When there were lift lines

Got this little story in an email today from ATSD.....good for a friday morning


Beginning after World War II and for the next 40 years, weekend skiers waited in lift lines so long that the person next to you had time to describe where he was born, his best powder day, his favorite music, why he deserved a promotion at the office, and . . . hey, look at that babe in the Bogner pants. Waiting could last an hour, all for a 12-minute ride up the mountain and the reward of a quick descent.

The problem of egregious lift queues, exasperating and bone-freezing,  arose from the relentless supply of young babyboomers demanding to ski. Their numbers exceeded the growth of new ski areas and lifts, even though that growth itself was spectacular. In the ten-year period between 1956 and 1966 alone, more than 580 ski areas with chairlifts and T-bars came into being, many of them previously equipped with rope tows. Yet it wasn’t enough. The number of U.S. skiers quintupled in the same period. And when a million or more of them arrived at the bottom of the mountain on a Saturday morning, the place looked like a standing-room-only Beatles concert. Waits of 45 minutes and more were common across the country, from Stowe to Boyne to Big Bear.

Some relief arrived with the advent of triple and quadruple seated lifts, but the big breakthrough came in the 1980s with the engineering of the detachable chair.  Climbing speed doubled. Time-wasting mishaps in boarding the lifts were sharply reduced. The new chairs and gondolas were people-eaters. In the last five years of the 20th Century alone, North American ski resorts installed 250 lifts capable of carrying more people uphill than all of the lifts that existed in the winter of 1965-66!

In the 1950s and 1960s, observed writer Morten Lund, lift lines allowed enough time “to meet a member of the opposite sex, get infatuated, engaged and plan the wedding.” Today, a Saturday or Sunday lift line scarcely allows time to work up an après-ski date. While no one wants to regress to long queues and slow lifts, history suggests that they once helped to develop skiing’s reputation as a sociable sport.

Very nicely written: a natural blogger if you ask me.

Ahhh...the good old days

Harvey44 wrote

Very nicely written: a natural blogger if you ask me.

He is a good writer, but he didn't write that.....he found it on the intrawebz

pro2860 wrote

Ahhh...the good old days

Lift lines used to be a wicked good time

back in my Smuggs days we'd have a blast in line...peeps would pass bottles of wine/booze/stuff on fire etc, etc.

seems as tho "fun" has been taken out of the dictionary lately

I think there are plenty of places on the mountain to have "fun" besides the lift lines

Pretty cool story but I would not trade what I have now for that.

gondola rides are LARRY.  I laugh harder on the gondi then I do any other place in the world.  Its just a stupid cube.  

I got a little taste of the old days when i went to mad river.   Keep it.   Who the hell wants to talk to those pretentious hippies anyways.   Great skiing.


As far as socializing.   I think it is overrated.  I am not actively looking for new friends.  I have enough.  

tjf1967 wrote

 

As far as socializing.   I think it is overrated.  I am not actively looking for new friends.  I have enough.

Talk about LARRY

I think that may why Gore keeps the North Quad. No lift lines, but a very slow 20 minute ride up allows for a lot of socialization.

tom

Recently saw some aerial photos of Liberty Mountain in the 70s.  700 vertical feet and only one black two green and a blue.    Weekend waits were two hrs.  

The whole base area was a lift line.  

Talking to anyone back in those days....they loved it.  

tjf1967 wrote

Pretty cool story but I would not trade what I have now for that.

gondola rides are LARRY.  I laugh harder on the gondi then I do any other place in the world.  Its just a stupid cube.  

I got a little taste of the old days when i went to mad river.   Keep it.   Who the hell wants to talk to those pretentious hippies anyways.   Great skiing.


As far as socializing.   I think it is overrated.  I am not actively looking for new friends.  I have enough.

This ^^^ person, w/ some editing assistance, is a NATURAL BLOGGER!  FUNNY OFF THE CHARTS!

There is nothing fun about lift lines.  

ScottyJack wrote

There is nothing fun about lift lines.

you abvi are doing something wrong....iffin U hafta stand in line U might as well have fun

My memories of Gore are standing in liftlines. I havn't been there since 1976. I did a paper in high School on how to cut liftlines. I got an A. I was good at it. Now, everyone would call me names or beat me up for doing what I did.

Post your A paper, would love to read it.         Did some line cutting myself back in the day at Blue Knob, Pa.      Thought I was so smooth.  But on reflection, I would love to have some video tape to see just how pathetic my attempts/sucesses were.  Because of it, I give teenage line cutters massive breaks, and actually chuckle sometimes.    I usually started with a line like..."nice skis, I really like them" then I would stike up conversation from there.   Next thing you knew the guy/gal and I were in the 4 person corral. Cutting as a group was never sucessful.   Each man on his own.  

Fondly remember using the MAJOR lift lines as cover when we would poach closed trails, which ended at the base of the lifts.   You simply would ski into the throng of people and blend in with all of the other blue jean skiers.  You never pushed, or skied over other's skis.   You wanted new friends for cover, not pissed off line waiters.     If there were no lift lines, we simply could not poach.  

lolkl wrote

My memories of Gore are standing in liftlines. I havn't been there since 1976.

Those were the bad old days for sure.

I:)skiing wrote

Post your A paper, would love to read it.         Did some line cutting myself back in the day at Blue Knob, Pa.      T

He said blue knob!  

ScottyJack wrote

There is nothing fun about lift lines.

Amen.
Working your way through a 30 minute maze of permanent post and rail fences that many ski areas had installed sucked. After the 30 minutes in the line there was a 15-20 minute ride up the mountain. Anybody who has fond memories of waiting in these long lines is just choosing to forget the horror.

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At least at MRG, after standing in line and riding the single.... you're at MRG!
Years ago, I was at Red Mt. in B.C. and I got to meet the owner. I asked him if they had plans to replace their old, slow double chair. He replied, " Red Mt. is about going down the hill, not about going up. " He was right. The place has amazing terrain and a great feel to the area.