Every December 31, somebody in the lift line would say it.
“I’ll take the chair with you for the rest of the year.”
Same joke every year. We laughed every time.
We were kids at Bousquet, usually getting on the Blue or Yellow Chair, and the ride was long enough that you had plenty of time to come up with bad jokes.
Both lifts were slow, a little cranky and in absolutely no hurry to get you back to the top. I don't remember thinking much about that at the time. You just got on. Then you spent the next several minutes talking about the last run, figuring out the next one, giving somebody a hard time or just sitting there. Then you got off and did it again.
Every winter I go back to Bousquet with my family, and I still ride those lifts.
By today's standards, they take forever. That's probably a big part of why I still like them.
Maybe it's just nostalgia, but fixed-grip chairlifts remind me of skiing as a kid. A lot of the day was spent skiing, obviously, but a surprising amount of it was spent sitting next to somebody on a chairlift talking about nothing in particular.
High-speed quads are great. I use them. I like them. I also think they change a mountain more than we usually admit.
Fixed-grip doubles are disappearing, replaced by detachable quads and six-packs. From the resort's point of view, it makes perfect sense. More people uphill. More runs per day. Shorter lift lines. Fewer people standing around wondering why they're paying $150 to wait for a chair.
But there's another side to that math.
A fixed-grip double might move around 900 people an hour. A big detachable quad can move something closer to 2,700. Put three times as many skiers at the top of the same terrain and, sooner or later, you notice it.
The trails didn't get any wider.
Fresh snow that might have lasted into lunch gets skied off earlier. A bump run gets hammered faster. And instead of waiting in a lift line, you're sometimes waiting for an opening in traffic halfway down the mountain.
I notice it most on beginner terrain.
Those big green groomers are supposed to be where somebody learns how to ski without feeling like they're standing in the middle of I-93. But put a high-capacity lift underneath them and suddenly you've got experienced skiers lapping the same trail all morning. One kid is trying to link two turns together while somebody else is flying by.
That's not necessarily a reason not to build the lift. It's just part of the tradeoff.
And then there are the places that are special almost because they're inconvenient.
The mid-mountain double that never seems to have much of a line. The trail pod that takes just enough effort to reach that most people don't bother. The glades that somehow hold snow longer because you can't bang out six runs there before lunch.
A slow lift puts a natural limit on how quickly people can ski the terrain underneath it.
It also makes you sit still for a few minutes.
I've spent a lot of chairlift rides talking with friends, talking with my kids, watching somebody ski underneath, looking at tracks in the woods or just watching snow blow across the liftline. None of that shows up in the vertical-per-hour calculation.
Yes, I realize this is starting to sound like an old man yelling at clouds. Change is inevitable. Lifts get old, mountains modernize, and skiers generally like getting uphill faster.
I'm not against new lifts. There are plenty of old chairs that probably should be replaced, and plenty of mountains where a high-speed lift makes the skiing better.
I just think the conversation around them is usually incomplete.
When a mountain announces a new lift, uphill capacity is one of the headline numbers. What usually isn't mentioned is what all those extra people will do when they unload.
Those two things are connected.
Eventually, the Blue Chair at Bousquet will probably be replaced too. Somebody will run the numbers, and the numbers will probably say it makes sense.
I'll understand.
But I'll miss that long ride up.