Which American Ski Areas Operate the Most Lifts?
Palisades Tahoe, Park City, Big Sky, Deer Valley… and Afton Alps?
An interesting question, right? Well now that I’ve added a lift inventory to the U.S. American Lift-Served SnoSportSkiing Masterchart, I can put together an overview of America’s lift leaders pretty quickly. The list is predictable and surprising all at once:
The first half dozen resorts roughly overlap the nation’s largest by skiable acreage:
How interesting that Breckenridge, the nation’s 18th-largest ski area, has established America’s fifth-largest lift fleet – a sign of just how tightly Vail Resorts has optimized space at its Summit County tourist magnet. Indeed, a deeper drill-down into lift types reveals that 15 of Breck’s 35 lifts are surface machines:
Accommodations for volume also explain why the latter half of this list diverges wildly from predictable size:lift ratios, with New England’s Killington, Okemo, and Sunday River each spinning 20 ski lifts. And Afton Alps, a mere 300 howling acres on the Minneapolis-St. Paul outskirts, makes a remarkable statement of Midwest up-and-at-em efficiency with its 19 lifts. Incredibly, the ski area’s lift fleet has been shrinking: Vail has removed, without replacement, three double chairs since purchasing the ski area in 2012.
In fact, Afton Alps’ 12 double chairs collectively form the largest fleet of such chairs in America:
That led me to wonder which resorts spun the most of each lift type. No one operates more than one tram, pulse gondola, cabriolet, chondola, detach triple, single, or J-bar, and several ski areas run two T-bars, but the other lift types all have clear leaders:
These totals include lifts under construction this summer, which is relevant mostly to account for Deer Valley’s remarkable number of high-speed quads – the most of any single lift classification operated by one ski resort (they’re scheduled to add a 21st in 2026). Park City’s third gondola is also under construction this summer.
A couple notes to stay ahead of Sends-Curt-Emails-Pointing-Out-What-Is-Wrong-Bro:
Yes Palisades Tahoe is a mash-up of two separate legacy resorts that still retain distinct personalities. So it’s fair to point out that eight of the resort’s triple chairs sit on the Palisades side, and two on the Alpine side. Big Sky’s nine triple chairs are therefore the most at one historically contiguous resort – though we can parse this claim as well, since Big Sky has been collecting bankrupt neighbors for a decade-plus, and many of its lifts are basically decorations that connect housing developments with the mainline lift network.
Yes, Park City is also the combination of two legacy resorts. But now it is one contiguous, modern resort, so that doesn’t seem relevant to the inventory.
Lift capacity matters more than number of lifts. We all know that. But that’s not the point of this exercise, Fun Police Bro.
Seven ropetows at nine-acre Four Lakes, Illinois is a remarkable stat. I believe America is due for a ropetow revolution, as the low-cost lifts are the best way to service terrain parks or to move skiers over short but inconveniently located uphill distances – like the top of A-Basin’s Lenawee lift and the drop-in to its Zuma terrain. I still wish I’d skied vintage Caberfae, Michigan, with its dozen or more ropetows set across a two-mile-wide set of hillocks and ridges:
Here’s a bit clearer one, which skimap.org pegs as circa 1958:
Your comments about Rope Tows reminded me of the interview you did with the owner/operator of Nordic Mountain, Little Switzerland and The Rock in WI. He extolled the virtues of a rope tow and his comments made so much sense. I did a lot of laps on the old rope at Little Switzerland. Ruined a lot of gloves that way. :)