As soon as the last chair stops running to signal the end of Pats Peak’s ski season, probably on the last Sunday of March, the construction crews will rush in to start replacing the venerable Hurricane Triple lift.

“We’ll need every bit of time between then and the first snowflakes in the fall,” said Pats Peak General Manager Kris Blomback. He compared the work to house painting: “Almost all of it is in the preparation. Once you start painting it goes quickly.”

The triple chair lift, in operation since 1977, will be replaced by a quad chair as part of a project that Blomback said will cost “just under $3 million” in total.

If you’re a Pats regular who feels nostalgic about the Hurricane Triple, you’ll be able to buy one of the chairs for your home decor. Some chairs also will be given to non-profits for fund-raising raffles, Blomback said, adding, “You can’t believe how much demand for chairs there already is.”

The upgrade involves moving the basic station slightly and installing a loading conveyor system to speed up loading. “It saves a second to a second and a half when it comes to loading a chair but you’d be surprised how much of a difference that makes during the day,” he said.

The resort also will raise the pitch of the unloading area about 8 feet and taper landscaping to make it easier for skiers and snowboarders to get to other parts of the resort without walking uphill. The new lift will have 15 towers instead of 17, covering the same distance.

Blomback said managers of the ski area have been talking about replacing the Hurricane Triple for several years as part of a master plan as the chairlift nears the end of its service life.

Part of that decision was to replace Hurricane with a fixed-grip chairlift rather than a detachable system in which the chairs move quickly up and down the mountain but slow down for loading and unloading.

Money was the driver in that decision, Blomback said, since a detachable would cost at least twice as much, requiring higher ticket prices.

Ski lifts require large electric motors of 250 to 300 horsepower. Blomback gave “ballpark numbers” that lifts consume about one-quarter of a resort’s electric bill, with snowmaking requiring another half and heat, lights and everything else using the other quarter.