The Poma/Button/Drag lift

How it works: One-man only. Ski poles in your other hand, face up the slope (snowboarders unstrap and face sideways up the slope). Wait your turn. Grab onto the pulley and tuck the circular seat between your legs and allow it to pull you, on your skis/boards, up the mountain.

Pros:

• Quick and convenient: Doesn’t have to cover huge expanses of space which is ideal for those of you who just want to quickly hop up to a certain area, i.e. the top of the park again.
• Solo-riding: You don’t have to make small talk with your lift companion.

Cons:

• Takes a trick or two to master the art of riding this lift. It’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll face plant spectacularly in your early attempts.
• That being said, if you fall off, you have to go all the way back down to the bottom and try again.
• Not hands-free: Depending on how confident you are, you can’t exactly take a break from concentrating on the motion of your skis/boards in front of you to check out your sick GoPro footage on the way up.
• Kind of slow. You might spend a fair bit of time alone with your thoughts.

Chairlift

How it works: Imagine an overly zealous waiter called Gustav tucking a chair in behind you at a restaurant. You sit down and on cue, the chair comes up behind you. Now imagine that chair is suspended a hundred feet above snow and you’re whooshing your way upwards towards powdery heaven.

So you’re at the barrier for the chairlift. What do you do? Well, wait for the barrier to open, then slide up to the marked line and wait as the chair comes up behind you. There’s a bar that comes down in front of you for safety, and you can share the chair lift with up to eight people seated in a row, or on your lonesome. At the top, you raise the bar and dismount.

Pros:

• Super fast, convenient, comfortable and sociable method of transportation.
• Hands free experience: Sit back and enjoy the stunning mountain scenery dashing past around you. Check your GoPro footage if you must, phone your Mum (she cares about you), look at pictures of your ex, eat some chocolate, down a tinnie… the possibilities are endless.
• Safe: Chances are falling off are fairly slim.
• You can chatter with your friends… Or sit in stony silence. The choice is yours.
• You can try out some of your sick chat up lines that seasonaire in the bar told you have a 90% success rate.

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Cons:

• Exposure to the elements: on a whiteout day you betcha your face will be blistered pink by the time you get to the top.
• Sitting next to strangers: Especially when they suddenly decide to question you on your Brexit stance/ask if you’re from ‘near London’/light up a cigarette in your face. Yeah, chairlifts can incredible awkward.
• Missing the chairlift your friends managed to get, and having to get the one behind on your own/with strangers is a horrifying and humiliating experience.
• You might actually forget to get off the chairlift.

Gondola

How it works: It’s a bit of a no brainer, really. Pop your skis/snowboards off, carry them into the bubble of the gondola (or put them in the ski/board holder on the outside of the bubble), make yourself comfy in a box surrounded by a number of other people, enjoy the vistas as you travel up to the top of the mountain, hop out again and off you go.

Pros:

• Super fast, safe and convenient: the gondola bridges much bigger expanses of space (i.e. connecting the town to the start of the pistes) in much quicker times, and due to the doors locking shut, it can sail up over huge heights where chairlifts cannot.
• Can carry you and your buddies together. That way, the squad doesn’t get separated.
• You don’t need any practice when it comes to getting on to the gondola. Great for beginners.
• Sheltered: you’re inside a protected safe capsule, away from the wind and snow on a whiteout day.
• Spontaneous gondola sing-offs can be a hoot.

Cons:

• If someone farts or burps you’ll probably know about it.
• Not the one for those of us who are scared of heights (because yes, they can go super high).
• Spontaneous gondola sing-offs can be annoying as f*ck.

Cable car

How it works: Like a gondola. But bigger.

Pros:

• No limit to the number of party people you can pack into one small, enclosed space (actually there probably is a capacity. Maybe 50.)
• Quick, convenient, caters for more than just skiers and snowboarders.
• Generally, all round, pretty great.
• You can sleep in a cable car…

Cons:

• There’s usually a cable car in place where other methods of transport fails or are hideously inconvenient. For example: bridging Avoriaz and Morzine.
• Watch out for ordinary pedestrians. Don’t bash them with your skis/ snowboards even though the old-timey slapstick comic value is quality.

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