Vail Resorts will continue its commitment to new infrastructure at Park City Mountain this off-season with the installation of a new fixed-grip quad, the company revealed today. Dubbed “Over and Out,” the lift will connect a spot near the bottom of the Tombstone six pack with the top of the Sunrise double, giving skiers and snowboarders a much-needed egress route from the heart of the mountain and the popular Quicksilver Gondola. Ride time will be approximately five minutes.
This will be the fifth new lift for Vail since buying Park City five years ago. “Since combining Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons Resort in 2015, our focus has been on enhancing the guest experience,” said Bill Rock, senior vice president and chief operating officer at Park City Mountain in a statement. “We continue to evolve as a resort and prioritize our capital improvements based on guest feedback. We know that time is particularly valuable to our guests and the new lift will offer a faster and more convenient route to return to Canyons Village.” Construction is expected be complete by December, pending permitting.
The latest project news comes a few months after Vail’s commitments to build new lifts at Crested Butte and Stevens Pass for next winter along with a planned T-Bar on Vail Mountain. Park City’s lift manufacturer was not revealed and it’s possible Over and Out will be a re-engineered High Meadow. That 1997 CTEC Sprint model quad was removed a year ago to make way for the High Meadow Express.
Update 5/24: I’ve confirmed with Park City that Over and Out will be a brand new Skytrac Monarch.
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I think this will be the old High Meadow Quad. They removed it carefully, but I don’t think it was sold. I wonder if it’s long enough though.
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I can imagine that it will be the old quad, although some significant modifications have to be made. It will probably require some new sheave assemblies as well as more towers. I don’t think more chairs will be added as the spacing can be far as it won’t get too much traffic. This will be a very helpful connection.
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This is one awesome idea. From my experience skiing Park City, we had to take the Tombstone Express and Short Cut to get to the base of the Orange Bubble Express. I think there may be some CTEC chairs in an old boneyard that could be used on this lift.
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Tombstone allows you to get back to Red Pine Lodge, where then you must take Saddleback, Short Cut, or ride the gondola downhill to get back to the base area. Since 99% of skiers riding Tombstone after 3:45PM are bound for the base area, providing a direct bypass lift is great.
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I wonder if this will turn out to be in addition to or instead of a new Sunrise lift. While obviously geared primarily toward egress from Tombstone, the new lift could also be used as a way from Canyons Village to Tombstone in the morning. That’s if loading is allowed in both directions like Timberline.
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I can’t believe that this will be the only change related to Sunrise/Tombstone/Village expansion connection. There are two major hotels under development/construction (Lift and Pendry) and the Canyons Village master plan indicates that the bottom of Sunrise will be a major ski beach with lots of shops/bars, etc.
They will have to upgrade Sunrise to at least a high speed quad chair and relocate the base terminal closer to the new hotels. The bigger question for me is where will the upgraded Sunrise chair go. Given that they are installing the Over and Out chair this year, my guess is that the new Sunrise chair will drop visitors off somewhere on the south side of Red Pine Lodge and will likely have a mid-station for people to jump on the new Over and Out lift.
I had heard various rumors of a gondola that would take people as far as the bottom of Dreamscape or even to Quicksilver, but I image that either the cost or challenges with the Osgulthorpe property rights squashed that.
I also agree that the mountain desperately needs an upgrade to Dreamcatcher. Hopefully that might come with the addition of the two new lifts slotted for White Pine Canyon.
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Sunrise becoming a high speed quad to Red Pine would likely entail some interesting engineering when crossing over the canyon.
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Where is White Pine Canyon?
2 lifts?
Go big or go home ⛷️
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White Pine canyon is the area between Pinecone ridge and Dream Peak. There are two lifts shown on the current Colony expansion plans.
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This has been a glaring bottleneck for the entire history of the Canyons – great idea and should be a cheap way to solve a problem. I assume they can’t have it start directly in the village because of property lines? That would be better – hard to get to the bottom of Sunrise in its current form as it’s not near the Cabriolet or any of the parking. I hope it loads in both directions.
Too bad this news isn’t in conjunction with the much-needed Dreamcatcher HSQ. I hope they’re reusing High Meadow – plenty of fixed quads around that would be great for just this sort of purpose. Another great place for one would be from the bottom of Silverlode to the top of Crescent for beginners on the PC side along the same lines – relieving crowds from the hard-to-avoid mid-mountain six pack on each side.
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Is High Meadow even long enough for the proposed lift line?
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High Meadow was 1,991′ x 310′. Over and Out will be somewhere around 2,990′ x 115′. The profile is going to be pretty cool.
(Station locations are just a guess.)
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That profile seems very Slide Brook-esque.
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The profile looks awesome!!!
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How did you do that?! It’s so cool.
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Jonathan, that was done in Google Earth Pro.
I made something similar, with a couple of alternate alignments. My guess is Vail already has an alignment in mind, since they said they are waiting on permits.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q55Nzs_7jnYLRoE1Lljf-TXJSnOgBDHu/view
If Vail goes ahead and uses High Meadow equipment here, it will be interesting to see what manufacturer supplies the new components for the re-engineering effort. I could see this going to either Skytrac or Doppelmayr.
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I think Skytrac is doing the CTEC relocation at Utah Olympic Park next door.
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As an Epic Passholder, this is SUPER good news. I wasn’t expecting anything given Vail’s typical mid December press releases. Thanks Vail for continuing to improve the Park City skiing experience.
Five minutes from the bottom of Tombstone to the near the Canyons Village base is great. I see this being good especially for skiers that started their day over at the former-PCMR side, as they are more likely to get stuck in this area late in the afternoon.
For the unfamiliar, Tombstone is one of the resort’s biggest bottlenecks, especially in the afternoon as everyone tries to get back to the base area, as it’s the only way out of a large portion of ski terrain after the Quicksilver gondola closes.
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Silverlode is a similar bottleneck that the Park City side needs to resolve, ever since the Quicksilver interconnect opened (sure, King Con was upgraded to provide an alternate way out, but SIlverlode is what you have to take if you want to get one-seat access over to Jupiter, Thaynes, and McConkey’s; whereas with King Con you’ll have to then take Crescent to Bonanza or Pioneer to get access to those areas). I’m kinda with Tyler about that one being a place where a fixed grip quad from the bottom of Silverlode to the top of Crescent would be a nice crowd reliever (maybe they can relocate Dreamcatcher to fill that purpose whenever they do decide to put the high speed quad on Dreamcatcher).
Tombstone is arguably a worser choke point because, as you say, when going towards Red Pine Lodge, Tombstone is the only way to get there from Quicksilver, Day Break, Dreamscape, Dreamcatcher and Iron Mountain. It’s not bad going the other way, from Red Pine Lodge over to Quicksilver. In fact the fastest route from Red Pine Lodge to Quicksilver doesn’t use Tombstone at all: it’s Timberline to Iron Mountain Express, then ski the Chrome Alley or Upper White Pine trails. The alternative route is Tombstone to Peak Five to Dreamscape to Flat Iron, which is three fixed grip lifts instead of just one. (One does have to use Tombstone to get to Peak 5 and Ninety Nine 90, though)
Over and Out will alleviate the Tombstone chokepoint a bit and definitely make the return to the Canyons base area much quicker (rather than have to go up Tombstone, travel to Red Pine Lodge, then take Short Cut over). It’ll also mean people on Saddleback won’t have to use Short Cut to get back to runs that return to the base at the end of the day. And more importantly, Over and Out will enable those traveling from Quicksilver to bypass Red Pine Lodge when headed over to Murdock Peak and Super Condor (thanks to a new route of Over and Out to Orange Bubble to Super Condor).
The Tombstone chokepoint would be further alleviated if the proposal to upgrade Dreamcatcher to a high speed quad ended up being combined with the addition of a lift traveling from the bottom of Dreamscape and Day Break directly over to the top of Peak Five. A lift in this alignment, as someone else suggested here on the site, would redirect experts traveling from the interconnect to Red Pine to ride Ninety Nine 90 and the East Face chutes to bypass Tombstone.
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Silverlode has been a bottleneck at PCMR even before Quicksilver, but Quicksilver did exacerbate the problem. On your proposed alignment, whatever fixed-grip lift PCMR replaces next should be relocated to there. My guess is it would be either the Pioneer triple equipment or the Dreamcatcher/Dreamscape quad equipment.
“It’ll also mean people on Saddleback won’t have to use Short Cut to get back to runs that return to the base at the end of the day.”
You can already ski from the top of Saddleback to the base area, via Kokopelli and Echo. The alternate route to Murdock Peak will certainly be interesting.
I know that Vail was waiting to see how traffic patterns settled after the Quicksilver Gondola, and I think this lift, Over and Out, is only the beginning of major lift changes to come. Park City is one of Vail’s ‘premium’ resorts, so they’ll want to make the experience as good as they can. I personally agree with you Donald, Tombstone was this area’s biggest bottleneck, so Vail upgrading this first makes sense.
“A lift in this alignment, as someone else suggested here on the site, would redirect experts traveling from the interconnect to Red Pine to ride Ninety Nine 90 and the East Face chutes to bypass Tombstone.”
I see you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve written on this site.
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I noticed when I was there in March that it looked like trails had been cut, coming down from Copperhead trail down to the White Pine gatehouse area. Are there any intentions of running a lift from that area or expand the terrain more over there? The Dreamcatcher lift would be a perfect fit based on its length.
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Off-topic. But I was out skiing in Park City in January. Park city is a 9 out of 10 but Deer Valley is 10 out of 10. I don’t understand why Vail thinks they can charge the same daily lift rate for Park City as Deer Valley. It made my decision easier as to where to ski most days. Did not get to the Canyons because a few days the gondola between Park City and canyons was closed due to wind
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Because, much like airlines, Vail doesn’t consider the amount you pay if you walk up to the ticket desk on the day of service to be the true price (https://www.saminfo.com/headline-news/9294-vail-resorts-re-sets-the-pricing-model). They expect most people to buy the $120 per day Epic n-day, the $650 Epic local if they’re not going to be skiing during the holidays., or go online and get the $150 per day advanced rate/the $165 mid-advanced when they book their flight.
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Will the new lift run in both directions?
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Doubtful, I’d say. The primary aim with this lift is to provide another drainage point out of the southern half of the ex-Canyons terrain. This lift can’t be lapped, and most skiers will ride it at most twice per day. Additionally, it’s pretty easy to get to the bottom of Tombstone down the Chicane run from Red Pine, so I don’t see why they need additional lift capacity to get to that trail pod.
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Yeah but why not take the opportunity to decrease the stress on Red Pine gondola and enable direct access from Canyons Village to Tombstone/Timberline to start the day? Makes no sense to me that this would be one way only.
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Makes sense if the top station is above the top of Sunrise.
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Would it also be possible to have sunrise get converted back to a quad chair
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Sounds like no loading in the southbound direction.
https://www.kpcw.org/post/park-city-mountain-resort-looks-back-2018-2019-season
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Anyone aware of what’s going on in the large bowl area south of the Quicksilver gondola and northeast of Scott Hill? Lots of early construction in the most recent google maps imaging (very likely from summer 2018) … this plot of land is surrounding by prime upper mountain slopes and, and only 2 miles from Solitude’s base area (allowing for a ‘One Wasatch’ interconnect lift that would not involve crowding up Jupiter Bowl).
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Actually, after a bit of digging i found this area of activity is consistent with further development of the Colony real estate … and is surrounded by a few potential new lifts and an intriguingly vague “potential future silver king development area”
Click to access 17X11-IMA-Homestead-Map-01-29-19.pdf
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I’ve confirmed Over and Out will be a brand new Skytrac Monarch fixed quad.
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Between Teocali and now this lift, it looks like Vail is going to be one of Skytrac’s biggest customers this year. I guess you could say this is big news for Skytrac?
I know Boyne has bought a Monarch (or maybe two), but it’s cool to see Skytrac get a customer like Vail. This isn’t Vail’s first encounter with Skytrac though, considering they’ve used Skytrac to retrofit a couple of other lifts.
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There are two Skytracs at Boyne resorts but the Big Sky one may have been purchased by Lone Mountain Land Company. Chair 6 at Crystal was a third but of course that is no longer a Boyne resort.
Skytrac should be quite pleased to be building at three of its largest resorts yet all in one season.
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Interesting that they’d spring for a new one and have it be a Skytrac over here instead of Doppelmayr. Only lift number 2 in the L-P family out of 37 at PCMR. So far the only Skytrac appearance in Park City has been one depression tower retrofit on Viking at DV.
How interchangeable are SkyTrac parts with an old CTEC fixed quad? Canyons side has plenty of those to share with. To the layman, grips, hangers, sheaves all look identical. They had their pick of local SLC employers.
Not a huge deal not to have access going southbound – it’s hard to get to the bottom of Sunrise unless you’re staying in one of the hotels over there. Of course the expensive way to do this better would be to run a two-stage gondola from the village to Tombstone to Iron Mountain, replacing Timberline in the process. Coming directly from the gondola back to the bottom is still quite a slog – long cattrack from gondola followed by back to back fixed quad rides to the parking lot.
Any news on the fate of High Meadow? It was sitting in the lower parking lot last summer but was moved somewhere else before winter last year.
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In addition to the Viking depression assembly, DV has some Skytrac brittle bars on a few of their Yan fixed-grip lifts. Back at PCMR, Vail bought new Skytrac controls/electronics for Thaynes and Jupiter around 2016-17.
Skytrac and CTEC parts can be mixed and matched quite a bit, but they definitely have their differences (that may not immediately be obvious). For example, while the sheave assemblies are near-identical, the crossarms are not. The Skytrac grip is basically a slightly improved version of the CTEC grip.
With regards to purchasing a brand new lift, either Vail has other plans for High Meadow, or the cost of re-engineering it wasn’t cost-effective enough compared to a brand new lift. Springing for a new Skytrac makes some sense at Park City, as it’s chock full of CTEC technology. Something else interesting about choosing a Skytrac, is that all of the lift components will be manufactured basically just down the road.
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They could definitely save costs by reusing High Meadow and having Skytrac bring in the necessary parts to extend the lift.
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The more I’ve played around with lift alignments in Google Earth, and now looking back at High Meadow, I’m not as sure as I once was about that. For one thing, Over and Out will have multiple breakovers, while High Meadow only had one major one. Another thing that concerned me was the drive station. In order to get the ride to ~5 minutes like they said, it’ll need to spin at 450FPM (assuming no load carpet), so the drive motor may have needed an upgrade. This lift will also be a little under twice as long, so a fair amount of new carriers would’ve needed to be fabricated, if they wanted any meaningful capacity. Once you’ve done all of this, you’re 80% of the way towards a brand new lift. I am starting to agree with Vail that a brand new lift is the best option here. There’s plenty of other places where Vail can put the High Meadow equipment to good use.
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Peter already confirmed it’s a new Skytrac.
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Isn’t Doppelmayr still making fixed grip lifts just down the road too?
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Yes, however a fair amount of parts are still imported from St. Jerome, Quebec. SLC makes the chairs, tower tubes, and fixed-grip terminals. St. Jerome makes the tower heads and line equipment. I’m not sure where Doppelmayr electronics/controls are made these days. It used to be they were made in SLC, but they might even be imported from Wolfurt these days. It used to be that Doppelmayr fixed-grip lifts (and even some Uni-GSs) used CTEC-style controls, but now they use Doppelmayr-style controls.
With a Skytrac lift, everything with the exception of some incidental parts will be made down the road.
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Skytrac parts have popped up at some of the other Vail owned areas. Keystone got A-51 outfitted with a Skytrac return station a few years ago, replacing the Yan loading station (making that lift a true frankenlift with Yan towers, Skytrac lifting frames and return, Doppelmayr sheaves and Riblet chairs).
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I rode up the gondola today and it looks like the alignment will be shorter and higher elevation than I initially guessed. Something like this:
Explains why it will only be one way.
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A two-way lift would’ve been impractical regardless of alignment seeing as the Gondola and Orange Bubble are pretty sufficient at handling all the base area traffic on the Canyons side and they feed enough traffic into Tombstone already.
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