In Colorado, Vail Resorts runs five mountains: Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Crested Butte. It calls all 42 of its destination resorts and regional ski areas "owned and operated," but "own" needs a qualifier. At each Colorado mountain the company owns the lifts, buildings and base-area real estate while the ski terrain itself is national forest land used under a Forest Service permit with a fixed expiry date. The permits, their expiry dates and what the company owns beyond the lift lines are below; the resort-by-resort list of all 42 is in how many mountains Vail Resorts owns. Vail Resorts' fiscal 2025 annual report and its report for the quarter ended April 30, 2026 give the 42 count.
The five Colorado mountains and how each is held
Permit acreage is the land the permit covers, not the skiable terrain, so it is far larger than the acreage in a resort's marketing. Vail Mountain, for example, has a 12,353-acre permit and about 5,300 skiable acres.
| Mountain | Forest Service permit | Permit expires | Owned by Vail Resorts | U.S. visitation rank, 2024/25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breckenridge | 5,702 acres | December 31, 2029 | Resort operations, lifts, buildings, commercial space and real estate held for sale or development | Most visited |
| Vail Mountain | 12,353 acres | December 1, 2031 | Resort operations, lifts, buildings, commercial space and real estate held for sale or development | Second most visited |
| Keystone | 8,376 acres | December 31, 2032 | Resort operations, lifts, buildings, commercial space and real estate, plus Keystone Lodge and the conference center | Ninth |
| Beaver Creek | 3,801 acres (portions of the resort) | November 8, 2039 | Resort operations, lifts, buildings, commercial space and real estate | Tenth |
| Crested Butte | 4,350 acres | September 27, 2058 | Buildings, improvements and land used to operate the resort | Not ranked among the top ten |
Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone operate within the White River National Forest, 2.3 million acres that the Forest Service permits for 11 commercial ski resorts. Aspen's four mountains, Copper Mountain, Arapahoe Basin and Sunlight Mountain are among the other seven and are not Vail Resorts mountains. Crested Butte sits in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests.
What a Forest Service ski permit means
A ski area on national forest land operates under a term special use permit, a kind of permit created by the 1986 Ski Area Permit Act. For its permits Vail Resorts pays the Forest Service a fee of 1.5 to 4.0 percent of adjusted gross revenue from the activities they cover, including lift tickets, pass products, ski school, food and beverage, rentals and retail. Every improvement on national forest land has to be in a Master Development Plan that the Forest Service reviews, and each project still needs its own approval. On the White River National Forest, the plans on file are dated 2024 for Vail, 2022 for Breckenridge, 2010 (with a 2015 addendum) for Beaver Creek and 2009 for Keystone.
Expiry dates are a fact about the paperwork, not a warning about closures. The company says it expects to request a new permit for each resort before the old one expires and is not aware of the Forest Service refusing a replacement for a ski resort in operation. The Forest Service can end a permit if it finds termination is required in the public interest, but the company says it knows of no permit ended over the holder's opposition. The Forest Service can also amend a permit in the public interest, and an amendment can go ahead over the holder's objection.
What Vail Resorts owns off the mountain
Beyond the lifts, a good deal of Colorado real estate is in the company's own hands. In Vail, it owns the Lodge at Vail and the Arrabelle at Vail Square. At Beaver Creek it owns The Osprey, The Pines Lodge and the Beaver Creek golf course and condominiums. At Keystone it owns Keystone Lodge, the conference center, Ski Tip Lodge and two golf courses, Keystone Ranch and the River Course. Other Colorado holdings include Bachelor Gulch Village, Arrowhead and Red Sky Ranch, which has golf courses and real estate held for sale or development. The company also owns stakes in employee housing, among them 50 percent of Breckenridge Terrace and 31 percent of The Tarnes at Beaver Creek.
Outside Colorado
Arrangements outside Colorado vary more. Park City is mostly leased, with about 8,900 acres leased and 220 owned. Stowe and Okemo sit partly on land the company owns and partly on land leased from the State of Vermont, and Mount Sunapee is on land leased from New Hampshire. Whistler Blackcomb operates on British Columbia Crown land under agreements that run to February 23, 2077, and Perisher, Falls Creek and Hotham are in Australian national or alpine parks. Stevens Pass, Heavenly and Kirkwood are on national forest land like the Colorado mountains. The regional table sits in the 42-resort guide linked above; the Crested Butte and Heavenly deals are in when Vail bought Crested Butte and when Vail bought Heavenly.
Resorts on the Epic Pass that Vail does not own
Being on the pass is not the same as being owned. Telluride is a Colorado example: the 2026/27 Epic Pass includes seven total days there, but Telluride is not a Vail Resorts mountain. Arapahoe Basin was bought with Breckenridge and Keystone in 1997 and sold the same year; the Breckenridge purchase guide has the details. The official Epic Pass site shows which resorts each pass covers, and the Epic Pass listing covers the pass itself.
The company's forest pledge
Vail Resorts launched Commitment to Zero in 2017 with a goal of a zero net operating footprint by 2030. One of its three parts, zero net operating impact to forests and habitat, means restoring an acre of forest for every acre permanently affected by new and expanded operations. The 2025 annual report says the company restored 100 percent of the forest acres permanently affected in calendar 2024. The other two parts, zero net emissions and zero waste to landfill, share the 2030 target. For the company that holds the permits and the shareholders behind it, see who owns Vail Ski Resort.
