Some of my strongest memories from nearly 40 years of skiing happened at the hands of the sport’s most questionable lift. I can still clearly recall my first day ever out, four decades ago, for falling off a T-bar surface lift. I can picture my teenage best friend and I huddled together on a slow and cold double-chair plotting our future as pro skiers. And I’ll always remember riding a T-bar with a toddler, partially because of the back pain.
But a troubling trend to replace these ski hill scourges has some collateral damage: losing all those rites of passage for the next generation. And all that core character, replaced instead by a high-speed quad that plays music, a heated bubble chair, and a covered magic carpet, respectively, in one case in particular.
That latest stinging casualty is the Summit Platter, which used to pull the daring to the best … Read the rest
Read Here