Chairlifts – a history

Came across what I thought was a very odd site the other day called chairlift.org. Now, I must admit that I thought the site was very odd as it is dedicated to chairlift history and is run by Chairlift Preservation Society Inc., plus they seemed to have an amazing collection of pictures of chairlifts.

Whilst I was still exploring the site, and musing over why such a Society would exist, and why they would want to preserve chairlifts, I fired off the link – chairlift.org – to a friend who used to work as a chairlift operator. Well, I was surprised by the response I received…

Basically, it appears that chairlifts have personalities, each make, model and location where the lift is installed contributes to this personality, and if you work the lifts you never encounter two the same. My friend went through the site checking out the lifts she had worked on, and the notorious ones she had heard of.

So, there you go. Chairlifts have ‘personalities’.

Also, on the chairlift.org there are some ‘historical’ documents from ski areas announcing new lifts etc. – History Page. My favourite is the one from Killington (VT) where they are talking about the installation of the new gondola. When I first saw the link (link to piece) I thought it was for the gondola that had been installed in the 1990s – nope, it was for the one installed around 1969, and replaced by the one in the 1990s. The brochure is worth a read.. and the picture on the second page says a thousand words….

The ‘1963-1964?’ Mount Snow brochure is also worth a look – the brochure. In fact, if you have any skiing ‘memorabilia’, such as old trail maps and resort brochures, why not send along scans to chairlift.org?