The last day to enjoy the slopes of Marmot Basin has sadly passed for another year.  Sunday, April 26, the last day of the season, was somewhat bitter sweet, historic and just plain goofy.  

Speaking with the old-timers who constructed the Tranquilizer chair, it was apparent that even though the work was tough, they thoroughly enjoyed it. “It rained 62 days in a row when we put this lift in,” said Joe Couture. “It didn’t rain hard everyday, but some days it rained really hard, so we were in the mud for months. It was a miserable wet summer,” he said.  

It was one of the first chair lifts in the Rocky Mountains being that the serial number, from Doppelmeyer (chairlift manufacturer), is ‘3’, said Bob Bell, vice president, maintenance and operations at Marmot Basin and one of the guys that worked on the lift.  

The actual chairs are not original, which is probably a good thing. Bell and Couture joked about the old-style chairs and how slippery they were, especially in the old shiny speed suits. Jasperite Mike Cameron still has one of the old chairs in his backyard.

All the guys were happy to be part of the decommissioning, sharing stories about the early days and having a few good laughs. Although Wayne Kiefer, whose family used to run Marmot Basin, hadn’t skied for 11 years until Sunday, he had a huge smile across his face as he sat down on the Tranquilizer chair with Bob Bell for the last ride. 

“You used to be able to walk down Jasper Avenue in Edmonton where women had short skirts on and you’d see the back of their legs and they had bruises on them” from the Tranquilizer, joked Kiefer. Chairlift technology has come a long way in 40-plus years and the new chair lift will accommodate 2,400 skiers per hour as opposed to the 800 to 850 that the Tranquilizer can now ferry up the slopes, said Bell, adding that “I think people are really going to like it [new chairlift].”

One reason many people went up to the hill on Sunday was to take a last ride on the Kiefer T-bar, which was also being decommissioned. People dressed up in their old ski attire, some of which I couldn’t believe anybody would actually hold on to.  

The Kiefer decommissioning was a sad event for many, especially local resident and Kiefer-enthusiast Charlie Finley, who held a protest sign and lashed himself to the first tower as a final act of defiance. 

Couture won the draw for the last ride on the Kiefer T-bar. Bell presented Couture with an old-school wooden T-bar as a memento of the event. The finale saw Couture and his old buddy Kiefer ride the wooden T-bar up the mountain for the last time.