IT is not every day that one gets the chance to purchase a genuine piece of Hotham history, but on opening weekend that chance exists.
For many long-time skiers at Mt Hotham, the first ever chairlift ride at a ski resort was on the Playground Chair.
After 50 ski seasons, the chair has been fully dismantled and removed from the mountain, and all of its 57 chairs are up for auction.
Before 1969, relaxing near-liquefied leg muscles on a chairlift after an exhilarating slide down the mountain was only a dream at Mt Hotham.
The Playground Chair’s installation for the 1969 ski season changed all that and represented Hotham’s first ‘great leap forward’.
A ponderously slow two-seater, it nonetheless revolutionised uphill egress from much of Hotham’s best ski terrain.
At its base station in Swindlers Creek (originally located next to the current Village Chair base) the lift took skiers up 300m vertical to its top station just below the road next to Zirkys.
As development of the mountain increased, the installation of the Heavenly Valley chair in 1987 placed huge pressure on the relatively low-volume Playground Chair.
Lift queue waiting times of over an hour were common at the end of a ski day, and so it was decided to replace Playground with the Village quad chair in 1993.
But rather than dismantle the lift, it was retained, and a new base station was constructed above the valley in the Lower Playground sector.
At the same time, the actual chairs were replaced with a more modern variety from Doppelmayr, and it is these that are being auctioned to the public.
Never popular with skiers, the lower base station was rarely utilised in its later years, and most of Hotham’s more recent visitors will have only ridden the Playground chair from its mid-station at the bottom of Sun Run.
With the slow demise of the Playground chair and the expansion of lifts during the 1990s out to the Orchard came a surprise - the apparent erasure of the Lower Playground area from the collective ski mind.
More popular in recent years due to a boom in off-piste freeriding, the zone will be the best it has been in decades due to the complete removal of all Playground chair towers and other infrastructure for the 2023 ski season.
You can participate in Hotham’s first ever chairlift auction on opening weekend, Saturday, June 10 from 4pm – 6pm at The Bird Café and Bar.
Remaining chairs will then be released for online auction via the Givergy platform on Sunday, June 11, with bidding closing on June 16.
A total of 57 chairs are up for auction.
“The auction is for a great cause with all money raised to be donated to local charities, community groups and environmental initiatives through our EpicPromise Foundation,” said Nathan Butterworth, VP + GM of Mount Hotham Skiing Company.
We look forward to seeing the chairs swinging prominently throughout Hotham, Dinner Plain and beyond for years to come.
