Olympic Express and Heavenly Sky Flyer are the First Two Major Projects Under Heavenly’s Ten-Year Master Plan

South Lake Tahoe, Calif./Nev. – With its recently-approved Master Plan Amendment in hand, Heavenly Mountain Resort today announced its resort improvements for the 2007-08 season – the opening salvo in what is expected to be 10 years of continual resort improvements. Guests can look forward to a steady stream of new lifts, on-mountain restaurants, lodging and base villages that will greatly improve the overall experience at Lake Tahoe’s leading destination resort.

“The improvements outlined under the Master Plan will solidify Heavenly’s position as the premier snowsports destination at Lake Tahoe,” said Blaise Carrig, Heavenly’s chief operating officer. “We’re extremely excited about the next 10 years, as well as this winter, with the opening of Olympic Express and the Heavenly Sky Flyer zip line.”

The new Olympic Express detachable-quad chairlift provides high-speed access to Olympic Downhill, three new trails and Nevada Woods – home to some of the best tree skiing in North America – letting guests more easily experience a part of the mountain that has been underutilized due to the existing fixed-grip lift. Olympic Express also gives guests accessing the resort from Heavenly’s Stagecoach or Boulder Lodge a quicker route to Dipper Express, Comet Express and East Peak Lodge.

When complete for its anticipated December 7, 2007 opening, Olympic Express will be 3,533 feet long with an 866-foot vertical rise. The high-speed lift will move 1,000 feet per minute with a 2,400 person capacity per hour. The former two-person Olympic chair ride took approximately 11 minutes, compared to just three-and-a-half minutes for the new Olympic Express, enabling more ski time and less time spent on a slow-moving chair.

Heavenly will also unveil three new trails off of Olympic Express. Cloud Nine is an intermediatelevel groomed trail that is perfect for wide-open cruising. Heavenly strategically thinned the trees on the other two trails to offer different levels of tree-skiing experiences. The Pines is a groomed, intermediate-level trail that allows skiers and riders to cruise around islands of beautiful western white pines. Bohemian Grove ratchets up the intensity one level. This advanced, gladed run is steeper, ungroomed and offers a more natural tree-skiing feel. For the expert skier or rider Nevada Woods is the all-natural, full-tilt tree skiing that made this area a local legend.

A fourth trail, called Nova, is an intermediate-level trail that will run along the Dipper Express chair line to connect Orion to the base of Dipper Express, bypassing the bottom of Orion and the guests heading to Comet Express and East Peak Lodge. The four new trails give Heavenly a total of 95 runs.

Also new this winter will be the Heavenly Sky Flyer at Adventure Peak. This elevated zip line cable ride will take guests on a 50-mile-an-hour thrill ride from the top of Tamarack Express back to the top of the Gondola, a vertical drop of 525 feet. At 3,100 feet, the Heavenly Sky Flyer will be the longest zip line in the lower 48 U.S. states.

For those who prefer their thrill rides on the trails rather than above them, Heavenly has continued its commitment to offering Lake Tahoe’s finest corduroy with four new low-emission Prinoth 350 groomers and one new, state-of-the-art PistenBully 600 ultra-low-emission snow groomer. Numbering 16, Heavenly maintains its claim to the largest fleet of Prinoth 350s in North America.

Heavenly has also purchased 11 more Snow Machines, Inc. fully-automated fan guns. These fan guns will be placed on elevated towers in strategically-selected locations to provide a more consistent, quality snow coverage. Additionally, Heavenly has retrofitted many of its air/water snowmaking guns to be more energy efficient while also making larger quantities of snow in warmer temperatures. The combination of grooming expertise and snowmaking capacity ensure that Heavenly’s guests are always skiing or riding on the finest snow surface conditions Lake
Tahoe has to offer.

Off the mountain, Lake Tahoe Development Company recently broke ground on the Chateau at Heavenly Village. The 11.53-acre redevelopment will include two luxury condo-hotels, a 16,000-square-foot RockResorts Spa, 50,000-square-foot convention center with 21,000 square-foot pre-function area, 1.5 acre park and a collection of shops and restaurants. The Chateau at Heavenly Village is located at the California state line across from Heavenly Village and the Heavenly Gondola, adjacent to Harvey’s Lake Tahoe Casino & Resort. The Chateau will be completed in winter 2009 and will be operated by Vail Resorts subsidiary, RockResorts.

Other future projects approved under Phase One of the Master Plan that guests can look forward to include: Replacement of another existing fixed-grip chair lift on the mountain’s Nevada side with high-speed, detachable lift technology; a 1,000-seat on-mountain restaurant with incredible views of Lake Tahoe called Powderbowl Lodge; 152 acres of new ski trails; regrading Skyline Trail (the infamous traverse from California to Nevada); and a skier bridge that will allow skiers and riders to ski from the Gondola top station to Tamarack Express. The plan also calls for multi-use hiking/cross-country skiing/snowshoeing trails in the area between the Gondola top station and the Observation Deck.

Every project contained in the Master Plan Amendment was designed to minimize environmental impact and maximize water clarity from the watersheds draining Heavenly. The plan also contains the most comprehensive environmental mitigation and monitoring program in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

“With this Master Plan, Heavenly has become a leader among ski resorts in terms of environmental stewardship,” said Rochelle Nason, executive director of the League to Save Lake Tahoe. “The resort worked closely with conservationists to assure their plan will result in greater protection for Lake Tahoe’s water quality, and their decision to spare the North Bowl trees is tremendous. Heavenly is a terrific destination for skiers and riders who want to help ‘Keep Tahoe Blue’.”

The results of Heavenly’s past environmental programs are positive: watershed condition and water quality in each of the watersheds draining Heavenly have been improved through a systematic restoration and re-vegetation program. At the Boulder and California Main Lodge base areas, state-of-the-art water quality Best Management Practices (BMPs) have been installed to further reduce pollutants. Nearly 30 acres of disturbed stream environment zones have been restored. Since 2003, Heavenly has been attaining its Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) targets for suspended sediment in Heavenly Valley Creek. This is the first use of the TMDL in the Tahoe Basin, and is seen as the future for watershed management at Lake Tahoe.

About Heavenly
Heavenly Mountain Resort is a world-class destination offering guests a one-of-a-kind combination of scenic beauty and exhilarating on-snow experience. Heavenly is a subsidiary of Vail Resorts, Inc., the leading mountain resort operator in the United States. In addition to Heavenly, Vail Resorts, Inc. owns and operates the Colorado mountain resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone, and the Grand Teton Lodge Company in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Company’s subsidiary, RockResorts, a luxury resort hotel company, manages casually elegant properties across the United States and Caribbean. Vail Resorts evelopment
Company is the real estate planning, development and construction subsidiary of Vail Resorts, Inc. Vail Resorts is a publicly held company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: MTN). The Vail Resorts company website is www.vailresorts.com and consumer website is www.snow.com.

For more information on Heavenly Mountain Resort, please visit www.skiheavenly.com or call 1-800-HEAVENLY.