Seeholzer: ‘a lot of excitement over such a little lift’

Beaver Mountain may not achieve a Dec. 3 opening like last year but preparations for the new season are underway with high anticipation for the new Little Beaver lift. “We are strictly snow-dependent in determining an opening date,” said owner Ted Seeholzer. “We do not make snow here because we do not have enough water to do that. So we need another great big foot of snow. The snow we received earlier was very, very light. We just don’t have sufficient snow yet to open the resort.” Seeholzer said he hopes for a Dec. 1 start, but that literally is up in the air. The Little Beaver lift went down about two weeks before the end of last season. Work began to rebuild it when the weather cleared. “The towers are all up, the two terminals are up, the cable is on and spliced so now we need to get the chairs put on and check alignment on the lift. Then we need to load test it. That means we get to put 177 pounds three times on each chair. It will have 47 chairs, it is a triple. So we move it up, we let it roll back and make sure the brakes will stop.” He said testing to make sure it is safe for the public is a full day job. “There has been a lot of excitement over such a little lift. But I really think Little Beaver is where most skiers in this area learned to ski.” The new Little Beaver lift is 150 feet longer than the previous lift, leaving it 1700 feet long. “It has 100 feet more vertical but it opens up a tremendous amount of additional ski terrain and that is a good thing. We think it will be a big difference to night skiing for two reasons. First, it’s longer. Second, it’s a triple. The old lift was a double. We did put safety bars on this lift for parents who are nervous about their kids riding.” Seeholzer said there was a good fall sale of season passes at reduced rates and the pre-season sale of tickets to university students wound up this week.

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