20 Years of Uplift
A MINOR milestone in the history of Dartmouth skiing was reached lately, when it was noted that this is the twentieth winter since the Oak Hill Ski Lift pushed the first adventurous skier up the bumpy slope, giving him the Hobson's choice of going down by gravity and whatever skill he might possess, or staying atop Oak Hill with the north wind zipping through his ski jacket.
The word describing his uphill journey is designedly pushed, not pulled. For although there were earlier tows, Oak Hill, with its power from the rear instead of traction from above, was the pioneer ski lift in the United States. Like the sturdy engines on the Mt. Washington Cog Railway, the J-bars suspended from an overhead cable still provide a slightly rough but dependable shove to the top.
It all began when Dan Hatch Jr. '28, then General Manager of the Dartmouth Outing Club, came upon an illustration in a winter sports pamphlet of a contrivance at Davos, whereby the skier was pushed uphill. In his mind's eye, Hatch immediately saw a similar installation at Dartmouth. Detailed information was not forthcoming from Europe, but he discovered that the American Steel and Wire Company had engineered similar banana. conveyors in Central America; and, replacing skiers for bunches of bananas, only a little extra ingenuity was required to bring about the desired result. The Split Ballbearing Corporation of nearby Lebanon agreed to pioneer the job. The idea of an endless cable from which handles instead of hooks were suspended, worked.
By the early winter of 1935-36 the "Dartmouth Outing Club Ski Tramway" was ready to push skiers up a vertical distance of 335 feet on a quarter-mile track at a speed of five-to-six miles per hour. During the first winter 40,498 passengers were carried on 37 days. The ski lift's initial cost of some $3300 has long since been amortized.
Although skiing as a sport has developed into the big-time brackets in twenty years, Oak Hill still serves the purpose it was designed for. The children of Hanover learn on it; Dartmouth undergraduates can reach it easily, as soon as the snow has fallen; and the experts are grateful for it as a limbering-up slope. There is every indication that the Oak Hill Ski Lift will be filling a College-community need and still be working twenty years hence.
