'People are psyched': New chairlift gives nod to nostalgic past at Berkshire East

Only Jon Schaefer could name a modern high-speed chairlift after an old T-bar.

Behind the irony of naming Berkshire East's new detachable summit lift, the T-Bar Express Quad, after a slow, long-gone surface lift, is a subtle, simultaneous vision of a bright future for this gritty, 71-year-old ski area and a homage to its illustrious past.

That's how Schaefer's creatively idiosyncratic mind works. As the representative of his family's ownership group who oversees their two ski areas, Berkshire East in Charlemont and Catamount in Sheffield, when he wants to cut new trails, he cuts them. When he puts in a new lift, like the T-Bar Express, he designs it. When he decides the ski area needs a new base lodge and bar, he builds it himself. When he wants to check in on the early-season work of his snowmaking teams, he drives his truck to the summit, then hikes down the mountain, and then back up.

When we spoke a few days ago, I asked him how the new lift, which opened in late December and makes the Charlemont ski area — an excellent, reasonably close alternative to Wachusett Mountain for Central Massachusetts skiers — only the third in southern New England to sport a high-speed lift will change Berkshire East's unique vibe. (The other two areas with high-speed lifts are Wachusett, with three, and Jiminy Peak in Hancock, with one.)

"It's going to make it better," Schaefer said. "People are psyched."

Its own vibe

That culture is all about isolated rural Western Massachusetts beauty, consistently steep runs and challenging intermediate terrain, few frills in the base area (up to now), 100% reliance on wind and solar power, an emphasis on advanced ski race training, and a tough-minded backwoods mindset.

Most of that will remain, Schaefer maintained, even as the ski area modernizes, expands, keeps improving its snowmaking and grooming and competes with its much bigger neighbors to the north in Vermont off the Interstate 91 spine.

As for the T-Bar Express, it runs roughly on the same line as the conveyance that operated from 1963 to the early 1980s to looker's left of the Competition slope — a run back then known simply as "T-Bar" — naming it was intuitive, Schaefer said.

"Naming it anything other than the T-Bar would have been stupid," Schaefer said. "Like the 'second summit express,' or 'fast lift 2.0,' or whatever? No, it's the T-Bar."

What Schaefer has done with the new high-speed lift is interesting, beyond creating the unusual situation, for now, of Berkshire East having three summit lifts all lined up to each other: the new high-speed quad, a fixed-grip medium-speed quad built in 2014, and a slow 2009 triple chair.

Most notably, the positioning of the summit terminal of the T-Bar Express creates a clever change in how skiers and snowboarders can navigate the top of the mountain. Because the lift rises slightly above the other two, you can now easily drop into Upper Comp from about 120 feet higher and also get to some of the steep expert runs — namely UMass and Grizzly — without having to lose vertical by looping around on the flat Riva Ridge access trail.

At the same time, skiers and riders also can slide onto the two beginner trails from the top — Outback and Thunder — with considerably less poling or walking.

"It adds a missing piece to the resort and fits in there very logically," Schaefer said. "Once you're on top of the ice cream cone, you can go any direction, and you get the full vertical."

What could change

Like most ski area operators, Schaefer wouldn't disclose the cost of building the new lift, which took about a year to erect. But high-speed detachables are expensive to build and maintain. By comparison, when Alterra Mountain Company built the new Snow Bowl Express high-speed quad at Stratton a few years ago, it spent $7.1 million, according to NewEnglandSkiHistory.com. I'd say that lift is comparable in length to the new Berkshire East lift, though the Stratton installation also included the removal of an old lift.

Another cool thing about the T-Bar Express is that its haul rope only has 52 chairs on it. Meanwhile, the Summit Quad has 127. The regular quad takes six or seven minutes to the top on average, while the high-speed lift takes slightly more than half that, if there are no stops.

That creates a situation in which there could be longer lift lines on the faster lift, and those wishing to spend more time in the air and less on the ground could choose to take the slower quad to the top. In the process, they'll get to rest their quads a bit longer from the exertion of pounding out Berkshire East's relentless steeps (pun intended).

Indeed, Schaefer said he thinks the high-speed lift will be, in a sense, self-limiting, because people will reach a certain threshold of how many times they want to lap any of six of the tough expert lines off the front of the mountain. For that reason, and because it has fewer chairs, Schaefer said the T-Bar Express won't overload the mountain, which had become considerably busier already during and since the COVID-19 pandemic.

"You can take twice as many runs an hour, for twice as much skiing. That's really what this is about," he said. "People will ski themselves out."

With the new higher capacity, Schaefer said he's considering experimenting with a several-hours-long session system similar to the one at Wachusett, in which day ticket-buyers choose, say, a morning or afternoon session.

Meanwhile, along with the growth on the hill, Berkshire East is seeing some expansion in the base area and is likely to see more.

As it stands, even before the high-speed arrived, the old main base lodge and the newer smaller one that Schaefer helped build and which houses the jumping Crazy Horse bar and restaurant, gets crowded on weekends.

Schaefer said he's planning to expand and upgrade the outdoor patio and add even more year-round outdoor entertainment programming. A lodge expansion also could be coming.

So with three summit lifts, the most likely scenario is moving the old triple to an expansion area on the north side of the mountain, where a few trails already have been cut, and permits to cut a few more are in hand. But that might not happen for a couple of years until Berkshire East adjusts, culturally and financially, to the T-Bar Express.

"That's to be determined. First, the python has to swallow the pig," Schaefer said, referring to the T-Bar Express.

Recovering from the weather

I hit Stratton, Mount Snow and Wachusett over Christmas week, and conditions were uniformly mediocre for the most part despite the best efforts of the ski areas' managers, who did their best to push around and smoothe piles of snow in the face of relentlessly warm and wet weather.

The forecast looks much better now, though, with sustained cold temperatures and maybe some natural snow in the forecast for next week.

I think all of us skiers and snowboarders, no matter our actual religious affiliation, become believers in Norse mythology during the winter.

We all pray to Ullr, the Norse god of snow.

—Contact Shaun Sutner by e-mail at s_sutner@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Snow sports: New chairlift gives nod to nostalgic past at Berkshire East