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First ski lift you ever went on?

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
My first would have been the old nursery tow rope in the centre of Val Thorens in 1992, spent a lot of time sliding back down to the start to get back on!!.

what I remember the most from my first ever foray on to a chairlift that trip, was our young female ESF instructor (the lovely Lulu!!!) assigning each one of us adults 2 small French children from a nippers ESF class to look after on a chair on the way up, I was crapping myself that they would fall off (they were cool as ice!!!!) not sure how I got off without falling back bottom over tit that time.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Button at Madeley, then the Checrouit cable car , '97 .......
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
@TQA, Clotes for me too, 1978, it was a sideways travelling single chair, skis off back then. Ski safety straps so lots of cuts on the face. It took the whole morning to get to the bottom, but I was in the improver ski school group by the afternoon 😁
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The poma on the blue run above Chavannes, Les Gets. Then the fixed grip chair on the same run was 2nd.
Actually, I lie. The 1st was the red bubble to get up to Chavannes.

Edit: and the first ski lift with a mountain bike was Pohorje in Maribor, Slovenia. Just after it was replaced, when the old one fell down.


Last edited by You need to Login to know who's really who. on Wed 9-08-17 20:10; edited 1 time in total
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Drags at Halifax the Harrogate dry slopes followed by drag at Embach in Austria in 1988
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A vicious Poma at Les Rousses in the Jura. It would pull you off the ground as it took up the slack. It seemed like that to an absolute beginner anyway. A baptism of fire. Never had a problem with drag lifts since!
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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Button lift at Aldershot in 1984 followed by the short drag in Tignes le Lac near Palafour in 1985.
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
A chair lift from Sauze d'Oulx to Sportina. Not even with skis on! We arrived on the coach transfer then were told that we would go up to our hotel on the chair lift and our luggage would be waiting for us there. It was my first ski holiday and as I went up, (freezing cold as I was dressed in ordinary clothes), I thought that I'd have to ski all the way back down there in the morning Laughing . Next day, as we spent all morning side stepping uphill, I began to wish it had been true!
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Poma on the nursery slope in Ellmau.
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@maggi, Yes, I remember the side stepping. Fortunately we didn't do too much of that before progressing to the drag lift.
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The drag lift on the nursery slope at Bowles near Tunbridge Wells is mine. Which is where I now teach part time. So that's only about thirty years in between using it for the first time and introducing people to it for *their* first time.
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
1979 at Harwood Common ski club (rip) snowHead
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
Spring 1994 - Camelback Lift at Beaver Run, Breckenridge Peak 9. Short, slow chair as I recall. Looks to be a magic carpet now on the piste map.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Mid-seventies Dragon valley, now Yongpyong. Two chairlifts; one red and shiny, the other rickety and yellow. No safety bar or chain - to my mother's horror; less of an issue for an 8 year old me who revelled in Korean attitudes to health and safety.


Last edited by You know it makes sense. on Thu 10-08-17 12:02; edited 1 time in total
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Poma in Ravascletto, Italy. Jan 1980.

If going up tow for the first time wasn't bad enough, there was a school from Glasgow in resort and there was a fair bit of bother between both schools. I was on the tow and a kid skied past and nearly took my head off with his ski pole shouting "remember bannockburn you Geordie b@stard". It was carnage in the boot room most days...
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A horrible (thankfully very short) rope tow which ripped your arms out at Catterick Dry slope in 1984. I've always loved t-bars & button lifts because they were such a relief after that rope thing.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Drag lift adjacent to the White lady run in Aviemore 1986. Seemed incredibly steep to me then. I fell off it half way up and went flying down the icey slope careering off the side and running into a fence pole. On my outstretched hands to save my face (it may have been worth it then). Injured my wrist but never got it Xray'd (which was daft as I worked in A&E). Wrist still aches!

Still hate them. Even managed to get an injury on an infamous button in Flaine this year. I have a mate who is a fantastic skier who just refuses to go on pistes supported by drags.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
ecureuil wrote:
Bracknell drag lift. Then Ahornbahn

That was for skiing. On reflection the first actual lift must have been the old Cairngorm chair, that preceded the funicular.
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Blunty wrote:
Rope tow at Rushden dry slope in 1979...no grip left by the end of the session!

That was brutal. A low rope, and they rented you little metal handles to grip it with. Inevitably they snatched at the rope and you'd end up with a sore shoulder. I didn't go there until maybe 1984, so the lift may have changed by then.

My own: Rossendale. No real issues with that, they taught us how to use it. I don't think I ever fell off.
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stevew wrote:
....Harrogate dry slope....


Back in the day stuff that!! Did an ASSI course there with a guy called Alex Leaf probably 35 years ago.

A couple of local boys went on to bigger and better hills and TV stuff. Madeye-Smiley
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Just came across this
early Cairngorms video (which may have been on snowHeads before). But it reminded me that my first chairlift, in 1962, a couple of years after this clip was shot, must have been up the White Lady on my second day's skiing (and back down to Coire Cas via the Traverse). The youTube video that follows that one shows the White Lady chairlift. I'm impressed by the skiing standard - certainly not me!
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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
I just love all these olde worlde ski videos. They seem to all be voiced by
Mr Cholmondeley-Warner! Laughing
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
@skimastaaah, never realised, til I saw yer pic, that helmet mounted gopro was around in '67 wink
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Rope tow at Catterick Indoor Ski Centre, first real lift was the Ahornbahn, Mayrhofen
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Tow up at Gloucester. C&A fartbag in full effect, well it was winter, so....
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
Wengen Nursery Slopes the long almost flat Wengiboden rope tow with those little orange plastic handles, age either 3 or 4 was never a fa of those tow lofts for some reason, actually prefered the Figeller lift which in those days was strong enough to lift you off the ground as it started, it ran you up the steeper side of the nursery slope very quickly and almost threw you off at the top, but as a child I found that "Fun"
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
Outside of the Ardent bubble was where I first put on a set of skis in 2016 - about a day later my first poma tow up the nursery slope in Linderet.

Pretty new to the game!
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
Some dodgy drag lift in La Bourboule in the Massif Central in the early seventies. God thats made me feel ancient!
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
@espri, I have a photo of my mother just like that, I think in Seefeld. No wonder she never really took to skiing!
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Le Mont Dore ,mid 1970's on school trip but cant remember name of it. First one I remember was day one of first proper trip at Bichlalm old single-seater lift in Kitzbuhel, c.1987....no longer any pistes there, its all off-piste now. Would love to go see that area again some time, last time we were there it was green fields in a poor snow winter 7-8 years ago so closed.

I'd also like to go back to Le Mont Dore - supposed to be great off-piste, albeit at the time as a 13 year old it was rainy/ foggy and nearly put me off for life! Laughing
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Button tow at Hillend in Edinburgh, it was heaven after 2 days of side stepping up to the first line.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
I can't believe I am the first in this thread to suffer the button lift at Ackers ski slope in Birmingham.
http://youtube.com/v/u-Y0mZzUdRQ

Honestly it might as well have been the headline venue for the infamous "Birmingham, It's Not poo-poo" campaign of the 1990s, featuring Birmingham Baywatch and a variety of people trying to pretend that Digbeth wasn't a warzone.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
@tarrantd,
Quote:

Button lift at Aldershot in 1984

You beat us to it by 2 years, we used to go there loads when we lived in Guildford, great slope - I assume its long gone?

One of the funniest things I've ever seen was a bunch of yoof's learning in the heavy snow falling on there and going so fast that one of them went flying off the back and ended up spread-eagled in the gorze bushes. Laughing
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@Markymark29,
Quote:

Le Mont Dore ,mid 1970's on school trip
. Thats where La Bourboule is, must have been a fave for cheap school ski trips, its was pretty grim as I remember. Smile
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
A drag lift in Niederau. It would have been in 1982.
A Town Called Malice was no.1 in the UK.
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Trafoi, Ortler Ski Arena, South Tyrol, Italy
1986

Förderband - Nastro di trasporto
100m long, 20m vertical

Sheet ice, bruised beyond belief
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Depends what you mean by "ski lift". Either:
- The gondola at the Liverpool International Garden Festival - ski lift equipment but no snow.
- A gondola somewhere in the alps in the summer - ski lift equipment and snow (glacier) but no skis.
- Silvrettabahn (A1) in Ischgl - "ski lift" equipment up to the snow and with skis but do gondolas count?
- Ubungslift Velill T-bar (B6) in Ischgl - but a drag so no actual lift.
- Gratbahn chair (BCool in Ischgl.
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
@markymark29

Aldershot was my wifes first ski lift. Ruined her first (and she only went twice) trip to Courchevel when another learner wiped her out injuring her hip. Circa 1990

Still going strong. My neighbour did his army resettlement course opposite it last month and said that he did not see a soul on the slopes in a whole fortnight

http://activenation.org.uk/outdoor_venue/alpine-snowsports-aldershot/
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Car park chairlift at Cairngorm around 1979/80, got afternoon lessons as a school activity once a week in primary 6, had just been the golf course hill prior to that. Fun days but combo of crap skis/boots, icy slopes, poor visibility and wooly jumpers with cheap anoraks made some days hard going, glad I stuck at it though, some of the best days of my life since have been on skis. Little Angel
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@Drammeister, quite possibly the same drag lift but 5 years previously.

P.S. Don't give up on us baby by David Soul.
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