I really don’t get the Fast Lifts rating in the book.  I understand that it’s some sort of formula of the number of fast lifts divided by the number of total lifts.  But is that truly an accurate measure?  Wouldn’t a better gauge be of the percentage of terrain/pistes served by fast lifts?  If it is quantifiable, there doesn’t seem to be any consistency.
 
Example - Val d’Isere has 46 lifts of which 17 are high capacity of one sort or another.  17/46=39%
 
Whistler/Blackcomb - 16/38 lifts are high speed = 42%
 
Deer Valley - 12/22 lifts are high speed = 55% 
 
In all cases, they have the same Fast Lifts rating of 4*.
 
Having been to all three, I will venture out on a limb and say that the amounts of lift-served terrain is vastly different and the pure density of high speed lifts at Deer Valley is much much higher than at Val d’Isere. 
 
Anthony
 

Hi Anthony
 
You have a point, but give us a break - we need a way of arriving at a rating that can be applied in practice. You can’t assess terrain area, and US resorts are notorious for contriving 6 runs next to one another that have separate names but are otherwise indistinguishable. And how do you deal with runs that are accessible from a particular lift, but not directly ... and so on.
 
Our rating may be crude, but it is the best measure you’ve got at present. Personally, I think the first way to improve it is to eliminate from the equation lifts that you really don’t need to use. May be we’ll do that.
 
Incidentally, I haven’t verified your figures. But in Deer Valley we almost certainly have excluded the Jordanelle gondola from the equation, because it is basically an access lift for fat cats with homes on the hill. And Val has way more than 17 fast lifts. Where did you get that figure?
 
Cheers
 
Chris

I must say that I disagree with the notion that a single lift serving a multitude of runs is redundant.  I would argue that most skiers/snowboarders prefer the choice of multiple routes down the mountain from a single lift rather than only being presented with a single option.  Perhaps that could be the answer to the problem of over-crowded European pistes compared to the relative emptiness of North American ones?  But I digress from the original subject…
 
"we need a way of arriving at a rating that can be applied in practice." - if you’re going for practical then simply take a look at the trail map and figure out how much of the mountain one can ski on high speed lifts. Going on the five-point scale, just divvy it up in 20% increments. 80-100% = 5*, 60-80% - 4*, etc…fiddle with the numbers however you see fit, but you get the idea.
 
Val d’Isere has 17 high-speed lifts, Chris.  I counted. 
See the map on pages 406-407 or check out the resort’s website: http://www.valdisere.com/gb/domaine/piste/ouverture.php
 
If you want to pull the Jordanelle gondola out of the mix, then do the same for the up-and-over chair, Leissieres.
 
Best,
 
Anthony
 
note - I only argue because I love the WTSS book so much. 

Anthony:
 
You obviously like a good argument. ("No I don’t!" "Yes you do!")
 
We’re clearly not going to agree on the basic mechanism - sorry, but subjective assessment of how much terrain is served by fast lifts would just lead to endless debates on this forum (joke). But to look a bit more closely at VdI ...
 
I was quite wrong to say there are "way more" than 17 fast lifts - our count is 18, and that is including Leissieres. I don’t think your argument for its exclusion holds water: we omit the Jordanelles because no holiday skier needs to use it. Not true of Leissieres. In fact, it’s arguable that it should be counted twice, because it functions in both directions ...
 
We also use a lower figure than 46 as the denominator in our calculation, I see from our database. This would normally be because there are duplicate lifts, or lifts with no skiing on them, like Jordanelles. I’m not able to check right now, but our % of fast lifts ends up at 42%, which gets 4 stars. Interestingly, if you adopt your "terrain assessment" approach I think you would end up with 4 stars too. There’s only one part of VdI where you need to ride slow lifts - the back of Bellevarde, which must amount to less than 20% of the total.
 
In the case of Deer Valley, it’s conceivable that we haven’t yet counted in the new Lady Morgan chair, which I think will lift the resort into the 5 star category. Reading between the lines, I guess when we edited the book it wasn’t entirely clear that it would be built this year. It has been built, in fact.
 
Cheers
 
Chris

I read this "discussion" very late on and tend to agree with Anthony. But my main point is that I don’t get the WtSS’s obsession with fast lifts. Skiing is supposed to be a leisure persuit and so long as there are no noticeable queues and the lift system is designed in a way that works efficiently in serving it’s runs with sufficient capacity in busy times, thats all most skiers/boarders need. A resort should not be judged as good or bad because it doesn’t have high speed, so called six pack lifts everywhere. Obviously detacheable chairs are better than French "bucking bronco" drags but if every lift was the same it would take some of the fun out of it.
 
Some resorts that the editors rate low for lifts have proved to be trouble free and efficient on my visits. In my humble opinion (as a mileage skier) resorts and their lift systems should be judged on their ability to move numbers of people on average to busy days regardless of the type of lift, i.e. is the system fit for purpose?
 
Six pack chairs are fine in busy bottlenecks but how often do you see a queue forming while only 2 or 3 seats at a time are being used? Most of the time so far as I can see.
 
Dave

Couldn`t agree with you more Dave. There is this obsession with getting up the mountain as fast as you can. I don`t know about you but I`m glad of the rest and the chance to have a chat and take in the views. I think that most resorts now suffer from the main problem ie. lifts can be O.K. during the week but come Friday and the weekend it can be a real pain with all the queues. I`ve just been to Champoluc which is fantastic during the week but come the weekend the best way to enjoy the mountains is to get up there, find a good restaurant, and settle in for the day ! The pistes are still O.K. but the lifts are not coping. It is a question I would like to put to the editors in that I wonder how much skiing they do at the weekend on their trips or are these "travelling" days and so miss the real bottlenecks. (I`m only jealous chaps).
Perhaps "government warnings" should be put against resorts stating that skiing on a weekend can damage your health !!

I’m not sure where this notion of an "obsession" comes from. Yes, we have introduced a fast lifts rating into the book. But in the text of each chapter, we focus more on queues, which is the main thing people care about. The fast lift rating just adds another angle. Take it or leave it.
 
I don’t mind slow lifts going up over steep terrain that is going to take me a serious amount of time to struggle down. But for typical Alpine blue/red run terrain, where the lift is travelling much, much further in the horizontal than the vertical dimension, slow lifts are simply a waste of time.
 
And when I say time, I mean lots of time. A seriously long, slow chair can take 20-30 minutes, for five minutes cruising on the piste.
 
Of course, people who actively like slow lifts can choose a resort with a low rating for fast lifts - so maybe our rating could be useful to Dave and Scully after all?
 
Chris
 

With regard to speed of lifts don?t forget that fast draglifts (usually Pomas) travel at speeds of 4.5m/s and more which is only slightly slower than a modern detachable chair and a lot faster than an old chairlift and many gondolas.
 
Surface lifts also have the advantage of being cheaper, less intrusive and more reliable in bad weather than chairlifts because wind speed is proportionate to height above ground. Draglifts are also quickly escapable in very bad weather, chairlifts may not be.
 
Therefore a resort that replaces all of its draglifts with fast chairs is going to be more vulnerable to lift closures and is more likely to have congested and worn slopes and therefore less pleasant skiing.
 
The crowded pistes that arise from higher capacity lifts are likely to require artificial snow creation, which can spoil a natural skiing surface, not to mention additional energy and water requirements and therefore higher emissions and higher costs. There is also likely to be additional piste widening and bulldozing to remove ?hazards?. The additional traffic is also likely to mean more pistebashing and therefore less opportunity for moguls etc etc.
 
So??leaving some runs only accessible by draglift is a good strategy for maintaining quality skiing !