Canadian Resort's New Technology Detects When Skiers Don't Lower The Safety Bar on Chairlift

Many American skiers don’t put the safety bar down on the chairlift.

We’re not going to speculate on the reasons why, but 13% of over 6,000 skiers told us in a poll last year that they never put the bar down, no matter the circumstances. We have a feeling this number is much higher in practice, but regardless, it’s no secret that skiers in states like California, Colorado, and Utah prefer bar up over bar down.

Some chairlifts in the United States are still without safety bars, believe it or not, but Vermont, on the other end of the spectrum, has a state law requiring skiers to put the bar down.

Lifties in Vermont have been known to scold skiers for not lowering the bar, and some will even stop the lift until the skier abides.

A relatively new advancement in ski lift safety is a camera that detects whether a skier has or hasn’t lowered the bar. If the skier hasn’t lowered the bar, an alarm rings and a bright light flashes. In some cases, the lift stops automatically until the bar is lowered.

Well-traveled skiers have seen these safety measures implemented in Europe, and I recently spotted them on the lifts of Cardrona, New Zealand, but they haven’t made the leap to North America. Until now, that is.

Blue Mountain, a humble but popular ski area in Ontario, Canada, recently announced that it installed a chairlift safety bar detection system on its Silver Bullet lift ahead of the Winter ’26/’27 season.

“At Silver Bullet, our Lift Operations team has installed a state-of-the-art chairlift safety system that monitors the loading area and can detect when a safety bar isn’t lowered or a rider isn’t seated properly,” writes Blue Mountain. “The system alerts our lift operators before the chair reaches the first tower, so any issue can be caught and guests supported quickly and efficiently.”

Tap or click below to see an example of the system in practice at another ski resort.

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It will be interesting to see how this technology plays out in Canada, a country that largely lowers the bar on every chairlift ride, and whether American ski resorts, wary of lawsuits, will follow suit.

The great chairlift safety bar debate is perplexing.

Skiers who lower the bar are vilified in some regions and celebrated in others, and vice versa for those who don’t lower the bar. And, with some lifts still without safety bars entirely, it begs the question—how much does a chairlift safety bar actually matter?

We’re not going to pretend to have the answer. Instead, we’d like for you to vote in the poll below and share your opinion on one of skiing’s last great debates.

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