer satisfaction. Show me a customer that likes the way he or she is being treated and I’ll show you someone who spends tens of thousands of dollars at the same resort over a lifetime.
In the end, it comes down to how people feel they are being treated, whether they are employees or customers. Figure out how to increase efforts in these areas and you won’t need to worry about how you’ll generate those essential business increases from year to year.
Snow Kings of the Hill
by Jim Sullivan, Ski Area Manager, Snow King Resort
We at Snow King Resort (Wyo.) enjoyed the May 2002 issue of SAM more than most because of your coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics and of the future of ski racing in America “Maybe It’s Time to Rethink Racing”), which we support in a big way.
We want you to know what the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City meant to us here at Snow King. In our 63rd year of operation, we truly have found our niche. That niche is ski race training, something that we are ideally suited for.
Providing pre-Olympic race training had been a goal of ours since the early 1990s. We established a special training area in 1994. In 1996, we hosted teams prior to the opening World Cup races in Park City. We proved we had the quality of training the teams were looking for.
From February 1 to February 20, 2002, Snow King hosted teams from eight countries. Of the 30 Alpine medals awarded, 9 were won by skiers who trained with us. We’re very proud for being a smaller ski area and getting these results. We planned, we promoted and we produced. As a result, all these teams want to come back again this fall, prior to the opening World Cup events in November.
Hosting these teams was an adventure from the get-go and we loved every minute of it, from the hard work to establishing friendships with the athletes, coaches, trainers and technicians who came to train with us. Although we were always rooting for our U.S. Ski Team racers first and foremost, we certainly felt a sense of pride when an athlete who trained with us at “the King” did well, too.
