America’s chairlift savant finishes 22-year quest to ride every lift in the U.S.
Peter Landsman, a lift supervisor at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, has visited, photographed and documented 2,381 chairlifts in the U.S.
Chris Figenshau/Special to The Colorado Sun
Peter Landsman fell in love with chairlifts when he first started skiing as a toddler in Washington.
He started documenting chairlifts — notes on length, age, capacity, with photographs — when he was 10, adding all the chairs from Crystal Mountain, Summit at Snoqualmie and Stevens Pass into a spreadsheet.
Late last month, the now-32-year-old lift supervisor at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort flew to upstate New York, rented a car and visited Hickory ski area. Then he went to Saddleback in Maine and rode the ski area’s new T-bar. Landsman now has documented, ridden and photographed 2,381 chairlifts at about 480 resorts in the U.S.
That is every single chairlift, gondola, tram, platter lift and T-bar in the country.
Chris Figenshau/Special to The Colorado Sun
“Twenty-two years. I can’t quite believe I’m finished,” he said, sipping an IPA at a new brewery at the base of Jackson, Wyoming’s Snow King Mountain ski area, a bit weary after a 12-hour shift down the road at Jackson Hole. “I’ve kind of been too busy to really think about it. Working full-time, living in Jackson, running a website and visiting five to 10 ski resorts a week. It’s been a wild journey.”
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