Vail Resorts’ industry-shifting Epic Pass turns 10 this month and, as part of a series of upcoming deals to celebrate the anniversary, the resort operator is offering $99 passes to all active and retired military and expects to funnel $1.5 million in donations to veteran organizations.

As Vail Resorts chief Rob Katz and his team pondered the last decade of growth, they thought about the founders of Vail Mountain, 10th Mountain Division veteran Pete Seibert and Army engineer Earl Eaton who returned from World War II to establish what would become one of the world’s most recognized ski areas.

“Pete and Earl were about making the mountains more accessible. That was one of their primary drivers. For us, the Epic Pass is about making the mountains more accessible and we feel the right way to pull this all together was to make the mountains more accessible to the military,” Katz said. “It’s the right thing to do to make sure we honor our beginnings.”

The $99 2018-19 Military Epic Pass is for active and retired members of the U.S., Canadian and Australian military and their dependents.

When Seibert and Eaton made their fateful seven-hour climb in March 1957, they birthed a plan to build a sprawling ski area across the wide-open, wildfire-cleared bowls that today anchor Vail Mountain. They corralled investors, bought property and opened in 1962.

“Everybody else thought we were crazy,” the late Seibert said in a 1989 interview with Sports Illustrated.

Twenty-six years later in 2008, almost to the day when Seibert and Eaton first gazed upon those back bowls, people called Vail Resorts’ chief Katz crazy when he slashed the price of a season pass to $579 from more than $1,500, offering unlimited access to the company’s then five resorts. The Epic Pass offered unlimited skiing at 11 destination resorts in North America for $869 for 2017-18.

For 10 years, the Epic has reigned without rival, growing from 60,000 sales a year in 2008-09 to more than 750,000 for 2017-18. The new $899 Ikon Pass — unveiled last week for the 2018-19 season — hopes to tap the popularity of the Epic Pass by offering unlimited skiing at 12 resorts and limited days at another dozen-plus ski areas. Katz doesn’t see the Ikon Pass as a threat. He says it’s good for the ski resort business when skiers share the liability of a business dependent on snow by buying season passes long before the lifts start turning.

“We want to see the whole industry thrive even with the challenging weather dynamics and that’s about more people with a megaphone out there convincing others to buy a pass,” he said. “It allows us to keep stable employment and keep all our strategies and initiatives stable and make sure we can provide a great experience for the guest.”

Katz said reaching three quarters-of-a-million pass sales took 10 years.

“Nothing comes overnight. I think the key for good, longterm stability, it behooves us and everyone in the industry to really keep at this. Five years from now, we should be at millions of passes across all resorts in the industry.”

For every Epic Pass sold, Vail Resorts will donate $1 to the Wounded Warrior Project, which offers support and programs to injured veterans. The company sold more than 750,000 of the passes for the 2017-18 season. Katz and his wife, Elana Amsterdam, are donating $750,000 to Operation Homefront, a non-profit that offers financial assistance and programs to families of military veterans.

Last fall the couple announced they were donating $58 million to non-profit social services and programs in communities where Vail Resorts operates. Katz has never sold any Vail Resorts stock since he was named chief executive in 2006 and last fall he had options that were expiring. So the proceeds — $58 million after paying taxes — of those more than 304,000 shares of stock were directed toward a donor-advised charitable fund. Related Articles Vail Resorts CEO says reservation system could be lifted during season if it proves unnecessary

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Katz and Amsterdam’s donation fueled a near-record year for charitable giving by America’s wealthy, when the top 50 philanthropists gave away $14.7 billion, the largest total since 2008, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual Philanthropy 50 analysis. (Katz and Amsterdam ranked 37th with their $58 million donation to the charitable fund.)

In December, the couple said they would initially focus on mental health issues, with seven grants to mental health programs in Boulder, Eagle and Summit counties, Utah’s Park City, California’s Truckee and British Columbia’s Whistler.

Katz said he and his wife wanted to focus on an issue that is underfunded in mountain communities.

“We felt it was a need. It was something that was not necessarily getting taken care of by other people,” he said. “Mental health and making sure people have access to the resources that they need and that cost is not a barrier, that’s an important part of having a holistic community.”