I respect ski resorts that come up with creative, well-thought-out names for their lifts. A lift’s name will usually last decades and be passed on to subsequent lifts in the same location. KT-22 is an example of a lift name so iconic I do not even need to say the resort. Yet more than 900 lifts in the US and Canada have no name at all or go only by a letter/number. Many resorts have a bunch of lifts with generic names like “T-Bar” and “Beginner.” I set out to identify some of the most frequently-used names in hopes that the ski industry can be more creative in the future. Here are the top 10:
- Summit. There are 38 lifts called Summit including nine Summit Expresses. Forty-four more lifts have other words added such as Mt. Snow’s Grand Summit Express. The temptation to name a lift Summit is obvious but it is hardly a helpful name when we are talking about machines that ascend mountains.
- North. While only ten lifts are called North, 34 more are named North Bowl, North Creek, North Face, etc. The other compass directions are almost as common – there are 28 West lifts, 22 East lifts and 21 South lifts. Not very creative and I would argue most ski resort guests have no idea which direction is which.
- Blue. Most ski areas have gotten away from painting their lifts bright colors and giving them corresponding names since the Forest Service banned such displays. However there are still 23 Blue lifts, 20 Green, 19 Silver, 15 Red & Gold, 7 Yellow, and a handful each of Orange, Pink and Purple lifts.
- Eagle. A surprising 26 lifts have the word Eagle in their name including four that are Eagle Express. Other resorts go further with Flying Eagle, Soaring Eagle, Screaming Eagle, Golden Eagle and Copper’s American Eagle. Other popular animal names include Bear and Elk. These aren’t bad names; they are just too common.
- Village. The US and Canada have 17 Village lifts including 4 Village Gondolas. I put these in the same generic category as Summit.
- Sunrise. Some resorts try to get past East and West by using Sunrise and Sunset. The result is 15 Sunrise lifts and almost as many Sunsets. For an industry centered on snow, the word sun is very popular. I count 9 Sunnysides, 8 Sundances and 8 Sunshines among others.
- Meadow. Learning lifts in particular seem to suffer from generic naming. Meadow is by far the most popular name for a beginner lift at 18, followed by Easy Rider at 12, Beginner (10) and Discovery (8.)
- Skyline. A logging term for transporting timber by cable, Skyline is a natural name for a ski lift. But with 12 Skyline lifts and counting, it’s time to use some new logging terms.
- Panorama. There are seven of these. Winter Park tried to put a spin on it with Panoramic Express but it’s still not very creative.
Last summer’s construction season had two new Summit lifts, 3 Sun variations, a Meadow and a Discovery. Hopefully 2015 will be better but it’s looking like we may see three more Summit chairs!
Lift Blog 
Besides the Pink Lift at Schuss Mtn in MI, is there any others? Ours is a Ctec with pink towers, but galv chairs, I thought she was one of a kind
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Yours is the only Pink lift, Jon. There is another purple lift at Nub’s Nob.
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SILVER FIR EXPRESS! I love that lift in Snoqualmie Summit Central! It has the word “SILVER” in it. 2008 lift.
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The US Space Program also seems to be weirdly popular for chairlift names, by my count there are:
– 8 Discovery’s
– 5 Challenger’s
– 2 Apollo’s
– 2 Gemini’s
– 1 Endeavour
Before removing Apollo, Winter Park alone had one of each of these.
There don’t seem to be any lifts named after Atlantis or Columbia … probably because the reference would be ambiguous.
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It is interesting that a lot of those names from the US Space program are used. However, Challenger at Winter Park is named after the Union Pacific Steam Locomotives. I didn’t realize Winter Park was the only resort to use the name “Apollo” and “Endeavour”, though.
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Apollo and Gemini are terms from Greek mythology, originally- NASA used them as part of a long-running theme for their rockets, spacecraft, and entire programmes. They also had Atlas and Mercury. I’m not saying WP didn’t name their lifts after the space programme, but there are other sources. And as Axe says, Challenger wasn’t named after the shuttle; in fact it was built five years *before* the spacecraft of that name.
More food for thought: ‘Discovery’ is, to my mind, a more generic term for a beginner lift as one is ‘discovering’ this sport. Crystal (WA) has a discovery lift; it too was built before the spacecraft.
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Ah, these are interesting clarifications.
It makes sense Challenger would have a railroad tie-in (that’s the entire theme of Mary Jane). But it seems like way too much of a coincidence they have so many space program names that it’s not consciously part of the effort.
Of the many Discovery lifts, only Mount Snow makes it definitive: the lift is called “Discovery Shuttle”.
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Went and found a pre-Mary Jane (early 70s) WP map. I had forgotten they once had t-bars named Comet and Meteor as well, so your idea of a space theme (at least on that part of the hill) is well-founded. Meteor paralleled the Eskimo chairlft- that must have been one steep surface lift!
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My brother and I were discussing this topic just recently. There certainly are a great deal of common/generic lift names out there. Trails, too. We don’t have too many here; Alpine, Rendezvous, and Timberline are the only ones (besides the Eagle which Peter already mentioned) that are duplicated elsewhere. I suppose the Flyer is as well, although it’s usually in the context of a longer name such as the Green Mountain Flyer or Powderhorn’s Flat Top Flyer.
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I like how many of the Copper lifts seem to be backfilled based on their original letters:
A = Alpine
B = Super Bee
E = Excelerator (note this is not a real word)
H = High Point (now Woodward, formerly Union Creek)
K = Kokomo
L = Lumberjack
R = Rendezvous
S = Sierra
Then some of them are more cryptic … I’d be super curious how Blackjack and Celebrity Ridge got their names. Or Three Bears.
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3 Bears was named after the 3 original Powdr Corp founders. John Cumming, David Cumming, and their father, Ian Cumming. They referred to themselves as the “Three Bears”, and Copper wanted to Honor them, so they named it Three Bears.
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Correct. They were getting named just before I hired on, so I never heard why we went away from using the letters. I suppose it was an extension of the detachables being named- they all had letter designations but they also had names from the start. As for the others you mention, I believe Blackjack was a mine near here, as was Mountain Chief. Mountain Chief was first known as Extreme Access, believe it or not. Celebrity Ridge was originally called West Ridge (it still says so on the lift construction tag in the bottom shack) but before too long marketing thought that was mundane and changed it to match the patrol name of the cornice below the bottom terminal.
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The names for lifts arrived about the same time as names for trails. Before that, all trails were numbered- 1 (Far East) was in the East flank of Copper and 48 (Roundabout) was on the West flank .24 (Main Vein) was right in the middle, both numerically and geographically. It was pretty easy to tell a persons ability but the number of the trail they skied.
As for Blackjack, my recollection was a math major in the marketing department realized that the lift would be the 21st installed at Copper and 21= Blackjack. I also remember doing all the layout for ‘Extreme Access’ before the name change. Copper Bowl was always a nice place to spend the summer.:-)
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Why am I not surprised Blackjack was named by Marketing ;)
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