When I started skiing Alta in 2001 the Wildcat chair was the center of attention on a powder day. No high-speed detach left the base, and the old Collins running to the top of Aggies – well who cared? It ended in the trees by the mid mountain snow study plot, rarely ran, and no one has ever raced to get Aggies or Blitz first. The Kitty, however, dropped you at the base of Baldy’s Shoulder (glorious), gave access down Stimulation to the Germania Chair (blower under the lift), and let you run out the Peruvian Ridge to the Westward Ho. It was literally the gateway to deep powder skiing. And then everything changed. Old Collins was removed, Wildcats base terminal moved up the hill a hundred feet into near obscurity, and the high-speed detachable quad named Collins was built. In the history of skiing at Alta the decision to build the quad ranks with putting a chair up the mountain in the first place (the original Collins chair built in 1938), and installing the mid mountain lift Germania (1954), as having the most dynamic impact on skiing at the worlds best powder ski area. It also changed skiing off Wildcat forever.

Running at 450 feet per minute, Wildcat is no match for the blazing 1000 fpm the new quad is capable of. A reliable double, it keeps group mentality from forming. No magazine ads of four friends yucking it up here, in fact time spent on Wildcat invokes images of two people sitting with shoulders touching, laps full of snow, and heads down against the west wind that often blows snow up the canyon and into the Ho. The people skiing underneath are not faceless phantoms that will be lost in a crowd at the bottom of the lift. You will probably see them over and over throughout the day, crossing paths in the Ho while each of you ski your own little slice of heaven. Wildcat was and still is the chair Alta Lift Foreman ride up in the dark every day of the season to reach the Angle Station of Collins, after skiing Stimulation in the dark. The Angle is where Collins is started and run from, and without the Kitty to deliver the employees for start up that chair is just another pretty face, lifeless and empty.

Of course in the big picture it’s not really a competition between the two lifts. Ultimately Collins is master supreme in all of the categories that decide such things. The capacity, the speed, and the terrain are all better with Collins. At 900 fpm a Collins lap can take you from the base to High traverse to a thousand vertical feet in multiple directions and back in less than twenty or thirty minutes. There are more face shots held between West Rustler and Stone Crusher than all of Westward Ho. I love skiing from Collins, and I have finally submitted to its dominance as Flagship Chair in Alta. But my first run ever in Alta was from Wildcat. A Shoulder run on a day that you had to look around the snowflakes like corners of buildings, big lake effect flakes refilling tracks in minutes. To me Wildcat is powder skiing in Alta, and one day when it’s time to bring her down, when the decision is made to put up a new chair, let’s hope we walk up past the vacuüm cleaner that is Collins and get on a brand spanking new double – next to the same old friends that know where to go when it snows.

Remember to watch the video in 720pHD, and keep in mind there are only a few weeks left. Don’t be sitting on your deck in July wishing you had skied more days.