For me, drag lifts are still almost unrivaled today. What could be nicer than being almost alone on a long lift in the powder during a snowstorm, with visibility only 10 bars away? For me, it's much more meditative than yoga. And because T-bar lifts can be operated in any weather, they are my favorite lifts - unless there is no snow...
The almost infallible Wikipedia encyclopedia dates the first T-bar lift to 1907; the date is probably correct, even if that is actually beside the point. And of course, the first T-bar lift was built in, we all know it already: - Austria, in beautiful Vorarlberg. However, the first "modern" T-bar lifts with self-retracting stirrups were put into operation in Switzerland from around the mid-1930s. Especially in the period after the Second World War, hundreds, if not thousands of T-bar lifts were built in the Alps, most of them with T-shaped anchors. And some of them are still running today, some of them still with stinky diesel engines. An aberration that I still find incomprehensible, and one that is particularly widespread in France (where some things are known to be seen differently, but that's another story), are the (pole) platform lifts. Especially as an early snowboarder, I learned to fear them: thanks to their massive suspension, the mounting poles swing back and forth when you get on - hardly controllable for sideways riders: more than once they banged against my skull. Of course, you still rode without a helmet back then ...
