- Alterra, Aspen, Arapahoe Basin and Boyne file a petition to force Liftopia into bankruptcy, claiming the company owes them a combined $3 million.
- The only North American ski resort accessible exclusively by aerial tramway will reopen at 30 percent capacity.
- Leitner-Poma is seeking installation labor for a major project at Nordic Valley, Utah.
- The Mont-Sainte-Anne gondola, which suffered two separate incidents before the Covid shutdown last winter, won’t operate this summer.
- High Country News profiles one group of workers’ quest to unionize at a Vail resort.
- The first concrete is poured for Arizona Snowbowl’s big new Telemix.
- Granby Ranch goes dark.
- The developer of American Dream, home to Big Snow, may be in trouble.
- An old Yan heads from Idaho to Mt. Baldy, California.
- The Indy Pass generated close to 9,000 skier visits last year.
- As Florida theme park Busch Gardens reopens, its gondola won’t be spinning. No word yet on the Disney Skyliner.
- Newly-purchased Bousquet Mountain will add a used Poma triple to replace its Summit Double this summer.
- Poma wins the contract to build $75 million urban gondola system in Grenoble, France.
- Hermitage Club founder Jim Barnes is still trying to appeal the sale of club assets to a member group.
- Leitner Ropeways releases its 2019 Annual Report.
Lift Blog 
Which Yan lift at Sun Valley was moved to Mt Baldy? Cold Springs?
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The Facebook post said the lift came from Soldier Mountain. This still begs the question, did Soldier sell one of their lifts or was this one sitting in storage? There wouldn’t be much left of Soldier if they sold off one of their existing lifts. Are they buying a new one?
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The Yan was never installed at Soldier. Both Stadelis are still in service there.
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Peter, what lift at Mt baldy does this replace? One question about Bousquet?, do they purchase another “new” lift to replace the blue chair?
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I have asked Mt. Baldy what the plan is for this lift and will update if I hear back.
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Do you know where it originally came from?
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Looks to me like East Broadway from Squaw Valley.
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I noticed that the AZ snow bowl webpage includes Brianhead among its affiliated ski resorts. Did Mountain Capital buy Brianhead? If so, when did that happen?
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Last November. https://liftblog.com/2019/11/05/mountain-capital-partners-to-add-brian-head-resort/
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Wait, the article is saying the Hall is getting replaced, not the summit lift. Which lift is going?
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I’m pretty sure it’s the Carlevaro-Savio/SLI double being replaced.
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Peter’s right. The Yellow Chair which is a nearly 60 year old C & S lift with SLI chairs is coming out. The new triple is supposed to be on a slightly different alignment too which will result in the little used Green Chair coming down as well. That one is a Hall that came from Eastover in the 2000s. Everything I’ve heard so far indicates the Blue Chair is staying.
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Keeping the blue chair is a mistake, Bousquet is a feeder Mtn, it is very hard for parents to load their kids on the blue chair.
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Yeah the green chair is seldom used, and not really necessary at all. The summit double has needed replacement for a long time. It’s got the old fashioned non-bull wheel unload. I remember going to races there and they liftees would keep having to tell people to load every other chair because the chair failed the weight test and would sag too low right by where the race finish is, even with a brand new drive. It would be viable to replace the hall as well, but they might not make an investment in that until they can turn a big profit.
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I asked Mt. Baldy what they were going to do with the YAN. Their response? We have no information to provide at this time and we will post any notices on our website. :(
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Can someone explain skier visits to me in reference to the 9,000 reported by the Indy Pass?
To me, that means that 9,000 people bought and used the pass, which seems kind of low, but maybe I am missing the ball or have inaccurate expectations.
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Skier visits are typically the sum of the total number of days skied at a particular mountain by everyone. What 9,000 skier visits likely means is that across all users the pass was used for 9,000 individual days. This number can be divided by the average number of usage days by passholders to determine the number of sales.
I think 2-3 uses per passholder is a reasonable, conservative estimate, which would yield 3000-4500 passes sold. While definitely not too bad for a small operation, it is still less than 100 per resort. I think they (or the individual resorts) need to do a better job of promoting the add-on option for season passholders.
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Hey ski the East, if they had 9k skier visits, divided by 44 resorts, which is what they had last year, that comes out to 204 skier visits per area. The Indy guy said they paid out a little over 48 bucks per visit, so almost 10k for each ski area, if visits were spread out evenly, plus food, beverage sales on top of that, not bad for year one
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I don’t think it was 9000 people, but around 2250 people who average around 4 visits on the Indy pass, just a guess On my part, 2250 Indy passes sold first year, roughly, not bad for first year, in a normal ski year, they would have sold 10k for year two, my guess at some point Five to seven years down the road they will have 100 k in passes, just my guessing.
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