Nelson (BC), Canada – With the assistance of a circa 1963 twin-blade Columbia Vertol helicopter — a chopper with four-and-a-half tons of lifting capacity — a team of eight Summit technicians affixed 19 chairlift towers to their concrete pads in a little over nine hours, under perfect blue autumn skies this week at British Columbia’s Whitewater ski resort.n“It’s a history-making event,” Whitewater Outdoor Operations Manager Kirk Jensen said on Wednesday. “It was hard to believe it was going to happen, but here it is only a few months after we started construction in July.”

The Glory Chair, on track for completion by the end of 2010, is Whitewater’s first new lift in 17 years, and the sixth lift in the mountain’s 34-year history. Five new runs have already been cut and gladed. At full build-out the lift will open 303 hectares (749 acres) of new expert and intermediate ski and snowboard terrain, doubling Whitewater’s current size.

According to Summit owner Randy Gliege, the fact that the lift will make Whitewater twice as big makes installation of this triple chair a remarkable undertaking.

“I’m really pleased Whitewater and its new owners stepped up and fast-tracked the project,” says Gliege, who’s supervised the construction of dozens of lifts across Canada and the U.S. over the past 25 years. “We’ve installed it in roughly half the amount of time it would normally have taken for a chair this size.”

Summit’s claims to fame are considerable. The company was featured in National Geographic TV’s “World Toughest Fixes” this spring, following a particularly demanding lift installation at Sleeping Giant ski area in Wyoming. In another legendary effort, the B.C.-based company also constructed two gondolas, a 12-person tram and a quad at Snowbasin, Utah, just in time for Salt Lake City’s Winter Olympics in 2002.

Even compared to Summit’s other renowned accomplishments, the Glory Ridge Chair, says Gliege, is extraordinary.

“This is pretty special for me. It’s the biggest fixed grip I’ve built in vertical rise. I fondly refer to it as ‘The Elevator’,” Gliege smiles.

The liftline itself, nearly twice as long, wide and just as steep as Whitewater’s famed Blast beneath the Summit double, “is going to be a real leg burner,” says Jensen. “It’ll separate the shredders from the pretenders,” adds the former ski movie star, an employee at the hill for the past 18 years.