Past Stories

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  Hans Burkhart, former general manager and president of Palisades Tahoe (then Squaw Valley) who oversaw the building of the Aerial Tram and the Funitel, passed on Feb. 1 after a brief illness surrounded by his family. 

  Born in Oberammergau, Germany, on Aug. 27, 1935, as a teenager Burkhart fell in love with skiing and the process of cable-propelled, uphill transportation and chair lift construction, and he followed that fascination throughout a career lasting more than 50 years and stretching from Europe to Canada and then the U.S.

In the early '60s, Burkhart met Squaw Valley ski resort owner Alex Cushing who hired him to manage the construction of the tram, which Cushing liked to call the Cable Car as a nod to his Bay Area customers. That remarkable feat of engineering in 1968 leapfrogged the fledgling resort ahead of the competition, and Burkhart's next accomplishment was even more impressive – creating a brand-new resort with an even more dramatic tram at Snowbird, Utah in 1971.

  Burkhart went on to become a giant in the ski industry  and his  accomplishments in lift construction included a significant number of projects that were either a “first,” “largest” or “longest.”

  Palisades Tahoe's Funitel being one of them. He also developed a reputation as hard-working contractor to call when a project was in jeopardy or had been deemed impossible by others.

  Burkhart's journey in the ski industry is a compelling story, and a few years ago he decided to tell it. Enlisting the help of  former Ski Corp. employee and retired Squaw Valley Fire Chief Pete Bansen, who now lives in Reno, the two collaborated on Above and Beyond  which is available at local book stores.  Burkhart was able to reconnect with many old friends and former colleagues at two book signings held at the resort just prior to his passing.

  “While he could be intimidating and blunt, he had a huge heart and looked after the people who worked for him,” recalls Bansen. “An example is the "Mexican Army" - the Latino workers that Hans hired to work on the Funitel. He was so impressed that these guys showed up every day ready to work and would work as many hours in a week as he would let them. He was an immigrant with a great work ethic, and he appreciated that other immigrants were as driven to work hard and succeed as he was - their language and ethnicity was unimportant.”

  Burkhart’s memoir recounts an extraordinary life and career which included several harrowing events that nearly brought his life to an early conclusion, including a helicopter crash. A lift project brought him to Canada, with stops as a tobacco picker, bait-worm collector, and landscape gardener along the way. After evading the Border Patrol and winning an important Canadian skiing event, Hans found employment at Aspen Highlands teaching skiing for the sport’s first big personality – Stein Eriksen. A trip to the 1960 Olympic Winter Games in Squaw Valley introduced him to the delights of skiing the Sierra Nevada and the eventual meeting with Cushing - a mercurial association lasting nearly forty years.

  True to form, Hans worked right up to the end of his life, because, as he was fond of saying, “Retirement is the leading cause of death.”

Hans is survived by his son Markus (Annette Trilevsky), daughters Kathrin (Bill Hudson), Anika (Kevin Schneider), and Mekala (Kyle Green); grandchildren Max and Nikolas Burkhart, Sophie, Bodie, and McCoy Hudson, and Eliana and Wyatt Schneider, as well as his former wife, Hedi Fitzi Burkhart. Hans’ three surviving siblings, Herta, Blanda, and Marita, live in Germany.