6 replies to this topic

[okuisman]

Hi all,

I would need to obtain a best estimate number of operating T-bar, Poma etc. "drag" ski lifts globally. I don't need an exact number (would be nice thought), but a rough estimate. Tens of thousands, hundred of thousands or more?

Thanks for your help!

BR,
Frank

[Bogong]

Globally? There are lots of people here who can help you with North America, but I'm an expert on Australia and to a lesser extent, New Zealand. I think there would be about 150 drag lifts (T-Bars, Pomas, Platters and Nutcrackers) still operating in those countries.

Down here, drag lifts tend to be used by the big resorts high above the treeline where wind is a problem for chairlifts and by small resorts that can't afford a full network of chairlifts. Nutcracker tows are now restricted to small "club fields" (although most antipodean resorts started out with them). Some nutcrackers have been operating for over 50 years at the same location.

Here is a list of every Australian ski tow ever built, sorted by resort. If you are keen, you can count up the operating drag lifts: http://wikiski.com/wiki/index.php/Australi...i_tow_directory

You can work out what is operating in New Zealand by looking at the wiki-Ski listing of resorts for that country and following links. http://wikiski.com/w...ory:New_Zealand.

There is a fairly complete listing of listing of ski resortsresorts by country at WikiSki. While many of them do not have entries written for them yet, it will give you a good list of resorts to google.

[Peter]

383 by my count operating in North America, that includes T-Bars, J-Bars, and Platters.

[okuisman]

Okay,

Thanks for the info so far. This would lead me to believe that there are less than 10 000 drag lifts globally. The numbers so far would make somewhere around 1000 drag lifts outside Europe and probably several thousand in European ski resorts (they are much more common there, at least to my knowledge). In total, probably closer to 10 000 than 1 000 anyway.

Does this sound right?

Thanks for the help!

Frank

[skierdude9450]

Doing a quick search on lift-world.info I get over 4,500 surface lifts listed there.

[Lift Kid]

Austria, France, Switzerland, etc. probably make up a very large portion of the surface lifts globally. Those regions tend to have far more surface lifts than aerial lifts.

[seilbahnbilder.ch]

Only in Switzerland we have about 900 T-bars an platters, which are still in operation. All these installations appear in the following list:

http://www.bergbahnen.org/search.php?ort=%...=de&seite=0

The list also includes images of most of the lifts.

This post has been edited by seilbahnbilder.ch: 26 May 2009 - 04:23 AM