It was a winter day in the early 1960s. A meteorology professor at MIT was running some numbers into a computer program that simulated weather patterns. Patiently awaiting the results, he left his office to get a cup of coffee. When he returned an hour later, he made a discovery that’s been called “one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton.”
Professor Edward Lorenz was repeating a simulation he’d run before. Only this time, the computer model rounded off a single variable from .506127 to .506. That tiny change set off a major transformation in the entire two-month weather pattern the program produced. It also led to one of the most profound insights into how nature works: that small changes can produce immense consequences.
Lorenz presented a poetic metaphor for his thinking: The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas. Eventually known as “the butterfly effect,” his discovery became the basis for chaos theory — the attempt to predict the behavior of random or chaotic systems such as the weather. Or the political machinations of a quintessential ski town, as the case may be.
As the Princess of Pure Reason says in the 1961 children’s literary classic “The Phantom Tollbooth”: “Whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world.”
Or, when a lady in ski boots slips in a ski-resort bathroom, the fall is felt by an entire community. Not to go all chaos theory on you, but such may be the not-so-poetic butterfly effect of a single skier’s lawsuit. That lawsuit has begotten a bigger lawsuit, which in turn threatens to deep-six Park City Mountain’s Town Lift, a local landmark since the resort opened in 1961.
It may not be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, but the graceful arc of cables crossing Main Street and connecting steel towers that rise up a pine-dotted blanket of the greatest snow on Earth is as ski-town iconic as it gets. And where besides Park City can you take the lift up and then ski right back down to town — and a shot of bourbon at High West?
In a February 2024 story entitled, “What a true ski city looks like,” a reporter from The Seattle Times referred to Town Lift as “One of Park City Mountain’s most charming quirks … a triple chair that rises directly from the heart of Park City and crosses over city streets before rising higher up the mountain.”
Park City Mountain Chief of Operations Deirdre Walsh calls Town Lift “a one-of-a-kind portal from Main Street to America’s largest resort.” In this way, it is our very own phantom tollbooth transporting Goretex-clad riders from the present moment to an uncertain and periodically chaotic future at the top of the mountain.
Town Lift is admittedly as slow as it is iconic. On a good run, the lift takes about 20 minutes from bottom to top — not counting a pow-day lift line, a slow-down for kids or newbs or an unexpected shutdown when there’s a glitch in the system.
If you ask me, the snail’s pace of Town Lift is part of its quirky charm. (Unless it’s a pow day, in which case, I’ll see you at Payday.) When you have close to a half hour of down time, you plan accordingly. Those in the know grab a to-go chair latte from Atticus Coffee. And I’d be willing to bet one of those chair lattes that there’s been more than one marriage proposal on the leisurely ride up.
One of my own favorite Town Lift memories was the time a friend opened her Osprey pack and pulled out a bottle of Veuve and three champagne flutes on the way up. On another trip, I had plenty of time to grill, er, get to know my bestie’s new boyfriend. Not sure how much he appreciated the chair time, but I know I did.
In addition to the lawsuit that threatens to close the lift, there have been lots of ideas to redevelop Town Plaza, which was placed on the market last week for $27 million. Park Record co-owner Matthew Prince, for one, has proposed replacing Town and Bonanza lifts with a high-speed gondola that would take skiers from Main Street all the way up to Summit House. But transformation isn’t always about making things faster.
It appears for this season at least, the lift stays put. “Town Lift will continue to operate now and into the future through our longstanding and long-term rights in the property,” Deirdre Walsh said.
We will need a phantom tollbooth to know for sure what massive changes may lie ahead. In the meantime, some of us will treasure the long, stolen moments on Town Lift waiting for the gentle flap of a bird’s wing or perhaps the tiniest breeze created when a snowflake falls.