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SKI TRIPODS

About 30 years ago, Holiday Valley, N.Y., was looking for a durable, inexpensive, and easy solution to support moveable on-hill signs that warn guests of a closed trail or that snowmaking is in progress. Legend has it that longtime former staffers Karl Kohler and Dave Stringfellow came up with the idea to use retired rental skis, bolting three of them together at the tip, which allows the skis to swing out, and bolting the sign to the front two skis so the third ski can pivot back to complete the tripod. The signs used to be made of metal, but accidental encounters with snowcats at night turned the metal into jagged hazards, so Holiday Valley switched to fiberglass. This creative repurposing of old rental skis has been used at Holiday Valley for so long, and the ski tripods are so recognizable, that marketing director Dash Hegeman says guests have asked if they can donate their old skis to be used for the same purpose.

TRASH CABINET HANDLE

The door flaps on trash can cabinets—the ones you need to push in to drop your garbage inside—can get a little manky. Nobody likes to touch them. Nobody. On a trip to Craigleith Ski Club in Ontario, MountainGuard’s Tim Barnhorst sent SAM editor Dave Meeker a video of Barnhorst happily using a handle to open a trash cabinet door flap with the note, “Umm. Yes, please!” (Tim doesn’t like to touch those flaps, either.) Craigleith assistant GM Natalie Bennett said the original version of the handle (far left) was not very durable and kept falling off. So, the ski area upgraded to a more durable version (near left), a metal handle attached in two places. Similar handles, either purchased or custom made by a resort, could offer a useful service to guests who absolutely don’t want to touch those door flaps.

Still a Good Idea, from 2005...

PICKUP CHAIR MOVER

Routine ski lift maintenance often involves removing chairs from ski lifts and putting them back again. The reasons are many: to reposition the grips, to remove the grips for inspections, to paint the chairs, to weld and/or heat treat, etc. To assist with the lifting, which is often done manually, the lift mechanics at Mont Saint-Sauveur in Quebec found a way to employ a GMC pickup. And why not? Lots of pickups are equipped with plows that can move the blades up and down. To complete the pickup modification, the Mont Saint-Sauveur crew used a small H beam and angle iron found in their welding shop, a hydraulic cylinder off an old groomer, and a manual hydraulic pump to provide the power to lift the chairs on and off the haul rope. It took about 16 hours to build. Now moving chairs is a snap. One person can do it, and back injuries from lifting chairs are a thing of the past. What is not a thing of the past is this chair mover, which is still in use today.