46 replies to this topic

[Bogong]

Here is a list of 32 "Ski lifts away from the snowfields" in Australia. It is part of a list of EVERY ski lift ever built in that country.

Australian ski lifts away from snowfields

[Lift Dinosaur]

Nice List, Bogong.
Thanks and welcome to the forum!

Dino

[northeastskier]

- Cabriolet at the Canyons
- Chairlift at Lake Placid Ski Jump

[Bogong]

Lift Dinosaur, on Mar 25 2009, 11:37 PM, said:

Nice List, Bogong.
Thanks and welcome to the forum!

Dino

Thanks Dino. After writing a few ski resort histories, I became frustrated that there was no proper record of old ski lifts, so I began to compile a list. Australia has had about 350 ski lifts since 1937 and I think I've identified them all, although there are probably a few that I've missed.

Has anyone compiled a similar list for other places?

[Peter]

I've been working on one for North America. It's got 4,480 entries so far.

[Bogong]

Skier, on Mar 26 2009, 02:46 PM, said:

I've been working on one for North America. It's got 4,480 entries so far.

Based on my experience of compiling a list of every Australian ski lift, I'd guess it would be almost impossible to try and document all of the roughly 4,500 lifts in North America at once, so my advice would be to concentrate on one major region with a maximum of about 500 lifts and once you have what you think is a fairly good list, put it up on a wiki site. I used WikiSki but any wiki popular with skiers would do.

Then ask your friends and people in chat rooms to have a look at it and no matter how confident you are that you have all the ski lifts in a region, people will tell you about weird lifts in major resorts that only ran for a couple of years and obscure backcountry lifts that are unknown outside a small group.

Once you have done one major region, move on to another. In my case, I'm satisfied that I have 99% of the Australian ski lifts that were built and I may have the energy to add New Zealand ski lifts in a year or so.

Good luck, people will call you a bit of a geek, but I've had academics contact me asking me for my sources and it has been a great fun project.

[boardski]

There is a Riblet center-bar double chair in Kentucky serving the Natural Bridge park. Definately worth seeing the area and riding the chair. This would be excellent ski/ snowboard terrain. Too bad Kentucky doesn't get enough snow.

There is also a very lame Riblet pulse lift near Mt Rushmore which takes you up a short hill (You cannot see the top terminal from the bottom or nobody would pay good $$ to ride it) At the top you can look at Mt Rushmore from several miles away through a telescope for a fee of course.