Longtime liftie nears 50 years on The Big

Generations of skiers and snowboarders on the Big Mountain have enjoyed the same friendly face and warm smile when Chair 1 took them to the lift shack at the summit.

Debbie Phillips has been working on Big Mountain for nearly 50 years. Officials with Whitefish Mountain Resort consider her "one of the longest-serving employees in the resort's 75-year history."

“I’ve been here for so long, I've watched kids grow up, I‘ve watched their kids grow up and now I'm watching their grandkids ski,” she said with a laugh. “That’s been enjoyable but hard to realize I've been here that long — that I'm seeing [the] grandkids [of] people that were kids!”

As a 16-year-old, she was working as a bus person at the Ptarmigan Room, a high-end restaurant located where Ed and Mully’s is now. Phillips graduated from Whitefish High School in 1976 and two years later started working on the chairlifts. At that time, the mountain had four chairlifts and one surface lift.

“Ticket checkers were their own department then and I did that for like, half a year,” she said. “Then I went into being a lift attendant and I did that for probably four or five years. Then, I became an operator.”

Phillips began working at the top of Chair 1 when it was installed in 1989 and stayed there until about five years ago when she moved to the Elk Highlands private lift.

The longtime director of operations for the mountain, Chet Powell started with the ski patrol about the same time Phillips began working the lifts. He remembers her dedication to the job and her ability to truly know the lift and the people on it.

“She ran Chair 1 for a lot of years and there was absolutely no question about who was in charge when Debbie was there,” he said. “She took it personally and she did a wonderful job.”

While working at the top of Chair 1, Phillips met many people and developed an uncanny ability to recognize them in a unique way. Oftentimes, people would come into her lift shack to ask for help when they were looking for somebody. Phillips could look down the chairlift line and point them out.

“I always could recognize people by the way they sit in a chair. That would always amaze people,” she said. "It's just how they sit in the chair — if they're bouncing their skis up and down or how they hold their poles when they ride.”

She said most people sit in the chair about the same way every time, so that makes it easy to identify people.

Her heightened perception is not just a nifty bar trick, but a valuable tool, as Powell explained. He said Phillips always took a lot of pride in her position and she added to the mountain's sense of community.

“If someone’s going to have trouble unloading, (she’s) gonna spot it before they unload,” Powell said of her keen eye. “She’s always, always taken great care of the guests and the local community. Anything that she could do to help them, she would. It was just a great family.”

PHILLIPS SAID that in the 1970s, there weren’t many opportunities for employment in Whitefish. The Anaconda Aluminum Plant and the railroad were the biggest employers.

“Back then they didn't hire women on the railroad and very few at the aluminum plant,” she said. “It was hard to get into restaurant [work] around here. There were very few restaurants and… most of them had people that stayed with them for years and years. That‘s basically why I started up here.”

She may have begun her career on The Big out of necessity, but she stayed because of her co-workers. That connection keeps her coming back.

“I have developed a lot of really good friendships throughout the years and that’s probably what keeps a lot of us here,” Phillips said. “When I started out, it was pretty small back then, so it was kind of a small family environment. Everybody knew everybody.”

In the summer, Phillips works at Chair 10 which services zip-line riders and bicyclists. There, she fields many questions from tourists about the flora and fauna of the area.

Her all-time favorite question is: “When do the deer turn into elk?” For years, she would answer sincerely, explaining that deer simply do not turn into elk.

Lately, she said she just answers, “October.”

Being a lift operator carries much more important responsibilities and she remembers a few times when her training and ability to think on her feet paid off.

“I’ve actually stopped a chair from a rollback and also stopped a chair when it derailed,” she said. “Probably saved a lot of people that day.”

“We just had a big ol’ gust of wind take the [communications line] and catch the chair and I happened to be watching it. [My chair] was already going slow… and I was able to stop the chairlift.”

Fortunately for everyone who uses the lifts, Phillips shares her know-how with the other lifties.

“I’ve been around. I’ve learned a lot in the past few years and I've been able to pass that information on to other people,” she said. “Basically, I trained Dennise.”

Dennise Turner has been a liftie on The Big for 20 years and is a well-known personality at the base of Chair 1.

“When I first started, Debbie worked up at the summit and she taught me everything I know. We’ve been best friends ever since,” Turner said. “I love Deb like a sister.

Phillips plans on returning to the Elk Highlands lift next winter but she might start taking summer off.

“On March 1, I turn 65. My plan was to retire from the summer. I guess you could call that semi-retired,” she said. “Right now, I’m still kind of up in the air about what I'm going to do.”