ENFIELD — Whaleback Mountain’s chairlift is back up and running, about a year after it first broke.
The newly repaired chairlift ran for the first time last Saturday, the second to last weekend of the mountain’s winter season.
“It’s been a long haul, to say the least,” Khara Benoit, general manager of the Enfield-based nonprofit ski area, said in a Thursday morning phone interview.
Benoit previously said the repairs likely wouldn’t happen until this summer, but a team of engineers and other workers persisted through the fall and winter.
“We just kept working at it,” Benoit said about the chairlift reopening.
The 1970s-era chairlift broke down late last February and Whaleback launched a $250,000 fundraising campaign to cover repairs.
The nonprofit hoped to repair it last summer, but was unable to do so and launched a separate fundraising campaign to raise $210,000 to open without the chairlift for the current season.
In late November, Whaleback announced it would open, though visitors would only be able to get halfway up the mountain using two surface lifts — unless they wanted to hike to the summit using a technique known as “skinning.”
Whaleback used the $250,000 raised last spring for lift repairs and operations. People donated time and some mechanical parts. The $210,000 it raised in the fall also went toward operating expenses.
“We’re stable,” Benoit said about the nonprofit’s finances. “We are going to run and survive on community support, and we’ll need to continue to always be fundraising to make the skiing accessible.”
Around the same time as the fall fundraiser, Holiday Mountain Ski Area in Monticello, N.Y., got in touch with Whaleback and offered it the gearbox and bullwheel — a large wheel that cables run around to make the lift move — it needed to fix its chairlift.
But the repairs weren’t as simple as trading out the broken parts for those from Holiday Mountain.
“It had to be fully reengineered,” Benoit said, including realigning all of the wheels on all the towers that hold up the lift from the base of the mountain to the top.
The lift continues to operate at a horsepower of 75 and with a capacity of roughly 96 people, Benoit said.
“The only thing that’s different is the bullwheel and the gearbox,” Benoit said.
The season, which began on Dec. 26, was a good one, Benoit said.
There were some challenges: Whaleback’s air compressor, which is connected to its snowmaking equipment, broke down during early January and limited the mountain’s snowmaking capabilities for the rest of the season. Plans are in the works to fix the air compressor in the warmer months to get it ready for next season.
The natural snowfall, however, made up for it — and so did the attendance numbers. Without the chairlift being operational this season, the mountain offered discounted passes of an average of $99.
“Our programs were right on the same level as they were in other years,” Benoit said. “We made the best out of what we had and people still came, still cared and showed up and they brought people with them and they got to be part of our comeback story for sure.”
That included community members who don’t ski or snowboard, but came to hang out at the lodge where live music was a regular occurrence.
“People really showed up every weekend,” Benoit said, adding that there were dozens of people in the lodge at any given time.
This weekend will be Whaleback’s last of the winter season. It concludes this Sunday with the Annual Pond Skim and Party, which begins at 10 a.m. Brooks Hubbard is scheduled to perform from noon to 3 p.m. More events, including family-friendly events featuring live music on Friday nights, are in the works for spring, summer and fall.
Whaleback also already has early bird season passes for next season on sale in its online store, which start at $150 for children and rise to $250 for adults.