Chairlift installation specialists Ryan Toolen, left, and Adam Bower smile at the base of the new Little Whiteface fixed-grip double chairlift at the Whiteface Mountain ski center in Wilmington on Tuesday. The new lift, along with snowmaking improvements, headlined summer improvements at the mountain. It is expected to be operational by ski season. The next major step is installing the chairs to the haul rope before a series of safety tests are performed. The lift begins near Whiteface’s mid-mountain Legacy Lodge and travels up Mountain Run, a black diamond trail rated for advanced skiers, to a mid-station where skiers and riders have the option to unload directly to access exclusively black diamond trails, or continue up to the lift’s end at the top of Little Whiteface, where a mix of intermediate and advanced terrain is offered — it’s also where the Cloudsplitter Gondola unloads. The new Little Whiteface Lift replaces a parallel set of double chairlifts that essentially followed the same route, but were getting old, and one of which was seldom used in recent years, as they were installed prior to the gondola, whose subsequent addition decreased chairlift demand. (Enterprise photo — Chris Gaige)