I got inspired to build a rope tow after reading an article in Ski Magazine about backyard skiing. The hills they profile are worlds more exciting than mine, but at the heart it's the same idea. Get me up so I can go back down. Vertical is wonderful...who doesn't dream of carving a hundred turns, stopping and seeing the lift still far below you? But carving five turns is still carving, and a short 30 seconds to do it all again--with the added benefit of improving those biceps--is still skiing. In reality, it's probably skiing in its purest form, back to days when a tractor and a rope where the only game in town...the initial spark that got people excited and led, in a wandering way, to the X-Games.
I started digging online for rope tows, and how the heck to build one, and came across this priceless gem. Heck, it probably works, but it's the description that's worth the trip. The video of their system in practice is even better...it looks like a VHS dub of an old Warren Miller film. Buying a purpose-built rope tow holds exactly zero appeal right now (I may change my mind when I eventually fire this up only to watch my tractor roll instantly down the hill and into the creek).
It does give me hope, however, that Yoshi (the tractor, not the mountain) will be enough to power this system. 
I'll need to visit the tractor store and have a conversation, and I have a fear that whatever the drive system is for the PTO (I know how to start it, not fix it) may need to be rebuilt, since the time I accidentally turned it on, it leaked a ton of oil. But I was also cutting the grass at the time, so maybe I just screwed something up.
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