On a deep day, it’s safe to say that it’s the center of this universe. As the flakes fall heavy and erratic, icicle-bearded skiers smile like schoolchildren, shouting “Whattup bro?” and “can you believe this-is-happening?” over the groaning metronome of Lift 9’s turning gears.

The 1985 CTEC/Garaventa lift serves 320 skiable acres and 14 runs. It begins its climb at 9,785 feet and ends 2,100 feet later at a lofty 11,910. Chances are, passengers have been cold for most of the 13-minute ride.

The runs it serves fall thousands of feet to the deck of Telluride. The drainages in the trees swirl riders around, through pines as tight as prison bars, up onto walls and back to the base. The wind blows snow from the Lift 6 side to Lift 9’s bumped pitches, keeping it soft for days after a storm.

And while its greatness as terrain is often trumpeted, its greatness as a ski lift isn’t a selling point.

It breaks down, as it did when the chair opened this season. It’s a slow and cold ride, as much of the Lift 9 terrain falls under an umbrella of shade for most of the day.
The slow lift keeps the skiing good, some say. The slow lift is garbage, others say.
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion.

So when Telski CEO Dave Riley announced his plans for the lift — which included new footrests and safety bars but not a total replacement — on his blog (blog.tellurideskiresort.com/blogs/davesblog), it wasn’t a surprise that he unleashed a torrent of comments.

One hundred and two people responded to the plans for Lift 9 and/or the resort’s number one priority, which is to drop a lift into Revelation Bowl, the 800 foot pitch of whipped-butter fluffy powder of the back of Gold Hill, also known as the San Joaquin Bowl.

Why don’t you replace Chair 9 with a high-speed quad and use the old 9 triple as the new San Joaquin Bowl lift? one reader asked.

Today was yet another perfect example of why chair 9 needs to be replaced. The runs were skied out in one run anyway, so why are we waiting 10-15 minutes to get back on the lift? For those who only had a couple hours in the morning to ski we only got a couple runs. And a delay on chair 8? No wonder everyone coming from town was so frustrated today, another wrote.

And another: NOOOOOOOOO to high-speed quad on 9. It’s great to keep skiers “hangin’ in the air” instead of overcrowding the slopes. Patience is a virtue, it’s nice to earn the turns, and besides, the slow ride cools you down on those warmer days.

The plan for now is simple.

“I feel strongly that we need to put safety bar and footrests on it,” Riley said in an interview. The resort may also upgrade the lift’s communications and diagnostic systems to fix its problems faster.

“The technology on that lift right now is not state of the art,” Riley said.

The footrests and safety bars will cost about $100,000. A new high-speed quad, which Riley said he would like to see sometime in the future, would cost $4 million or more.

But he didn’t set a timetable for a new Lift 9, citing other priorities, such as a fixed-grip lift serving Revelation Bowl.

Whenever talk of replacing Lift 9 comes up, the issue that circles local fishbowls is that of skier traffic.

Ski resorts use a cocktail of numbers, from wait times to skiers per acre to the degree of difficulty of runs when considering upgrading chairlifts, Riley said.

That model right now would say that Lift 9 underserves the area, known in resort-jargon as a “pod.”

“Then it becomes a qualitative decision as to whether we want an imbalance that provides for fewer people on the slopes,” Riley said.

Lift 9’s terrain is by all measures massive. The trails are wide and long. Getting lost in the trees is a real possibility for novices.

Couple that with the older, slower lift and you’ve got surreal conditions.

“It’s really pretty unique in North America,” Riley said.

Right now, the lift can haul 1,200 people an hour up the hill. If a high speed quad replaces it, that number could leap to more than 2,000, though Riley said he doesn’t plan on making the 9 area as crowded as a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Avid skier Mike Munno said he doesn’t ski the area much due to the lift itself.

“The lift drives me absolutely crazy,” he said. “You can’t get warmed up on that lift.”
The terrain, he concedes, is good.

“It has the best trees on the mountain,” he said. “And the truth of the matter is, the snow on Lift 9 is better than Gold Hill.”

But when guys like Munno will be lining up at a quad us anyone’s guess.

“I don’t think it’s going to be in the near future, to be honest,” Riley said.