Vail Resorts’ $50 million endeavor to connect Utah’s two largest resorts last summer was one of the biggest infrastructure investments at a U.S. resort since American Skiing Company created The Canyons in 1997. That summer twenty years ago, ASC bought so many lifts for The Canyons (8!) they had to split the order between three lift manufacturers to get them all done in time for the 1997-98 season. It’s hard to even imagine that happening today. Still, Vail did manage to build a two-stage gondola, add a six-pack, move a detachable quad, construct a mid-mountain lodge and re-brand an entire company over the last eight months. I got to check out the results this week.
Park City Mountain is now the undisputed largest ski resort in America with 37 lifts and 300+ trails spread across 7,300 acres (it’s worth noting that Big Sky Resort still owns, and seems to have no problem using, the Biggest Skiing in America® trademark.) The first thing I noticed is Vail did its best to remove all references to Powdr’s old Park City logo and the Canyons name, replacing them with the red infinity branding. Despite these efforts, everyone still seems to call the northern half of the complex Canyons, or perhaps worse, The Canyons. Thousands of signs were changed over the summer and every employee got a new uniform. Most of the lifts were painted red although a few remain in black and orange.
Quicksilver, the resort’s fourth gondola, is a stunning machine connecting the heart of Park City to the southern edge of Canyons in 8 1/2 minutes. As easy as Quicksilver makes the connection, skiing between the two sides is still nearly impossible. Skiers are permitted to exit the gondola on either side at a mid-station on Pinecone Ridge. There are two short runs into The Colony (Canyons side) while the Park City side is akin to backcountry skiing with nowhere to go at the bottom. You end up on an endlessly flat road and even after conquering that you can’t get back to the base of Quicksilver without riding either Motherlode or King Con. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Bill Rock and company settled on siting the gondola at Silverlode rather than at the base of King Con. Because the skiing is so limited on both sides, I’d estimate 90 percent of gondola riders were downloading rather than skiing off the mid-station this week. In poor snow years it won’t even be an option. That’s okay when the gondola flies hundreds of feet in the air at times with panoramic views of the Wasatch.
Another quirky thing about the Quicksilver angle station is you cannot easily cross over from one side to the other. There’s a primitive footpath around and under terminal that few people wanted to negotiate. The whole area around the angle station feels like no man’s land, as if a company came in and said “we want to put a lift here,” built one in six months and opened it without really figuring out the skiing part.
If anyone thought this summer’s $50 million campaign would fix Park City once and for all, they were mistaken. Egress from the southern half of Canyons still plagues the combined resort. From the drive terminal of Quicksilver, you still have to ride three lifts at a minimum to get “home” to Canyons Village or two to the Park City base area. Even with the gondola closing at 3:30 it’s an operational challenge trying to get thousands of skiers out of White Pine Canyon in anything less than hours. The crazy thing is the entire drainage is full of roads, just not public ones.
Lift Blog 
Looking back at the past few years after Quicksilver was installed, traffic patterns are starting to settle in this area, which was what Vail was waiting for. I have confidence that Vail will eventually fix the mess that is the lift system in the southern half of The Canyons.
The fascinating thing about the last picture, is that it calls for all the lifts to be HSQs, of which only Iron Mountain turned out as one. Very excited to see what the next 10(+) years under Vail ownership brings!
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Dreamscape and Dreamcatcher definitely deserve the high speed quad upgrades. Peak Five should also get a high speed quad upgrade and be realigned so that it has more lapable trails/can be accessed from Daybreak.
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Dreamcatcher especially. Getting to Peak 5 from Daybreak would help with drainage somewhat, as advanced skiers could leave that area via 9990 to Red Pine road, and avoid Tombstone.
On the former PCMR side, Pioneer is probably the next to go detach.
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Agree 100%, but since this lift seems to be solely for the benefit of McMansion owners at 9000′ in the Wasatch, I suspect this will not happen anytime soon. Hard to ski down from the steeper terrain on the ridge in your Bogner one piece.
And it’s such a shame as well b/c lack of ability to transit from the South to the North side of the Canyons terrain is the biggest single skier circulation issue IMO – everyone is forced to ski down to Tombstone right now.
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The good news is that Vail is a ski company, not a real estate company (for the most part), so they actually have some motivation to make it more ski friendly, since it’s not all about the homes like it was under Talisker.
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What were the lifts installed in the 7 at once and what year?
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In 1997, Canyons installed Tombstone Express (the old detachable quad), installed Saddleback Express, moved the old Saddleback quad to become Raptor, installed High Meadow (the old fixed-grip quad), installed Sun Peak Express (called Snow Canyon Express at the time), moved the old Lookout triple from Steamboat to become Short Cut, and installed the Red Pine Gondola. Additionally, legacy Park City installed two detachable six-packs in Bonanza and Payday and Deer Valley installed Deer Crest (the old fixed-grip quad) and relocated the old Wasatch triple to become Quincy. That summer was extremely busy in Park City with 11 lift installations. Interestingly, that was only 23 years ago, yet only six of the lifts remain standing in place, with one of them, Red Pine Gondola, having a different alignment at its base.
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Payday and bonanza replaced the old gondola
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The catwalk under Quicksilver can be mostly skipped by going into one of the many gates along the catwalk. If you ride up on the PC side you can see a cut run below that is accessed from the first gate on the left. (Or strait from the bowl)
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