The Vail Daily’s John LaConte dropped a bombshell of a story yesterday….all the hype last season from Vail Mountain management about it being the longest season ever has proven to be untrue.
Many publications around the country (including this one) are now embarrassed by the fact that they have been lied to by Vail Mountain.
It was all revealed in an investigation by John LaConte, who tapped into the paper’s archives to reveal that last season was, in fact, not at all close to the longest season on record for Vail. It was actually tied for the third-longest season on record.
“Vail’s longest continuous season occurred during the 1997-98 season, when the mountain opened on Nov. 7, 1997, and stayed open all the way through May 3, 1998, for a total of 178 consecutive days.”
We talked to LaConte and he told us that his paper was among those embarrassed by the error, running not one, but two front-page stories touting the false claim of last year’s 171-day season being the longest. The paper ran a correction on its front page yesterday.
“The announcement came right from Vail COO Beth Howard, and it dropped during March of last year when Vail Mountain was getting bashed by guests for having sub-standard operations, they didn’t have some of the lifts open despite ample snow, and this probably seemed like a way to smooth things over a bit with a big, history-making announcement. We took her word for it, but it turned out to be pure bullshit. I asked their PR person to share their records on numerous occasions, they never did, so I started digging into it. I’m convinced they don’t even have those records.” -John LaConte
In another revelation, it turns out that Howard and Vail Mountain were touting this season’s Nov. 11 opening as the earliest ever, another false claim which also unfortunately also ran on Unofficial Networks.

But that wasn’t even close to true, either. Vail Mountain’s earliest-ever opening occurred on Nov. 1, 1991, and “early November openings continued to follow in the years to come. In fact, from 1989 to 1998, Nov. 11 would be tied for the latest opening.”

Just wanna set the record straight and apologize for any false information that we have disseminated. Thanks to LaConte for the crack reporting and The Vail Daily for setting the record straight. Follow John LaConte on Twitter HERE.