Since I was five years old, skiing has always been my favorite sport. As I grew older, I paid more attention to the vast network of ski lifts, and how they all interact to transport people around the mountain. As I visited more mountains, and more chairlifts in the process, I began wondering which chairlift is best. To find the answer to that question, I had to first decide on what the qualities of a good chairlift are.
After pondering what makes a chairlift great or bad, I narrowed it down to several criteria: Average Angle, Vertical Rise, Vertical speed, and Peak Elevation. With just these four numbers it is possible to gauge the trail difficulty, uninterrupted time spent skiing, lift cable speed, and snow quality.
Ski lifts are first ranked individually in each category, getting assignhed a score ranging from 1 (first place) to the highest number (last place). Then, the scores in each category are multiplied by the category weights, and added together for a final score. The ski lift with the lowest score receives 1st overall, the second-lowest score receives 2nd overall, and so on. The score breakdown is as follows, from the highest to lowest weight:
| Criterion | Score weight | Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Average Angle | 50% | Average Angle is highly indicative of a ski run's difficulty, where large angles correspond with difficult ski runs. A high average angle is ranked positively. |
| Vertical Rise | 25% | Large vertical rises result in more time getting spent skiing on the slopes uninterrupted instead of having to constantly onboard a lift. A high vertical rise is ranked positively. |
| Vertical Speed | 15% | The faster the vertical speed, the sooner skiers can get to their destination and ski. Slow fixed-grip lifts can take twice as long as detatchatable high-speed lifts that run the exact same difference. A high vertical speed is ranked positively. |
| Peak Elevation | 10% | At higher elevations, snow is less likely to melt and turn into ice. Higher elevations have better snow conditions overall. High peak elevation is ranked positively. |
| Trail Designation | Varies | As a safety check, trail designation is used to ensure that borderline cases not otherwise covered are handled properly. |
It should be noted that these rankings are designed with an audience of advanced skiers in mind. The rankings are designed specificially so the "best" ski lifts all have advanced terrain, wheras beginner ski lifts that have easier terrain have lower rankings. This website can still be useful to skiers of all skill levels in finding chairlifts that might interest them. Many chairlift entries contain a description that speaks to aspects otherwise not covered by the ratings, such as including terrain parks and being family-friendly.
Since I'm ranking ski lifts already, I might as well rank the resorts too while I'm at it. I wanted to keep the calculations simple, so I reused all of the data from individual chairlifts to calculate various qualities of each resort. While these resort rankings are great overall for determining which mountains have great advanced terrain, important things not considered in these rankings are crowds, lodging accomodations, food, other facilities (such as ice rink), and the mountain's atmosphere.
| Criterion | Score weight | Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Quality of Lifts | 50% | The average quality of the 10 best lifts from the ski mountain. Lift quality is determined by each ski lift's overall score. Mountains with fewer than 10 lifts will have all of their lifts considered in this metric. |
| Total Vertical Gain | 25% | Having a high vertical gain peak-to-base often results in more skiable terrain. A large vertical gain allows skiers to have uninterrupted ski run that can last miles (often achieved at the end of the ski day). |
| Peak Elevation | 15% | The higher the peak elevation, the better the snow quality snow is the top. |
| Number of Lifts | 10% | More lifts often means more terrain and better crowd control. While Quality is more important than quantity, having more ski lifts is rarely a bad thing. |
This website was programmed by Arthur Zarins. You can see more of my projects at my website.
This code uses the d3js library to parse CSV files.
Listed below are the primary sources of data that I used for this project. I highly recommend visiting these websites, all of which are well designed and can be quite helpful for your own research.
While not used as a data source for this project, there are a few other websites that are quite important in the skiing community.