Pursuits: Getting Comfortable With the New Vail

Justin Edmonds for The New York Times

Taking advantage of the Wi-Fi in Vail's new 10-person gondola. The resort is celebrating its 50th anniversary. More Photos »

In the late 1950s, Pete Seibert, who dreamed of building a major ski resort in Colorado, spent seven hours hiking to the top of what is now Vail Mountain. At the crest of the obscure, unpopulated hill, he glimpsed a rare landscape of largely treeless bowls, a vast panorama of seemingly boundless, perfect skiing terrain.

Mr. Seibert, a former member of the United States ski team, turned to his hiking partner, Earl Eaton, a local uranium prospector who had led him to the site, and said: "My God, we've climbed all the way to heaven." They sat in the grass, ate a lunch of cold cuts, then spent another four hours hiking back down.

Five years later the Vail resort opened for the winter of 1962-63 with $5 lift tickets and crowds so small that one day only 12 people showed up.

Fifty years later the resort can attract 1.7 million people to its slopes per season, and it is a seven-and-one-half-minute ascent up the mountain in the resort's new 10-person gondola, equipped with heated seats and Wi-Fi access. Steps from the top of the gondola, one dining choice of several is a restaurant in which guests can exchange ski boots for slippers before looking over a menu that includes things like hazelnut and ginger buffalo carpaccio and selections from a 2,200-bottle on-site wine cellar.

Just outside the restaurant door, Vail photographers will take your picture, and using the chip embedded in your $106 lift ticket (the online purchase price) send it to friends through the social network of your choice. The same chip can chart and digest every detail of your day: the number of vertical feet skied, trails visited and your top speed. Later, you will also be able to watch video from the day, if you are one of the many on the mountain who have affixed a tiny camera to your helmet.

Suffice it to say, the Vail founders, both deceased, would hardly recognize the resort today. The truth is, late last year, in my first extended visit to the resort in a decade, I often felt out of place, too. Large new hotels towered over old landmarks, pedestrian walkways had replaced ordinary streets, new restaurants lured visitors away from the ones I remembered.

Vail is far from the only large resort to have infused the traditional ski trip with technologically advanced creature comforts and luxuries. As vacationers have become more accustomed to the kinds of bespoke experience hotels and restaurants are offering across the globe, ski resorts have been trying to shed their rough edges. No longer is it enough to appeal to ski purists who simply crave the mountain. Today's experience must also be comfortable, and, for those who want it, feel exclusive as well. And no resort has embraced this more than Vail.

But what happens when a hallmark resort retools? Can a historic mountain be modern too? And would I like it as much?

Arriving on Christmas night, it didn't take long to get some answers. That's when I met the ski valet, a novel new service professional creating dependents at resorts from Vermont to Utah.

Many hotels at ski areas take a guest's skis or snowboards at check-in, store them and hand them back when it's time to hit the mountain. The ski valet goes much further. The ski valet does everything but ski for you.

When I checked in at the new Ritz-Carlton residences with my wife and three children, the valet took our skis, poles and boots. The next morning, in a lounge alongside the lobby, our boots, which had been heated overnight, were retrieved for us. If anyone needed help getting the boots on — not unusual when small children are concerned — attendants helped get the little feet into the little boots. They also handed out free hand-warming packets.

Coffee and snacks were available in an unrushed atmosphere that was nothing like the noisy, crowded crush of the typical day lodge. Then, when we were ready to leave, our skis and poles were loaded on a van which shuttled us the few hundred yards to the lifts. When we finished at the end of the day, the ski valet was waiting at the bottom of the trails and the entire process was reversed, right down to our boots being dried and warmed again. It is a service provided by the hotel, although the valet is usually tipped $2 to $5 in each direction.

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