The Vanishing Ski Lift: Why We Can't Afford To Replace Them

Nearly half of every ski lift currently operating in North America is more than 30 years old. 500 of them have been running since the 70s. 178 were installed in the 60s or earlier. These are not antiques in a museum. These are operational lifts carrying skiers up the mountain right now. And the crisis surrounding them has been building for 20 years. To truly understand the scale of the problem I've been looking at some recent deeply researched reporting from Rick Kahl over at Ski Area Management Magazine. Much of the core data Rick discusses comes from the exhaustive work of Peter Landsman, editor of liftblog.com and a lift supervisor himself. If you're a frequent skier I'm sure you're aware of the problem with aging lifts. What you may not know is how close some of these lifts are coming to disappearing forever. How devastating this is for smaller operators and how hard a small group of people are working to keep them running. According to data compiled by Peter Landsman about 6,682 ropeways have been built in the United States and Canada since 1935. Of those 2,947 are still operating. That's 44%. And of those 2,947 operating lifts just under half are more than 30 years old. More than 500 have been running at least 45 years. 178 were installed in the 1960s or earlier. Landsman puts it simply. The math is pretty simple. If a ski lift has an expected lifespan of 40 years and the industry replaces them on that schedule, North American Resorts should be installing approximately 75 new lifts every single year just to stay current. Last year the actual number was 37 and only 23 of those replaced an existing lift. That's less than a third of what the math demands. This is not a surprise. People inside the industry have been aware of this problem for at least 20 years. The difference now is that the gap between what needs to happen and what can realistically happen has never been wider. Complicating the problem is the fact that 90% of the aging lifts, those 30 years old or older, were manufactured by just seven companies. Doppelmayr, Hall, Riblett, Borvig, Yon, Poma, and Sea-Tec. Some of those manufacturers are still operating in some form, but some are not. And the challenges their equipment now presents are reshaping how the entire ski industry thinks about its future. For the veteran skier, these legacy lifts represent far more than just steel and cable. They are a tangible link to our history. Watching them turn today is not just a triumph of maintenance, but a reminder of the unhurried pace of the mountains that formed us. While it's inevitable that many need to be replaced, it's my hope that we continue to preserve as many as is feasible. Capital costs for replacing or building a new lift have risen 40 to 45 percent in the past six years alone. Construction costs are up 40 percent over the same period. Early in 2025, steel prices jumped 10 percent in a single month. A mid-sized chairlift that once cost four or five million dollars now routinely runs seven to ten million and sometimes more. For a small resort earning seven million dollars in total annual revenue, that is not a line item. That is an existential decision. And financing that decision is much harder than it sounds. Mark Fisher, CEO of Pacific Group Resorts, has described the bind precisely. Conventional lenders offer equipment loans with terms of five years, maybe seven at best. But the economic life of a ski lift spans 40 years. As Fisher put it, you don't do a short-term loan for a long-term asset. A ski area earning seven million dollars in revenue is not going to get a five-year loan for a seven to ten million dollar lift. The numbers and timetable don't work. The other issue is perception. To a bank, a ski lift does not look like a movable, resellable piece of equipment. It is bolted to a mountain. It cannot be easily repossessed and sold somewhere else. And that makes lenders deeply reluctant to take on the risk at the scale these projects actually require. The result is a financing gap that has left hundreds of resorts managing older and older equipment year after year and working hard as they can to keep them well maintained and operating. If you are finding this interesting, please take a moment to like this video and subscribe to Seniors on the Slopes. Next, we get to the part about the amazing people who actually keep these lifts going. So if replacement is expensive and financing is difficult, what are resorts actually going to do? The answer for many of them is rigorous maintenance built around a philosophy that might surprise you. John Ball is the General Manager of Snow Valley Resort in Ontario and a member of the Lift Advisory Committee of the Technical Standards and Safety Authority. He has spent years developing a systematic approach to extending the useful life of older infrastructure. His model is built around a five-year engineering review cycle. Every component on every lift is evaluated on a fixed schedule and when that review comes around, the team essentially takes the lift apart and puts it back together, replacing anything that does not meet as built or better standards. As Ball described it, when you have mechanics working on a lift that has a dedicated task list to complete for the engineering review, they become much more familiar with that lift and every component on it because essentially every five years you're taking it apart and putting it back together again. That familiarity, he argues, is the real asset, not the age of the equipment. An experienced mechanic who knows every bolt on a 1975 Hall double chair may be worth more to that mountain than the brand new installation that nobody on staff fully understands. What matters is not necessarily the age of the lift. What matters is the condition of that machine and the people who maintain it. Matt Vose, General Manager of Cascade Mountain in Wisconsin and Vice Chair of the National Body that sets the safety standards for ropeways, has reached a similar conclusion. As he puts it, overwhelmingly it's cheaper to maintain a 50-year-old Hall as long as you have the proper personnel in place. Vose acknowledges that the variable that complicates this calculation is risk. Age-related failures are genuinely difficult to predict and the cost, both on the liability side and on the emergency repair, is hard to quantify until something goes wrong. The economics favor maintenance, the risk calculus argues for replacement. Deciding which course to take challenges just about every ski resort and for many that decision can impact their future viability. What it takes is a culture of care and the desire to keep these historical lifts running and nowhere is this more evident than in our independent ski areas. There is a quiet unsung beauty in the way small independent mountains treat these aging lifts. It's not just a review cycle, for many it's a labor of love. As seniors we understand that value isn't always about the newest model, it's about the character, reliability, and the wisdom that comes with experience. When a mountain decides to invest in keeping a legacy lift running, they are telling their skiers that history matters. Take for instance the legendary single chair at Mad River Glen. Built in 1948, it is the only one of its kind left in the lower 48 states. When it reached the end of its service life in the mid-2000s, the mountains skier cooperative faced a choice. Replace it with a modern lift or save the icon. They chose to save it. Through a massive multi-million dollar save the single campaign, they didn't just patch it up, they performed a complete historic restoration. Towers were stripped and repainted, the drive and bull wheels were replaced with precision engineered parts, and they fabricated new chairs to match the original design perfectly. It was a monumental, years-long labor of love, but it guaranteed that this piece of living history would continue to carry skiers to the top of General Stark Mountain for generations to come. I simply cannot imagine Mad River Glen without it, as it is the heartbeat of that mountain. Even with the best maintenance philosophy, aging lifts face a challenge that compounds every year. Finding parts. As I mentioned, 90% of lifts more than 30 years old came from seven manufacturers. Some still produce replacement components for older equipment, some cannot or choose not to. Keith Johns, CEO of Doppelmayr, one of the industry's largest manufacturers, has said the company tries to support older equipment as long as it makes economic sense, but for certain components from four or five decades ago, the cost of recreating the original tooling or mold may simply be prohibitive. The manufacturer wants to help, but the math does not always allow it. The secondary market for used equipment is shrinking. As major resorts replace aging, fixed-grip chairs with modern high-speed detachables and gondolas, the supply of older lifts available for purchase and relocation is getting thinner every year. And relocation carries its own risks. Bobby Farrell of Elevation Engineering in Vermont has noted that when evaluating a lift for relocation, internal corrosion in hangers and tower tubes can be difficult to detect until the equipment is disassembled. You may not know what you have actually purchased until well into the installation process. Behind every operating vintage lift is a person or a small team of people with a very specific set of skills and a very deep knowledge of a very particular machine. Building and sustaining this team requires training, time, and institutional knowledge that can take years to develop, and that knowledge walks out the door when an experienced mechanical engineer or engineer retires. Finding qualified lift maintenance technicians is one of the most persistent challenges facing smaller resorts right now. The work is technical, seasonal, physically demanding, and often does not come with the compensation that competes with other skilled trades. The industry is working on it. New training programs are being developed, but the gap between the number of aging lifts that need experienced maintenance and the number qualified to provide it is real, and it is widening. The industry is not standing still. Carl Skyling, president of Skytrack, has described his company's philosophy as being built around maximum simplicity, modular, bolt-together design that reduces installation complexity and cost. Skytrack is planning a 25% increase in production capacity for 2027. Mark Fisher of Pacific Group Resorts has asked what may be the defining question of the next decade for smaller ski areas. What if we could manufacture modular lifts like an erector set? Right now the terminals are getting bigger, requiring cranes for installation and huge trucks for shipping. It's a question worth sitting with. The ski industry spent the 1990s and early 2000s chasing high speed and comfort, high speed detachables, enclosed gondolas, heated seats. These innovations changed everything about the experience of skiing at large destination resorts. They also changed everything about what a ski lift costs. Some voices in the industry are now asking whether there is a market for something simpler, a lighter weight lift, a bolt-together installation, a product designed not to impress but to be affordable, reliable, and maintained by the teams who staff the mountains that need it the most. Peter Lansman has noted one reason for cautious optimism. MND, a French manufacturer, is working to establish itself as a third competitive option in the North American market. And as Lansman observed, competition always helps hold prices down. To fully understand the significance of what Peter is saying here, we need some background. For years the North American market has functioned as a virtual duopoly between Doppelmayr and Leitner Poma, which also includes the Skytrak brand. Because these two corporations control the vast majority of new lift installations, resorts historically have had very few options when it comes time to replace aging equipment or expand their terrain. This consolidation makes the arrival of a third competitor, like French-based MND, particularly noteworthy. In a market where high demand and long lead times are common, the presence of a viable alternative provider offers resort operators more leverage in negotiations, which helps stabilize costs and encourages more innovation in lift design. Though MND installed its first North American chairlift, the Tecumseh Express, a six-person detachable bubble at Waterville Valley, in 2022, we may be waiting a little longer for their next installation. Rather than further competing for high-speed detachable contracts, MND's North American team announced plans to introduce a fixed-grip chair specifically for the U.S. market. Here is what I keep coming back to. This is not just a story about replacing aging steel and cable. It is a story about preserving the soul of our sport. Ultimately, this is about the sustainability of the independent family-owned mountains, the places that form the backbone of our community and may not have the luxury of multi-million dollar capital budgets. I don't want to live in a world where only the resorts with the deepest pockets and the newest fastest lifts can survive. The legacy lifts at these smaller areas connect us to something the modern industry has largely moved past. A time when skiing was simpler, more accessible, more egalitarian, and profoundly more authentic. These machines are the heartbeat of the mountains that shaped us. If they eventually disappear, it will be because the economics became too rigid, the solutions arrived too late, and the dedicated people keeping them alive simply ran out of time. Those mechanics, engineers, and ski area managers, the ones making the impossible budget decisions year after year just to keep the bullwheels turning, deserve far more credit than they receive. They are the true guardians of our shared history. And as we look to the future, my hope is that we find the parts, the talent, and the industry-wide will to ensure that these legacy lifts continue to carry us up the mountain for a long, long time to come. If you enjoyed watching the video, please like, share, and subscribe to Seniors on the Slopes. We want to hear from you. Have you skied at a mountain with vintage lifts? Which ones have meant the most to you? Tell us about it in the comments.