The mountain, which is owned and operated by the town of Webb in the southwestern Adirondacks, began spinning a new Partek triple chairlift on Friday, Jan. 17. The new lift replaces a Hall double chairlift that was installed in 1973.

The lift, while new to McCauley, is actually in its second life. Formerly known as the ‘Hudson Triple,’ the lift was originally installed at and operated by Gore Mountain beginning in 2010 at its North Creek Ski Bowl, also known locally as ‘Little Gore.’

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To McCauley

Brian Bamberger, Bonnie Baker and Kurt Gardner take a ride up McCauley Mounatin’s new triple chair during the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, Jan. 17. (Provided photo — Grey Gardner)

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The former double chairlift at McCauley was still spinning in working condition at the end of the last ski season. Town officials, however, knew that a lift installed in the 1970s was prone to breakdown, and wanted to take a proactive approach.

Kurt Gardner — a former member town of Webb board member who has been extensively involved with the chairlift replacement effort during and after his time on the board — said a mechanical breakdown would leave the town in a precarious position, financially and logistically.

“We’re so thankful and thrilled that this actually happened,” he said. “It saved us. Our chairlift was over 60 years old and it was still in very good shape for the age of it, but the one big thing is if something ever did go wrong with it … if something did fail on that lift, it’s three years from the time of ‘OK, we need a new lift’ to the time that we put it in.”

Town of Webb Tourism Director Mike Farmer added that the search process balanced the urgency of beating the ticking clock of the old lift’s mechanical life with the patience to find the right fit.

“Our mountain manager and our town council — they were looking at this hard, and they took a lot of advice from ORDA. … There was always that question. It was running great, it does the job, but when is it going to go hard down? And you didn’t want to live with that and we didn’t want our guests living with that.”

Gardner emphasized that the three-year timeline assumed that the funding would be in place, which he said the town could not afford on its own. With an estimated new lift cost between $5 and $6 million, Gardner said the town would have likely had to undertake an extensive grant search process, possibly elongating the timeline by several years.

The chair is the only ski lift at McCauley to reach the mountain’s summit — the only point to access several of its popular trails. The idea of having the lift out of capacity for so long would have been “devastating” to the mountain and the community, according to Gardner, who grew up skiing McCauley but had to give up the sport in 2014 due to an injury.

“That mountain just means so much to every community member around here and so many people who come ski here,” he said. “People are very passionate about that mountain, I mean that’s their baby. I’m happy to see that it has life and that improvements are being made.”

Gardner said the old double lift was removed in the spring after the last ski season, and installation of the new lift began in late July. He said that having the lift in service by mid-January, even though they had originally hoped to have it finished a few weeks earlier, was still a remarkably fast timeline.

“You guys have the ‘Miracle on Ice’ up there,” he said. “And now we have the Miracle on McCauley as far as I’m concerned.”

He credited Jason Blenis, who led the installation process at McCauley for making this possible.

“He did an amazing job, what an animal,” Gardner said. “You’re talking about something that, in July, we worked the deal out. End of July is when they started working on site, and here we are with a working chairlift in a pretty short period of time.”

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From Gore

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Gore Mountain, which is owned and operated by the state Olympic Regional Development Authority, removed and replaced the fixed-grip triple chairlift with a high-speed detachable quad chairlift as part of its expansion of its North Creek Ski Bowl, according to Matt Allen, ORDA’s alpine operations manager.

“Going to a detachable ski lift made complete sense down there with the expansion,” he said. “The need for a detachable ski lift was there and we went after it.”

Allen said the detachable lift — which operates at high speeds for most of its route, and allows the lift to function at different speeds simultaneously — will help expand carrying capacity for the mountain’s winter and summer operations, which are expanding at Little Gore.

He said McCauley had reached out previously about acquiring other lifts Gore was replacing, but those were too old to reasonably be repurposed and would cause more problems — in the form of ongoing mechanical failures — than they would solve.

“Nothing was a good fit,” Allen — who spent 28 years as a ski lift mechanic before joining ORDA’s corporate team — said. “Not worth the effort of reinstalling.”

When it came to the Hudson Triple, however, ORDA and McCauley officials agreed that it was a perfect fit. Allen said it is still considered a fairly new lift by industry standards and should have a long life ahead at McCauley.

Allen said ORDA and state lawyers first made sure the potential transfer would be in accordance with the organization’s property disposition policy, which states in part: “With the approval of the Contracting Officer, Venue Managers may dispose of personal property for a negotiated value that is less than fair market value if the disposal of such property is clearly within ORDA’s purpose, mission, and authority of its enabling statute and: i. The entity receiving such property is a government or other public entity, and the terms and conditions of the transfer require that the ownership and use of the asset will remain with the government or other public entity(.)”

After getting legal confirmation, Allen said Gore worked to carefully disassemble the lift and bring its components to the mountain’s base, with McCauley responsible for handling transportation and installation costs.

Allen said he was happy for the service the lift will provide in its second life.

“It’s good to see a small (ski) area, especially a municipal area, function,” he said. “It’s good. It’s really good. New York state has the most ski areas of any state in the Union, and it’s good to see them keep going.”

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A family-oriented mountain

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McCauley is known for being, “New York’s best family mountain,” according to Farmer, and with the new chairlift, its legacy is well-served.

“This works right in with the triple chair,” he said. “It’s just much better at servicing families.”

Farmer said that nickname lends well to McCauley because of the large variety of terrain. Easy, intermediate, difficult and expert trails all accessible directly from the summit — with all runs meeting back up again at or near the same base location.

“The entire family — no matter if you’re a teenager and you think that part of skiing and snowboarding is slam dancing with mother nature, or if you’re a grandparent or parent, or young kid — they all go up there, they’re one trail away from each other … we’ve got everything from ‘oh boy’ to ‘oh wow’ to ‘uh oh.'”

Farmer said the triple chair, which is wider than the double and contains cushioned seats as opposed to the old plastic seats will lead to a more enjoyable riding experience.

“With that comes improvements both in the loading at the bottom station and improved unloading at the top station,” he said. “Many, many fewer stoppages throughout the day. That really translates to more people getting up there to enjoy it and we are far from maxing out, compared to our downhill capacity.”

Gardner said he and other people involved with the replacement carefully considered the mountain’s downhill capacity and were confident that the new lift, which moves considerably more people up the hill, will not lead to overcrowding on the slopes. He said in the past on busy days, the slopes were still light on crowds while the bottleneck was the lift line, where long waits would develop.

He said the new lift handled the crowds well on a busy holiday weekend.

“That line was always moving,” Gardner said. “There was never anybody just standing still. From the back of the line to the front of the line, everybody was skiing forward and that thing was just spitting them up the hill.”

Gardner said long lines have also been an issue during the fall, when the mountain’s scenic chairlift ride becomes an especially popular attraction for leaf peepers.

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Bright future

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The mountain will soon undergo several other major improvements. A number of these upgrades are being made to the mountain’s snowmaking infrastructure. One of McCauley’s bunny hill rope tows is being replaced with a magic carpet — funded by Herkimer County, where the ski area is located — at the end of this season as well.

“With the winters being the way they have been for a lot of things around here, (skiing) is really the one winter sport that we actually have control of,” he said. “We’re slowly chipping away at upgrading the snowmaking, so that we can hopefully open earlier and with more trails too.”

While the mountain has high-efficiency snow guns, its compressors, which Gardner said are about 30 years old, do not allow for a high enough air pressure for the guns to make snow at their full potential. He said those are slated to be replaced with new compressors.

“That will allow us to start utilizing these high-efficiency guns and actually use them the way they’re supposed to,” he said. “Whereas right now — and we’re halfway there — we’ve struggled to get to sufficient air and water pressure to get to where the guns can operate at.”

With high-capacity snowmaking, high-quality skiing will be able to continue long into the future, according to Gardner.