Tomorrow will mark 11 months since Vail Resorts announced their massive $50 million project to connect Park City Mountain Resort with Canyons to create the largest ski resort in the country. A significant chunk of that investment went to Doppelmayr USA to build two new detachable lifts and relocate another. All three projects are nearly finished before there’s even much natural snow on the ground. In addition to the three new lifts, Park City built a huge new restaurant called Miner’s Camp, added significant snowmaking and did a lot of painting & re-branding.
When I visited today the new King Con six-pack was spinning and the Motherlode Express was also finished with chairs on the line. Crews were pulling com-line at the Quicksilver Gondola and finishing up the angle station. Check out pictures of all three projects below. Park City is making snow on both sides of the mountain under sunny skies this weekend and all three new lifts are scheduled to open by the holidays.
King Con Express
The King Con Express got Doppelmayr’s EJ-model chairs with footrests and pads on both the seats and backrests. The top-drive six-pack also has a loading carpet and loading gates. It will probably be the first of the three new lifts to open on or close to Park City’s opening day which is November 21st.
Motherlode Express
Motherlode was just moved over from King Con. The old Yan triple in this alignment was scrapped with some parts going to Sun Valley. Barrels are at the bottom terminal so it was either load tested recently or will this week.
Quicksilver Gondola
SAM will confirm in January but I believe Quicksilver is the biggest lift of the year for North America with three stations, two cabin parking facilities and 27 towers spanning a huge canyon and 9,000′ ridge. A long parking rail is going up at the return terminal but cabins will initially go on line at the other end. The Park City side has a custom operator house built to match the new Miner’s Camp lodge next door while the other three lift shacks are CTEC-style metal ones. There is still no obvious evacuation system for the span over Thaynes Canyon, which is at least 300 feet above the ground. Maybe the Poma-bus from the Red Pine Gondola can do double duty!
Quicksilver’s angle-station looks similar to the mid-station on the Orange Bubble Express with simple steel covers over the tire banks instead of a full terminal with a roof and windows. It looks sharp despite not being painted in the new Park City red. Com-line is on the towers on the Canyons side but not yet on the longer and steeper Park City section. The drive terminal has an indoor grip maintenance bay that’s almost finished and also a large gen-set for backup power
Lift Blog 
It’s interesting to see that the cabin storage area was not designed into the new Miners Camp lodge. In addition, do you happen to know if the cabin storage rail will be motorized or will it be a manual push rail?
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Hey Cameron, It doesn’t look like Quicksilver will have automated cabin parking now or in the future. The steel going up doesn’t look like it is designed to support tire banks. Keep in mind none of Park City’s three other gondolas have any cabin parking whatsoever so anything is an upgrade. I expect a building will be built over Quicksilver’s parking rails next summer and I’m sure the exterior style will match Miner’s Camp.
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