Restoration on Mad River SINGLE Chairlift
Mad River Glen, Vermont - At the close of Mad River Glen’s 2006-07 ski season, the Single Chair will be dismantled and its historic restoration will begin.
On opening day in December 2007, the newly restored Single Chair will take its first skiers to the top starting a new era that is remarkably similar to its past.
The skier-shareholders of the Mad River Glen Cooperative gave a clear mandate at their April 2005 annual meeting when 81% voted in favor to authorize the historic restoration of their iconic Single Chair which is the only remaining single chair lift in its original location nationally. The historic restoration will have the same lift capacity, about 500 skiers per hour, as the current single chair.
To the untrained eye it will look virtually identical to the existing lift but will have new and restored components.
To raise money Mad River Glen initiated the Single Chair Capital Campaign with the goal of collecting $1.54 million in tax-deductible donations. The campaign’s “thermometer� which tracks the amount raised to date, prominently displayed on the Base Station of the Single Chair, currently totals $850,000. An additional $240,000 was raised in a chair sale auction and is earmarked for a maintenance fund.
The Single Chair Restoration Project has great historical significance for the State of Vermont and for the world of skiing. As such, it has been enthusiastically endorsed and supported by two Vermont nonprofit partners, the Preservation Trust of Vermont and the Stark Mountain Foundation. Through these two tax-exempt organizations, donors are able to make tax deductible gifts online at www.madriverglen.com.
“The Mad River chairlift was probably the last single chair built before the double became the standard. The single chair gives today’s skiers a taste of past decades, when a 15 minute ride up 2,000 vertical feet of prime skiing mountainside was a revolutionary innovation,� says Jeff Leich, Executive Director New England Ski Museum.
