- Stevens Pass nears completion of its largest lift investment ever.
- Bretton Woods prepares to open New Hampshire’s first eight passenger gondola as soon as October.
- A nonprofit hopes a T-Bar will be the right lift for historically troubled Ascutney Mountain.
- The 17 former Peak resorts are now Vail resorts.
- Vail season pass sales are up double digit percentages from last year and the company expects to earn between $778 and $818 million in fiscal year 2020 with a net income of $293 to $353 million.
- Mt. Bachelor launches an all-new James Niehues-painted trail map with some surprise new lift names: Alpenglow, Early Riser and Little Pine.
- The Berry family and Arctaris Impact Investors issue dueling letters on why the Saddleback sale fell through.
- Here’s another construction update from Alaska’s brand new ski area.
- The Forest Service approves Mammoth Mountain’s Chair 16 replacement project.
- Stakeholders seek an extension as the Hermitage Club bankruptcy works its way through the courts.
- The ski resort portion of American Dream now won’t open until December 5th.
- Doppelmayr is out with a new issue of Wir Magazine which profiles Ramcharger 8 and Whistler Blackcomb’s three newest additions.
- Vail concludes that undetected ground movement caused July’s tower separation and evacuation of the Eagle Bahn Gondola.
Lift Blog 
I’m glad Ascutney’s T-Bar is finally taking shape. Just wondering though, why couldn’t they re-use the sunrise double?
http://www.chairlift.org/ascutney.html
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Here is the T-Bar when it was at Le Relais.
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tke2-d-doppelmayr-4457.html
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Love the new Bachelor trail map!
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For all these years I was surprised Bachelor didn’t have a James Niehues painted trail map, considering how many other ski areas in Oregon do. It looks incredible!
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They will probably build the new 16 lift next summer. Loading carpet on 16? Have LA skiers ever seen one before?
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Probably not. This will also be the first time that a lift at Mammoth will have sideways loading since 15 was converted to inline a long while ago. I’d heard rumors a while ago (It may have been in an INF filing) that they were going to give 16 the full Ramcharger treatment, but as a six instead of an eight. Either way, it’s be interesting to see which, if any, Doppelmayr lifts are D-Line next year. Around the time that Ramcharger was announced, I’d heard that they might phase out the UNI-G the way that they did with the UNI-M a few years after the UNI-G was introduced.
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If they give Canyon the full Ramcharger treatment and go D-Line, they will break their impressive fleet commonality of 100% DT series grips on all the detachables. They don’t really need 8 pack capacity because there is backup from lifts 4 and 17.
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Should’ve put this in the other comment but forgot. The UNI-G has stuck around far longer than the Spacejet/UNI-M did when the UNI-G came out. The prototype UNI-G first appeared in 2000 on 15 and the Purgatory Village Express. The production model UNI-G came out in 2001 and the last UNI-M’s were also built that year. By 2002, they had completely transitioned to the UNI-G.
If we go back even further to the transition from the UNI to the UNI-M, the prototype UNI-M made it’s debut at Tremblant in 1994. The next year, 1995, the production model came out, while one final UNI was built at Camelback. This happened one year faster than the UNI-M to UNI-G transition.
The prototype D-Line came out in 2015 in Europe with the production model coming in 2016, but the UNI-G is still reportedly available for the 2020 construction season in North America. That’s 4 years offering both the production model D-Line alongside the UNI-G. Even in Europe, it took multiple years to fully transition.
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When did Europe stop offering the UNI-G? Maybe Doppelmayr of America still needs to get their production capabilities up.
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I don’t think any ski areas actively monitor or measure ground movements so unfortunately what happened on Vail’s gondola might could happen in other places with older high capacity detachables
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James Niehues’ map for Mount Bachelor figured out how to capture the whole mountain without needing insets.
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He is excellent at that.
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For those who ski Mt. Bachelor, you will notice one serious thing about the trail map in regards to Sunrise Lodge. That lodge does not resemble anything like the current one, but instead has a complex built on the side of it, maybe a sign of a Woodward Mt. Bachelor? I’m referring to the indoor skate center.
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