When the ski season comes to an end, a significant portion of a ski resort’s staff heads off to find other jobs throughout the summer. Many turn towards mountain biking related work, rafting, climbing, or general summer recreation work. Others might grab jobs in national or state parks, and some might just try to avoid working until ski season begins again.
But some people have to stick around, even if the ski area doens’t offer some sort of summer operations. There’s work to be done in preparation for the next season. For ski lift mechanics that could mean working on a new lift that’s supposed to debut in the upcoming season or it could mean simply maintaining the lifts that already exist, like we see in this video.
“I get asked all the time, after someone finds out I work at a ski area year round, what do you do up there in the summer? I lube the haul ropes, for one thing. I’m putting a thin stream of castor oil based lubricant on the rope as it passes by, I did two revolutions applying it, then let the lift run for a couple of hours to help it make it’s way into the core. I’ll probably do another light application sometime closer to ski season.” – Devil Peak Motorsports
