- Vermont sees its best season in four with 4.2 million skier visits.
- San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center will reopen July 1st and its mini tramway is undergoing testing.
- The Hermitage website is back with a reorganization plan posted.
- Berkshire Bank calls the Hermitage plan “not feasible” and members are stuck in the middle crowdfunding legal representation.
- Leitner-Poma expects 2020 to be as busy as 2018 was after a slightly quieter 2019.
- The Disney Skyliner evacuation boat gets a permanent home.
- Eaglecrest eyes building a $30+ million adventure park including a gondola replacement for Ptarmigan.
- MND Group’s LST division is working on another detachable lift.
- Before the Skyliner opens, take a look back at Walt Disney’s original vision for a gondola-connected resort.
- Stevens Pass is indeed moving the Skyline Express to make way for two new lifts and is considering even more lift projects in the future.
- U.S. ski areas paid record rent to the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management last year.
- Arizona Snowbowl is working on a master plan update which will include two new lift projects.
Lift Blog 
So, we already know about the Agassiz replacement, but do we have any ideas about what the other new lift will be? Does it have anything to do with that highlighted area on the far skier’s left?
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I asked an Arizona Snowbowl rep for specifics on the lifts and got this in response: “We’ll explore potential locations for lifts once we submit the plan to the Forest Service and enter into the National Environmental Policy Act process.” Kind of strange they made this announcement before the actual draft is ready.
The Agassiz decision is now expected in January 2020 with implementation as early as June 2020. That could mean Snowbowl is looking at two lifts in addition to the chondola.
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Hmm. I wonder what the other lift could be. One thing that’s always interested me is the idea of a lift from the Midway Catwalk to the summit of Agassiz Peak. It’d open up a lot of the hike-to terrain, and might be able to attract some more of the expert skiers from Phoenix.
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They could also when they replace Agassiz make the current top a midstation and then make the top Agassiz peak so the experts wouldn’t have to hike as long
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A lift to the top of Agassiz peak would never happen because of the threat to the San Francisco Peaks groundsel and winds. If the Chondola is separate from the two new lifts my guess is the Aspen double will be replaced by a FGQ most likely (another option is to use the Agassiz triple but I believe it will be parted out with some of it going into the sunset lift, especially the chairs since they announced all future chairs will have safety bars and also it had a whole new gearbox installed in Dec 18) and that highlighted area would be the new lift or again possibly the Agassiz triple. They still have the Hart Prairie double in storage which could be reused but I think that lift will end up in Williams.
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