Brian Heon of Peak Resorts, GM of Wildcat Mountain, NH, talks to us about working from the ground up – from lift operations to the role of GM. “When my daughter Elsie was four years old, she went missing at the ski resort one Saturday morning. My wife Megan was freaking out looking for her,… Read More »

Courtesy of the New England Ski Museum The lift crew on the Wildcat Gondola c.1958.The two-person gondola was built by Carlevaro and Savio of Turin, Italy, and was their first American installation. The American builders had to struggle with plans in metric dimensions and in Italian, and when engineer Savio visited the site he discovered… Read More »

Mike Lane, NSAA’s new Technical Director, tells us of his start in the ski industry, his adventures as Ropeway Engineer for the Forest Service, and insider’s information on his favorite fishing lures. I moved into Sid’s old office and two sides have windows in the corner over-looking busy streets below on 133 South Van Gordon.… Read More »

New Chair Six triple Mt. Spokane, WA Sixteen towers, 1200’ of elevation, 33 picks in 3.4 hours This is what the end of a good day looks like. Fixed-Grip Friends: (back row)Brad McQuarrie, Caleb Deibel, Stefan Burandt, Matt Lewis, Zach Lingo, Justin Glidden, Ben Perry, Nick Clutter, Dustin Flath (front) Stefan-Lance Stengle, (kneeling) Chuck Von… Read More »

Many of us who work around ropeways use Lift Blog’s database when we need a lift’s history or technical details. The blog’s compilation of ropeway-specific news, images, and announcements cover every aspect of lifts. It reads so wholly and interestingly, old-schoolers liken it to a ropeway history book that you want to keep flipping pages… Read More »

Courtesy of the New England Ski Museum American Steel & Wire dominated chairlift construction for about a decade as suggested in this 1948 ad in Ski News.

George Boyden on a morning inspection, over 10,000 feet above sea level and approximately 1,000 feet above ground. He performed these daily inspections for the majority of the Tramway’s first 40 years in rain, snow, shine, wind, and ice weather conditions. A little pre-ski history of Taos Valley “Spanish armies came up the Rio Grande… Read More »

Excerpted from the New England Ski Museum’s Winter 2002 Newsletter Testing the new chairlift design in the Omaha, Nebraska shops of the Union Pacific Railroad. Designer and engineer James Curran needed to know how fast the lift could run and still allow skiers to load from a stationary position, so a chair was hung from… Read More »

I’m happy to have been nominated as the Mechanic of the Year by my team at Sunday River. This group of coworkers call me the “Lift Whisperer” because I’ve become so familiar with the sounds of the lifts in my zone. I can readily hear, or feel and determine what it might be that needs… Read More »

Jim Fletcher; skier, civil engineer, and recipient of the Jan Leonard Award. Jim tells the story of his career spanning 40 years of ski industry ropeways, especially how the thin threads of an eye examination and draft lottery during the Vietnam War era allowed fate to have its way.

The use of helicopters to transport lift towers to mountain locations was a great increase in efficiency, and allowed for much less disruption of the hillside since haul roads no longer needed to be built to each tower location. New chairlifts were constructed using helicopters for tower installation at Stratton Mountain, VT in 1961 and… Read More »

Skytrac fabricates and stocks parts for Skytrac, CTEC and many other lift brands. Click here to check out parts and compare prices in our parts showroom or download your catalog. Meet Alex McCann, your Parts and Customer Service Manager: Alex McCann — Parts & Service (801) 972­-1699 ext: 313 alexm@skytrac.us