Janek “Yan” Kunczynski, 1944-2024

Janek Kunczynski was a Polish immigrant and former ski racer who initially worked with Jean Pomagalski at Poma, in France. He left Poma in 1965 and founded the company Lift Engineering to build his own ski lifts. One of his first customers was Squaw Valley. The name "Yan" is the English spelling of his first name, and the brand under which Kunczynski sold his lifts. 

“Yan”, as Janek was also called, was famous for dining with prospective clients (après-ski) instead of just negotiating the usual way, and would sketch plans out on paper napkins. 

Besides creating sleek designs that were easy to operate and maintain, another attractive feature to buyers was the price that was significantly below those of larger manufacturers. 

Sold mostly in North America, the lifts have been sold in France (Val d’Isère), Spain and Iran among other countries. For a while, Yan was a major ski lift manufacturer in North America. Based in Carson City, Nevada, the company built at least 200 fixed-grip chairlifts, as well as 31 high-speed quads. 

Mostly through the introduction of these later lifts between 1987 and 1995, the company has been unfortunately involved in the deaths of five people and the injury of at least 70, the worst record of any ski-lift maker operating in North America. This led Lift Engineering to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection in the District of Nevada. 

In Park City, there are still two Yan fixed-grip double chairs (Jupiter and Thaynes) in operation and at least one triple in Deer Valley; a detachable chair remains still in use in Iran. With Yan passing this March at age 80, according to liftblog.com’s Peter Landsman, another page is turned in the history of the ski business...