I was skiing yesturday and I got to wondering how they build a ski lift. What is the first step? Seems hard to get all the equipment and steel and such up the mountain. Do they clear the trees by hand? Put some kind of pulley on top and haul a crane up there for the rest of the stuff?
Anyone ever seen this happen?
Helicopter longline operations
My brother once worked for a ski lift construction company. They indeed use helicopters to get the towers put into place.
Slight hijack: I once hiked in summer on the mountain where I learned to ski. The trail went by the top of the ski area. I decided to walk down to the lodge, down the most recently built trail. Rather than being cleared to bare soil, all the trees that had once grown there had been chopped into 4 ft logs and left on the slope. (I suppose that was to provide an anchor for the snow; it’d probably would’ve slid avalanch-style otherwise.)
It also took me 2 hours to walk down what would’ve taken me only 12 minutes to ski. And boy was I tired after clamboring down all those logs.