(soft music)
- It's obviously an icon, for the mountain.
Just the symbol of it.
- You don't have a lot of opportunity in life these days,
to have 10 or 12 minutes alone.
- Some people think when they come here and
they ride the chair it's a lonely ride.
I never really thought of it that way.
- Mad River was founded by a guy named Roland Palmedo
'cause he wanted to start a ski area where sport and
not money was gonna be the overriding concern.
He built the single chair here in 1948 and
then someone figured out very quickly that
a double chair was just as easy to build as a single chair.
The single chairs went away very quickly and
this thing has kinda hung around for a long time.
(soft, relaxing music)
- You're forced to really focus on
what's going on around you.
To look down, just watch some of the skiers having fun and
when you get up there you can
look across the valley into New York.
- As the ski industry's changed over the years,
this place hasn't.
Everything that we do shouldn't work.
But it does.
There's not a lot of ski areas in the world
where the skiers are donating money to build the lift.
- There's something about like, you know,
waiting in line in the corral and
you're going back and forth,
and you're saying hi to people,
you're carrying on multiple conversations.
It's just a real friendly vibe that, you know,
it's not like a hashtag campaign.
We're trying to create a community that's already here.
- Sitting on that single chair is like coming home.
(soft piano music)