Powderhorn Mountain Resort’s West End lift was installed the same year “The Godfather” came out in movie theaters. Ever since then, it has carried Western Colorado skiers to some of the area’s most compelling terrain — though never in much of a hurry.
That fixed-grip, two-seater lift, first installed in 1972, will be entering its final year of service this winter as the resort announced plans to install a new, high-speed detachable four-person lift in the summer of 2026.
Ryan Schramm, general manager for Powderhorn, said the West End lift traveled around 7,000 feet, which was considered a long way even when it was installed. That long trip mixed with a slower design meant that riders had more than a spare moment in between runs.
“It was about 14-and-a-half minutes? Best case scenario,” Schramm told CPR News. “It's a little bit of a throwback to an earlier time before high-speed lifts, and you rode that lift with a companion, and hopefully you really liked them and you had some great conversations.”
Powderhorn is located on the Grand Mesa near Grand Junction and first opened in 1966. Its new lift is not really new, but comes by way of Aspen Snowmass. According to the release, the former Elk Camp chair will be refurbished by Leitner-Poma of America at its Grand Junction facility before being installed on the Grand Mesa as the “Wild West Express.” The Elk Camp lift was originally installed at Snowmass in 1995.
That life cycle of ski lifts is common in the industry, with smaller areas like Powderhorn playing the role of the hermit crab growing into a bigger shell left behind.
Peter Landsman, who runs the site Lift Blog, wrote about Snowmass replacing the Elk Camp lift in the spring. He told CPR News that “the ski industry is very resourceful at saving whatever it can and finding the best use.” On top of that re-use mentality, Landsman said a recent boom in lift building at major resorts has put a lot of these types of lifts on the market for smaller mountains.
“The smaller resorts tend to be more likely to buy a used lift from a larger resort. So there is kind of that circle of life where a big fancy ski resort like Vail builds a new lift and then they have a high-quality used lift available for a smaller ski area,” Landsman said. “That's pretty common across the country.”
Colorado is often on the cutting edge for lift access, Landsman said, even compared with other ski-obsessed regions. That means the state is starting to wind down its inventory of two-seater lifts, as Sunlight Mountain Resort near Glenwood Springs did this summer in replacing the Segundo Lift.
“Colorado tends to have the best lifts in the country because it's such a center of the ski industry and there's a lot of visitation to Colorado,” Landsman said. “So I can tell you right now the most high speed quads anywhere — anywhere probably in the world — is the state of Colorado. So there are a lot fewer double chairs and fixed-grip lifts in Colorado in general. But if you go to a state like Michigan or upstate New York, there's still a lot of really old double chairs in those kind of places.”
Schramm said Powderhorn had been working to secure a new lift since the sale of the mountain to Pacific Group Resorts was completed in February, and the recent swell in lift construction made for a good time to find a replacement.
The move has not yet secured approval from the U.S. Forest Service, which must sign off on changes to forest lands. However, the release notes, the new lift will fit roughly within the same footprint as the existing lift. One change will involve a proposal to offload skiers slightly lower on the mountain to avoid a wetlands area that the current lift crosses over.
“There still needs to be some studies and engineering completed and signed off and that's subject to Forest Services final approval before we could move ahead with changing that location,” Schramm said. “But ultimately I feel that that would be a better experience and it would also allow those wetlands to basically remain undisturbed for the future.”
As for the existing chair, it’s unlikely that the whole piece will find a new home, Schramm said. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s done serving the ski industry entirely. Schramm said some parts on it — including about 14,000 feet of cable for the recently replaced haul rope from which the chairs hang — can service other lifts. Additionally, the chairs themselves are likely to be auctioned off to the public.
“They're quite popular and I would expect that we have about 200 of them that we would sell, and I expect that all of them would be gone and not very much time at all,” Schramm said.
