More and more resorts are phasing out their two-seaters in favor of high-speed quads and six-packs. From a business perspective, it makes sense: more vertical per hour, better ROI when pass holders want to rack up days, fewer complaints about lift lines. Nobody is wrong to want that. But for those of us who actually like skiing the mountain, not just cycling it, there is a cost. And we are starting to feel it.
I spent a lot of my childhood skiing at Bousquet, usually riding the Blue Chair or the Yellow Chair. They were slow, a little cranky and never in much of a hurry to get you back to the top.
At the time, that was simply how skiing worked.
The ride gave you time to talk with friends, replay the last run and decide where to go next. On December 31, someone would inevitably say, “I’ll take the chair with you for the rest of the year,” and we would laugh at the same ridiculous joke every time.
Now I go back to Bousquet and ride that slow Blue Chair with my kids. By modern standards, it takes forever. But that is part of why I like it.
We talk. We look down at the trails and watch other skiers make their turns. We take in the surrounding Berkshire hills. They point out where they want to ski next, or tell me about something that happened on the last run. There is no rush to get off and immediately do it all again.
A high-speed lift is efficient. It gets you more runs, and sometimes that is exactly what you want. But an old double gives you something different. It gives you time to experience the mountain instead of simply moving through it.
Those chair rides were part of skiing for me. Now they are becoming part of skiing for my kids, too.
First the numbers. Your average fixed-grip double moves about 900 people per hour. A detachable quad? Nearly triple that. That solves the lift line, but it hands you a different problem: the same trails, now with three times the traffic on them. Faster lifts do not make the mountain bigger. They just make it busier. None of this means fast is bad. On the main arteries, moving people efficiently is exactly the point. But run that math across a whole mountain and the trails that used to stay untouched until noon are tracked out by mid-morning. That two-minute lift ride you love? Great. But now you are back at the bottom with a few hundred of your closest friends, five times an hour, and so is everyone else.
Beginners feel it too, in a different way. Wide-open green groomers, the ones that are perfect for your first season, are now speedways. High-speed access means advanced skiers are bombing those same runs lap after lap, and a nervous first-timer trying to link turns is suddenly sharing the trail with people doing 40. The terrain that is supposed to be the gentlest on the mountain stops feeling that way.
There is something sacred about those slower, quieter laps. The ones off a mid-mountain double that somehow always stays uncrowded. The glades with a locals-only feel. The bump run that does not get chopped up in the first 45 minutes. The old double chair slowed you down on purpose. You were not in a rush. You were not pounding vert to get your money's worth. You were skiing, talking, looking around, and occasionally just sitting in silence, watching the snow drift sideways.
Some places still get it. Mad River Glen has its single chair. Alta still runs old fixed-grips. Magic Mountain held onto its mid-mountain doubles for years because they worked.
The question is not whether we should stop upgrading lifts altogether. Of course not. Modern high-speed quads have their place, especially on the main arteries where moving big volumes of skiers efficiently is the whole job. But there is also value in protecting the slower, soulful doubles that access terrain meant to be savored, not rushed. And when a mountain plans an upgrade, the conversation cannot stop at the ride up. Are we ready for the downhill traffic that comes with it?
We all love fast laps now and then. But if every lift becomes a bullet train, we will look around one day and realize the mountains feel more crowded, more rushed, and a little less like the thing we fell for in the first place.