Button Lifts

Skiers and snowboarders alike seem to have a hate-hate relationship with button lifts. I understand why. Compared to the chair lift — in my mind the most sophisticated and comfortable way to get oneself up a mountainside, and certainly the most convenient as one doesn’t have to remove skis/boards and walk around like a stormtrooper or cyberman — the button lift is something of a brute.

• thankfully the more modern ones clamp on and off the moving wire, but I remember as a beginner some fifteen or so years ago the button lifts which circled continuously: one had to look behind to see a button approaching, grab hold of it and get it into position quickly
• it is relatively difficult to fall off a chair lift, but falls when using button lifts are all too common
• button lifts tend to be in beginner areas going up short slopes, which means there are a lot of falls
• if you fall you likely have the “ski of shame” down the side of the lift back to the bottom
• if someone falls in front of you, you might be unable to avoid them; and so you will crash into them, fall on top of them, and the cycle of carnage continues until the lift attendant presses the stop button
• gradually the weight of skiers going in the same direction wears the slope: icy ruts form, but you also find hollows worn out after steeper ascents plateau
• getting started is the hard part: some lifts will catapult you forward and into the air as you accelerate from zero, a process which is painful and that certainly upsets your balance (and for male singers could involve moving forward a row within your choir)
• monoskiers must remember to undo the safety strap holding their knees together, but it’s still tricky for them to get the button positioned correctly if they leave both boots in the bindings
• for snowboarders you’re not even facing the right direction so how do you get the button between your legs?
• monoskiers and surfers both suffer from an uneven surface under the button lift: we drift side to side if there is any camber; if ruts begin to form from the procession of skiers we are likely to get an edge caught in it, so expect us to topple

Sjek continued to be unbeatable as she took on the button lift TK Baron. After a brief bit of advice from the lift operator (the same gentleman with whom I’d spoken at the start of the trip to Switzerland with Martin), she grabbed the lift and up she went! I was a little slower in getting up the hill as the two monoskiers had a short chat and held up the queue…