The New Snowdon Quad: Why Fixed-Grip Lifts Matter on the East Coast

Let's be honest: Fixed-grip chairlifts aren't the most exciting thing in the world. Compared to their high-speed, detachable counterparts, they're pretty simple. Instead of detaching from the haul rope, or the cable that carries each chair up the lift, chairs on fixed-grip lifts stay affixed to the haul rope through their entire trip up and down the mountain. In the process, this makes fixed-grip lifts trickier to load on to, trickier to exit, and, most importantly, slower. However, as we'll cover here, they're a crucial part of keeping The Beast running each winter.

Part of the reason you haven't heard as much about our main lift project this summer is simply because it isn't very flashy. Last summer's capital improvements involved major makeovers for a couple of our high-speed, detachable lifts, as the Skyeship Gondola got a shiny new fleet of cabins and the Superstar Express Quad made way for the speedy new Superstar Six. This summer, a much less showy infrastructure project has been taking place right on the other side of our K-1 Lodge, as the old Snowdon Triple is being replaced by a new, fixed-grip Snowdon Quad manufactured by Doppelmayr.

After our final helicopter fly day of this season just concluded, we thought we'd take some time to answer a couple of lift replacement questions: Why did we choose the Snowdon Triple to replace? And why is it being replaced by another fixed-grip lift? To get the lowdown on both questions, we chatted with Andy Lyman, our lift maintenance manager, as well as Kayla Sarajian, our mountain experience manager.

First up, why Snowdon in particular? Well, the easy answer is this: it was getting pretty old. The Snowdon Triple opened in 1973 and serviced skiers and riders for around 53 years before it closed and was torn down this past April. Older lifts often need more upkeep to keep them spinning each year, and as Andy outlines, those repairs can get more substantial as time goes on.

"The way that lift was manufactured lent itself to more costly repairs, more time-consuming repairs, and more time-consuming maintenance, especially for a fixed-grip," Andy says.

But, as astute Beast fans may point out, the Snowdon Triple was not technically the oldest lift at Killington. The Snowshed Double, though it was retrofitted in the 80s, was originally built all the way back in 1961. Aside from its age, another key factor that differentiated Snowdon as a lift worth replacing was its location. As Andy mentions, it's an important backup lift to get people around the mountain if any of the lifts around it are down for maintenance, including the Superstar Six, K-1 Express Gondola, or Snowdon Six Express.

"It was necessary to replace it just because it's out of the main base area here. It's just making that backup transportation a lot more reliable long term."

Kayla agrees, describing the Snowdon Triple as a "workhorse" and a key backup to having us connected as a resort. "Once you take [that lift] up, you can then get to North Ridge, which then gets you to High Traverse, which gets you everywhere," she says. "I think from an operational standpoint, it was its time to go... We just wanted a more reliable lynchpin for everything."

So, why are we replacing the Snowdon Triple with another fixed-grip chairlift? In short, they're a steady and reliable lift option, especially to have as a “backup” lift. First off, as Andy details, their efficiency lies at least somewhat in their simplicity.

"There's fewer things to go wrong on a fixed-grip compared to a detachable just because there's fewer moving parts. So in general, we see less downtime on the fixed-grips," he says.

Second, and much more importantly, fixed-grip lifts are a staple at East Coast resorts for one main reason: icing. Icing is primarily an East Coast phenomenon, when our more unpredictable winters bring temperature swings along with precipitation that can leave inches of ice caked onto cars, trees, and for the purpose of this discussion, lifts. Vermonters who have skied around here long enough know this all too well, as do Kayla and Andy, having worked for years in lift operations and lift maintenance respectively.

For detachable lifts, the trouble starts when the grips holding the chairs to the haul rope become iced over. Once a chair with a frozen grip enters the load or unload terminals (the top and bottom of the lift), it quickly slips out of the grip of the tires that normally push the chairs at a slower speed through the terminals. Kayla unsurprisingly describes this process as not a very fun one.

"We're physically pushing all of these chairs through while somebody is beating the ice off the grip," she says. "And eventually once you push all these chairs through long enough, the grips get clean, and then we have to respace [the chairs], and then we can open it."

Andy agrees, citing this exact problem as why fixed-grips are usually our first lifts open after inclement weather rolls in. "They are easier to get moving because the chairs aren't coming off the haul rope in the terminal, so it just eliminates a whole lot of extra work. So in the mornings, they get moving a lot faster."

Fixed-grips aren't entirely ice-proof, though, as Andy goes on to describe. Lift tower sheaves, the wheels that guide and the support the haul rope, can't be iced over either, or else any type of lift won't run. "We still might have to climb towers to clean up sheaves, but that's the same on both [types of] lifts," he says.

Overall, Andy does say that fixed-grips are an easier proposition to open than detachables: "You're not also having to contend with chairs getting stuck at the terminals."

On these icy mornings, opening up our fixed-grip lifts buys our team valuable time. "It gives us the ability to get the mountain open on time and get people around the mountain, able to go skiing, and gives us a little bit more breathing room to get the other lifts open," Andy says. "Because they're usually open later in the day if it's a severe icing day."

That "usually" is key, though, as even our team's finest efforts sometimes can't stop Mother Nature from having her way. Some of you may remember January 11, 2026, when the first rotation of our fixed-grip lifts looked like this, and our lift operators were treated to chairs in the morning that were better described as icicles:

Even though our detachable lifts never got spinning that morning, we were only able to open at all that day due to our fixed-grip lifts, something that not many other resorts in Vermont were able to accomplish. It may not have been everyone's favorite day of the year, but for our diehard guests in particular, it sure beats getting ready to come ski and being stuck at the bottom of the hill.

Knowing this big advantage of fixed-grip lifts, we've purposefully kept them as auxiliary lift options all over the resort to facilitate guest movement on these inclement weather days. Building the incoming Snowdon Quad as a fixed-grip lets us transport skiers and riders all around the mountain, keeping crowds and lines more manageable while our crews work through any weather-related issues.

This fixed-grip strategy has been in place for years, and with the new Snowdon Quad, it's not going anywhere. And as Kayla mentions, even on mornings with kinder weather, our team still prepares these lifts for action in case the time comes.

"We've always used our fixed-grips as backups... We've always run the lifts and made sure that they're ready to go just in case anything were to happen," she says. "That bypasses us having to repower the lift, check the safety switches, and do a line check. We already know it's all happened and we can just open and go."

Lastly, as Andy outlines, this new chairlift will still be an overall improvement over the Snowdon Triple. "This is going to be a little bit better of a ride," he says. "More reliable, and the chairs will be more comfortable just being a newer chair." Besides each seat being 33% more spacious as a quad chair instead of a triple chair, the Snowdon Quad will also have a backup generator that can run the lift at full speed in the case of any potential power outage.

Though it'll be a new piece of equipment for us to get used to, it'll improve the experience for our employees as well. "We do have wind speed monitors on it just because any modern lift has that," Andy says. "It'll have more modern controls, which is nice."

So, the next time you're on a fixed-grip lift, instead of thinking about how you could be moving faster, try to think about how you could not be moving at all.