Ski Chair 116

Ski chair number 116 is our small piece of local Boulder Colorado history.

This 1971 triple chair was manufactured by Hall Ski Lift Company out of Turin, New York. It was originally installed on Bald Mountain at Sun Valley in Idaho where it ran as the “River Run” lift through the 1970-1992 ski seasons. In 1992 it was relocated to Eldora in Nederland, Colorado where it lived out the rest of its days as the “Challenge” lift.

April 9th, 2017 was the final day of service before being retired after 47 ski seasons. Then this happened!

On May 5th, 2017 I picked up my chair from Eldora and brought it home to repurpose it.

It sat in the backyard while I pondered exactly what I wanted to do with it.

After a lot of deliberation and a handful of sketches I decided to make it an indoor entryway bench. After getting it right off my local mountain it was important to me to not change the character of the chair. I didn’t want to smooth or grind down any of the welds. I wanted to keep all the dents and dings. No imperfections or inconsistencies were corrected. I really didn’t want to cut down and shorten the arm to accommodate regular height ceilings, but I wanted to make sure the chair would be able to come with me anywhere I went. That prompted me to come up with an idea to make it adaptable to different spaces. I wanted to cut out about 20 inches of the arm and lug all of the connections so the middle piece could be added or removed, in similar fashion to Lego blocks, so it could be full height or reduced height as needed.

After hanging outside for 47 years the chair has warped and twisted overtime. The legs were designed to compensate for that and allow the chair to sit level on the ground. With a design ready, I took it to Last Chair Customs. They welded the chair into a single solid piece, cut off the brackets for the non-existent lap bar and took it for media blasting and powder coating.

With the metalwork and powder coat complete I brought this almost-11-foot-tall giant home and started on the finishing touches. I replaced the warped and swollen plywood seat base with a new piece I cut from 3/4” birch. Compensating for the twist in the frame, I shaped the seat bottom to get a more secure and precise fit.

I painted the wooden base black and made some brackets for a neat, clean installation, even though you’ll never see it.

The final step was a new cushion, heavily inspired by the original, but handmade by my mom with a much higher degree of craftsmanship. We chose a very high quality Crypton upholstery for the cover.