By David & Ann Schissler – When we acquired the White Book a decade or so ago, we searched for hard data on every lift in North America to build our database. After diving into numerous ski sites we learned about the Liftblog.com. We realized we struck gold when we saw the scope and detail provided by publisher Peter Landsman. Peter’s website contains photos, reports and documentation of each lift’s name lift name, who makes it, how many it seats, its capacity per hour, ride time, number of chairs, overall length, how long it’s been in service, vertical rise, cable speed and tension, number of towers, and even the type of drive and horsepower. It’s everything a lift junky could want. In the past 22-years he managed to visit 480 ski areas and ride every one of their lifts including t-bars and pomas.
Peter Landsman has been called a lift guru and a lift savant. When you know a little more about Peter’s background it’s understandable. At age 10, while growing up in Washington state he began creating spreadsheets about the lifts at his local mountains, Summit at Snoqualmie, Stevens Pass and Crystal Mountain. Now 32-years old and a lift supervisor at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, he travels to 5 to 10 mountains a week! When asked about his accomplishment Peter said he can’t believe he’s finished. It took him 22 years. As you may suspect as his list of visited destinations grew, he needed to forget about driving and fly to many of the resorts. If you’re wondering how he can afford all the ski travel, he works four days a week as a member of the lift crew at Jackson Hole but advertising revenue from his web site is what fuels his journeys.
His passion for lifts has made Peter Landsman the foremost authority on lifts in the industry. As a visitor to all 480 resorts, he’s very likely in a club of one.