Here are some crappy pictures taken with a phone, showing how we decided to tackle the raising and lowering of our ladder. We may graduate to some sort of pulley mechanism at some point, but for now, our system of walking stick + spray-painted PVC cap (screwed to the ladder) works nicely. At the top, the ladder rests on a stained wooden board, rounded on the end, that matches the rest of our wood. A bonus to this solution: we now have a nice walking stick!