Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

Colorado company is making part for smaller chairlifts

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Created on Friday, 04 March 2011 15:16

Written by Dena Rosenberry

After 40 years of replacing parts on aging chairlifts, Leigh Nelson decided a few years ago it was time for new chairlifts at his Welch Village Ski and Snowboard Resort southeast of Minneapolis, writes Jason Blevins in the Denver Post.

But the major U.S. lift makers — Salt Lake City's Doppelmayr-CTEC and Grand Junction's Leitner-Poma of America — weren't making affordable fixed-grip chairs. They were too busy forging high-speed chairlifts and high-capacity trams and gondolas for the big resorts in Europe and the Western U.S.

"It's incumbent upon us in the industry to keep replacing our chairs with newer technology," said Nelson, who owns one of 14 ski areas in Minnesota.  "But that technology wasn't available five years ago. I said, 'We have an issue here.' "

After gathering more than a dozen Midwest ski-area owners, Nelson persuaded Doppelmayr to make a fixed-grip chair, and he's been installing a new chair every other year since at his 300-vertical-foot ski area.

Now Leitner-Poma in Grand Junction is also producing low-cost, fixed-grip chairs to meet the surging demand for chairlift replacement in the hundreds of smaller ski areas across the country's midsection and Eastern Seaboard.

It's a back-to-our-roots business plan that ultimately feeds demand for those multimillion-dollar speedy trams and six-packs across the West.

"These small areas are really important because they feed the big areas," said Leitner-Poma president Rick Spear, who is producing low-power, low-cost, fixed-grip chairlifts that can easily fit into existing systems at smaller ski areas.

"We designed it to match the need. There's no reason to stick a V8 in a compact car, right? We are adapting to the market because it seems like there are a lot of compact cars out there."

Read more of this interesting ski-business story.

PHOTO:  That's a shot from Arapahoe Basin last season (or was it the season before?) used only to illustrate the story.  I don't know who manufactured the parts for the chairlift.