SE4:EP3 - Peter Landsman: Our Love of Lifts

As skiers, we love ski lifts. They get us quickly to the top of mountains so we can slide back down. But what would you think about visiting every single ski lift in America? 2,381 of them! Well, that has been the life of Peter Landsman, a lift supervisor and founder of liftblog, a popular website and network of social channels. Today Last Chair chats with Peter about his adventure across America, the unique lifts he found and what we can expect for new lifts this winter.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest (Snoqualmie), Landsman became infatuated with lifts early. “Immediately, I loved to ski – I think I was about four years old when I first started. Very quickly with the skiing, I realized the lifts were also really interesting machines. Ever since then I've had an interest in both the skiing and the lifts and tried to get to as many ski areas and lifts as I can.”

As a lift supervisor at Jackson Hole, Landsman works long shifts three to four days a week, then heads to the airport to fly around the USA, hopscotching to ski resorts in a rental car winter and summer to ride lifts, hike to lifts and photograph them from every conceivable angle.

In 2015 he started a small blog (liftblog.com) documenting his travels and indexing ski lifts. It was slow at first but with some love and car on social media, it took off.

There is probably no individual in America who is so knowledgeable about, literally, every ski lift in the country. He can rattle off stats and show you photos on his phone.

Here’s a sample of Last Chair’s episode 3 of season 4 with Peter Landsman.

How old were you when you began an infatuation with ski lifts?

One of the earlier memories I have of a ski trip was to Sun Valley. I was five or six and asking my parents if I could stay late and watch them turn off the ski lift and like, somehow that would be interesting. They probably thought it was kind of a funny thing to ask, but they let me stay and watch and I ended up talking to the lift operators and I still do that kind of thing today.

You’ve been to nearly 500 resorts. You must have some interesting stories?

The ski industry is incredibly broad. I have been to a ski resort that's inside. There are ski resorts run by schools. There are ski resorts that are run by the US military. There are ski resorts that are run by nonprofits. So they come in all shapes and sizes. And it's really remarkable how many different types of lifts and ski resorts I've been to.

How do you plan?

I study the map. Usually I have an idea in my head of what the ski area is like from my prior research. But the night before, I review the map, figure out what I think is going to be the most efficient and fastest way to go up and down every lift. It really varies on the resort, how many runs you have to do for each lift to really photograph them properly and ride them and then get between the different lifts. 

Do you have a pipeline to the lift manufacturers to learn about new lifts?

I do have a good sense of what lifts are coming online. It actually mostly comes from the U.S. Forest Service in Utah and a lot of other places. Many resorts are on public lands, so they have to go through a permit process through the Forest Service before they can even build the lift. And then a lot of times resorts will tell me that they have an announcement coming up and keep me in the loop.

Have you seen some unusual lifts?

Every one is different. One that comes to mind is in New Jersey, an actual lift that was built here in Salt Lake City but sent over to New Jersey. It's inside this new indoor ski resort in a shopping mall called Big Snow. They have a quad chairlift that instead of coming out of the ground it actually hangs from the ceiling. So as you ride up, the lift towers are coming down from the roof. And that's a pretty unique lift. And then another one that comes to mind is a single chair up in Alaska. Cordova, Alaska, has a single chairlift still operating. It's actually from Sun Valley that got sent up there after they were done with it in Idaho.

Do you also try to track the lineage of lifts, like where they started and ended up?

I do. So some of them have moved two or three or four times. As an example, Deer Valley's old Homestake Lift went to my home mountain in Washington – Crystal Mountain, where it's now operating again. So if lifts are not that old and being removed, there's a good chance that they will end up at another ski area down the line.

I’ve always wondered, how do the ends of lift cables get attached to each other?

It's called a splice, and it's a very technical marriage of two ends of a haul rope. There are specialized specialists whose only job is to go around the country and splice these ropes. So they basically unwind both ends of a cable and weave the strands together, make some cuts, do some pounding with hammers. And at the end, you've got a nice smooth loop of rope. And nobody, unless you're a real technical guy like me, nobody really knows where the marriage even is.

Any technical innovations on the horizon?

Some of it's behind the scenes technical aspects that we deal with as lift employees that the public may not see. The big one of those is called direct drive. For example, Alta's new Sunnyside lift is going to have a direct drive. It's a new kind of motor for ski lifts that directly operates on the bull wheel. So it takes out a whole lot of components of the drive system of a lift that could fail.

We have a handful of six-packs in Utah, with some eights planned. What’s the limit?

I think eight is probably the limit as far as how many skiers you can line up in a row, have them sit down and then be able to get off and not crash.

Peter has a lot more to say about his favorite lifts and unusual ones he’s seen around America. Listen in to the full episode of Last Chair with liftblog founder Peter Landsman on his adventure to visit every lift in America.

By the Numbers

2,381 lifts in USA

480 resorts

46 states

773,091 miles (thank you Delta)

Liftblog’s Five Game Changing Lifts in Utah

Tram - Snowbird - Kicking off a second half-century

Collins - Alta - Two lifts in one

Quicksilver - Park City Mountain - Connecting two resorts together

John Paul - Snowbasin - Third most chairlift vertical in USA

Paradise - Powder Mountain - Classic fixed grip quad serving vast terrain

New Utah Lifts for 2022-23

Alta - Detachable six replacing Sunnyside

Deer Valley - Detachable quad replacing Burns

Snowbird - New tram cabins and drive system

Sundance - New fixed grip quad opening new terrain off Jake’s

Utah Olympic Park - Detachable quad serving new West Peak