- A bill introduced in Congress would allow National Forests to use some of the fees collected from ski resorts to be used to expedite permitting for improvement projects.
- Poma will break ground on its first urban 3S in July.
- Lookout Pass intends to buy a second Skytrac quad for the Eagle Peak Expansion and relocate Chair 1.
- In addition to its Lake replacement project, Owl’s Head decides to also remove the Panorama double without a direct replacement.
- Breckenridge proposes building an infill chairlift on Peak 7 to improve skier circulation.
- Local electeds vote in support of an urban gondola to Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby Mountain campus.
- Retired Riblet double chairs bring in $146,000 for nonprofit organizations surrounding Schweitzer Mountain Resort.
- Towers supporting the world’s first eight passenger monocable gondola are history.
- This video shows how the Disney Skyliner’s innovative loading works. Every 9th gondola goes to a second turnaround, stopping about 50 seconds for unloading and another 1:10 for loading before rejoining the moving line. Pretty slick!
- The Hermitage Club files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing more than 200 creditors. A company called Restructured Opportunity Investors could lend the club up to $1.75 million for restructuring if approved by a bankruptcy court.
- Berkshire Bank wants the Hermitage receiver to stay on the job while a different bankruptcy court considers whether to initiate a Chapter 7 liquidation, which at least 187 club members now support.
- At Smugglers’ Notch, hundreds of trout take a spin up Sterling to their new home in Vermont’s highest pond.
- A Dutch-American joint venture proposes building an indoor snow park on a Northern Virginia landfill serviced by a two stage gondola.
- It sure looks like the Skyline Express is moving as part of the Brooks/Daisy replacement project at Stevens Pass.
- The haul rope is up on the Bretton Woods Skyway.
- Construction is well underway on Jackson Hole’s 10th chairlift.
Lift Blog 
The second loading contour on the Disney skyliner is super slick. It’s great to see Disney use some of the innovative D-Line features! As Doppelmayr tries to push into urban gondolas with their D-Line system more, I think double loading systems like this will be more common.
On another hand, about how many skiers do you estimate this year at JHMR were Ikon passholders? I realize you probably can not give any sort of exact numbers, but I’d be curious as to your thoughts. Thanks.
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Ikon Pass usage is definitely a hot topic. The official line is Ikon accounted for an 8 percent incremental increase in visits as of early March. Overall visits were up about 13 percent last season. https://www.jhnewsandguide.com/opinion/guest_shot/article_3b2ff051-3b63-56a9-b994-29b781dd7aac.html
Skier visits at JH have grown approximately 50 percent since the new tram opened and much of that growth came before Ikon. Assuming the trend continues, it will be very interesting to see what lift projects follow Eagle’s Rest.
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Possibly six-packs and or bubble lifts at jackson hole? maybe even an eight?
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Is there any room at Jackson for an expansion lift? Or boxed in by government land?
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The east, west and north sides are no go due to Grand Teton National Park. The south side is a mix of National Forest and private land. Cody Bowl is already included in JHMR’s permit boundary.
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Basically the entire resort is on “government land”
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It would be great if they installed a Hoback lift from the bottom of North Hoback/Union Pass to the top of the Hobacks at Rendezvous. In addition allowing people to lap this part of the mountain, it will keep people from coming all the way back down to the base and crowding the tram. Perhaps make Sublette a detachable quad and increase its capacity 2400 at the same time to allow for longer laps on that side of the mountain. Jackson Hole has plenty of terrain and just needs to better spread everyone out.
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I think that Thunder needs an upgrade before Sublette. It’d also be interesting to see a replacement for the East Ridge chair that was moved to Marmot, to allow for an alternative to the Tram.
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East Ridge could use a triple chairlift or low capacity fixed grip quad.
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Sublette is probably too windy for a HSQ, better idea would be to make thunder one.
Honesty, East Ridge isn’t necessary unless Jackson ever gets permission from the forest service to have a longer season (which won’t happen). If it did though, they could run Tram (with up and downloading), east ridge and sublette until the snow is gone. Either way, I don’t think a chair is the right choice for East ridge, a poma or T-bar in the same area would be able to run twice as often.
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Jackson Hole’s season dates are not dictated by the Forest Service. Not sure where that myth came from but it sure is popular. June 1st and plenty of skiers went up the tram today.
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Another idea that occurred to me was the idea for a chair to the top of the headwall, as they’ve had plans for in the past.
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Thanks for that article. So basically, my feelings were confirmed. Ikon pass has added skiers, but it’s not like it came and stole the stage from everything else. 8% is still a significant portion though. The big thing seems to be weather. People love skiing on fresh snow, and of course powder skiing is awesome.
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For the Alpine-X and SnowWorld indoor slopes proposed for Virginia, the gondola is not inside. It’s only a option to connect the Alpine-X building with a nearby park. The first SnowWorld facility has been around in the Netherlands since 1996. Landgraaf is their big facility and it was built on top of the slag heap of a coal mine. It has a 6-seat chairlift and an FIS slope.
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The 6-seater chair at Landgraaf is a fixed grip 6 pack IIRC.
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Some news this week concerning the gondola proposed for Idaho Springs. https://www.clearcreekcourant.com/content/gondola-opening-pushed-back
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Currently, I’m theorizing that Breck’s proposed infill lift on Peak 7 is probably going to be a high speed quad that will run from maybe the bottom of Wirepatch or Lincoln Meadows up to Pioneer Crossing at the top of the Independence SuperChair. That’s my best guess as to what “to improve skier circulation could mean.” To repeat myself from another thread (https://liftblog.com/2020-new-lifts/), I think it has to do with cross-mountain navigation. One thing apparent about Peak 6 is that the only way of egress is via Lost Horizon to Lower Monte Cristo and back to Peak 7 Base Area, then either the Independence SuperChair and Claimjumper or the Gondola if you want to go back to Peak 8 and points south. This makes the last hill on Lower Monte Cristo a big bottleneck that has to be designated a slow zone with guys in yellow jackets, and it can get really icy.
Basically, you have to go through Peak 7 Base Area to get anywhere else after you’re done on Peak 6 because of the way the trails are configured. This problem doesn’t exist going towards Peak 6 since the Peak 6 Parkway (small trail segments cut between Pioneer and Wirepatch, and Wirepatch and Lincoln Meadows) enables direct access from the Rocky Mountain SuperChair to Zendo, bypassing Peak 7’s base area. A superchair from the bottom of Wirepatch up to Pioneer Crossing would certainly eliminate that bottleneck and also take a lot of traffic off the Independence SuperChair, both by making it easier to lap the four blue runs north of Pioneer without having to do the runout after each trail, and also enabling most Peak 6 traffic to bypass Peak 7’s base.
The terrain profile in the Monte Cristo/Wirepatch junction area looks like one very suitable to putting the bottom terminal for such a lift, which would amount to something about 6,500 feet long, with somewhere around 20 towers and 135 chairs. (I place the theoretical unload as being on the north side of Pioneer Crossing and slightly uphill from where the Independence SuperChair offloads; again, this is me just guesstimating):
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This is my thought exactly when i saw that announcement. Really stoked as I was just talking with my friend this winter about how we needed a second lift on 7 so you could lap wonderlust/ore bucket.The only way i think there would be a different alignment than what you propose is if they set it up in the hopes of getting that private land between 6 and 7 in the future.
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Working around that private land is why Zendo has to start where it does.
I think the infill superchair will essentially result in Peak 7 having the same setup as lower Peak 8 and upper Peak 9 where there are two superchairs serving essentially the same terrain, but there are some slight variations in exactly what terrain they serve as well as the different lifts’ purposes.
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It could also be a second lift parallel to Independence à la Big White. The Forest Service expects implementation in June of 2020 so we should know the exact plan soon.
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Good theory and all, but there’s not really enough room at the base to squeeze another lift in. I say that from seven years of a timeshare at Grand Lodge on Peak 7.
At the base of Peak 7, the area around where the Independence SuperChair loads is pretty tight, between the Grand Lodge on Peak 7’s swimming pools and Seven’s Restaurant seating area on the north side, and the walkway to the Gondola on the south side. (And while there may be room to put a loading area near the enclosed walkway connecting the Grand Lodge’s North and South Buildings, it would be a little too tucked away to be noticed)
At the top, it’s a different story.
A high speed quad could probably thread the gap between the Independence SuperChair’s terminal and Pioneer Crossing, with a top drive terminal due straight in front of the Independence SuperChair, with a result kinda like what one sees at Deer Valley with Silver Strike:
Where I’m thinking in regards of guessing the lift’s starting spot as being where Wirepatch meets Monte Cristo is that that last hill on Monte Cristo before you empty out into Peak 7 Base is a real bottleneck point, since four blues from Peak 7 plus all the traffic from Peak 6 are funneled into that quarter-mile section of trail, and it can get pretty icy, especially at the end of the day. Starting a lift at the bottom of Wirepatch would take a lot of the traffic off that lower section.
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It also could be the Peak 6 alternative lift that was proposed in the past
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Seeing as that proposal also includes the Colorado SuperChair upgrade that has happened, it could be on the table.
I imagine that such a lift would probably be a high speed quad and would also enable for transiting over to Peak 8 from Delirium via the Peak 7 road.
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Looking at a satellite, the Peak 6 alternative lift would deposit guests around the south fork of Delirium, with direct access to gladed intermediate terrain, while also providing access to the Kensho SuperChair via Delirium. Zendo wouldn’t be redundant, although it would primarily be for traffic transiting to Peak 6 from Peak 8 and points south.
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Would definitely be stoked if it was that alternative lift alignment!
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