Earlier this month, Snowbasin Resort announced a handful of infrastructure upgrades, including making major upgrades to the Becker Chairlift.

At the time of the announcement, Snowbasin Chief Operating Officer and General Manager Davy Ratchford told the Standard-Examiner of a popular act in the skiing community.

“The actual physical chairs that are on this, anytime you replace them, people love to get their hands on those chairs because it’s just a piece of history and people have a lot of personal connection to it,” he said. “A lot of people will put them up in their homes and have them as porch swings and things like that. This year, we decided to donate all of those chairs to the Snowbasin Ski Team.”

Snowbasin Sports Education Foundation Executive Director Troy Price told the Standard-Examiner this will make for a huge fundraiser for the group.

“The fundraiser is allowing the Snowbasin Sports Education Foundation to start our first endowment for scholarships,” he said. “The foundation is a separate identity — it’s a nonprofit organization and it’s focused around the local community there in Ogden and Weber County. We have a total of 290 athletes and 80 staff.”

He said the organization helps train skiing athletes for competitive skiing.

The fundraiser, which launched March 1, aims to auction off 140 of the 150 chairs that had been a part of the Becker Lift. Price said that, as of Friday morning, 65 had been sold, with a goal of raising $200,000. He said, as of Friday, $85,000 had been raised and that the campaign will run through April 15.

Price said this is the foundation’s biggest fundraiser to date.

“Prior fundraisers have been more like a winter welcome banquet or ski swap,” he said. “We’ve participated in the Banff Film Festival for the last 25 years, but this is by far the largest opportunity for the foundation.”

He said he’s thrilled with how the fundraiser has been received so far.

“The word is definitely spreading,” he said. “Initially it started off with people really connected with either the resort or with the team, but now it’s reaching the greater community, which is great because we want everybody to have the same opportunity and get a little bit of Snowbasin’s history on their front porch, backyard, basement or wherever they would like to remember the Becker Chairlift and the impact it’s had on their life as well as the history of Snowbasin.”

For more information, visit https://www.snowbasinskiteam.org/becker-chairlift-auction.