- Construction will begin early next year on a new point of interest chairlift in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
- Amazon files a patent for a skier-pulling drone.
- Mission Ridge provides another fantastic construction update.
- 2020-21 is the final season the largest ski resort in California will be known by the name Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows.
- The Forest Service seeks public comments on eight lift projects and more included in the Grand Targhee master plan.
- Big Snow American Dream reopens Tuesday after nearly six months closed. The snow never melted!
- Utah Olympic Park expects to add a fourth chairlift and new terrain next summer.
- After years focusing on snowmaking, Telluride’s owner considers lift upgrades.
- Ski Santa Fe fires up snow guns to help protect lifts from wildfire.
- Glenwood Caverns reopens today following a 16 day fire closure.
- Riders get stuck on the Sandia Peak Tramway for hours.
- Vermont may provide direct payments to ski resorts.
- Harry’s Dream at Beaver Mountain gets a new Skytrac return terminal.
- Vail Resorts won’t sell day tickets early season and will require passholders to make reservations at all 34 of its North American mountains for 2020-21.
- The Denver Post catches up with Colorado mountain leaders to talk winter plans.
- The Lower T-Bar at Pass Powderkeg, AB is being extended.
- Doppelmayr begins testing its D-Line gondola to the beach in Mexico.
- The City of Los Angeles releases four gondola alignment alternatives it’s studying for Griffith Park and the Hollywood sign.
Lift Blog 
In 16 years of ownership of Telluride, owner Chuck Horning has done less for the resort than any previous owner, while the value of his investment has likely tripled. One short fixed grip quad, some snowmaking expansion and maintenance that had been deferred for years, and a few pop up type restaurants in underperforming commercial space at the base. That’s it. He’s not a skier and has very little respect in the community. Long time industry leader Bill Jensen couldn’t take it any more and recently left. Master plan updates and talk of new lifts is now considered comedy in Telluride.
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It’s not even like they need to do a ton to improve the lift system a lot.
– New gondola for Sunshine
– New HSQ for plunge
– Move current sunshine to coonskin
– Move current plunge to Oak Street
– Use leftover parts from sunshine/plunge and new parts to build Palmyra Basin FGQ chair
– New Gold Hill surface lift as already planned
The above alone would do wonders to improve the lift system at telluride. Here’s the pipe dream section (if they wanted to do more):
– Bear Creek return lift ending near plunge
– Expansion into above treeline bowls in upper bear creek
Here’d be my dream expansion into bear creek (yellow are existing plunge/revelation. Most new red lifts would be surface lifts.)
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Sunshine Express is aging out is due to be replaced, I could see this being a new 6 person, but other than that, what else needs to be replaced? It’s not like Coon and Oak get a ton of traffic.. Maybe upgrade Plunge to a HSQ, but is this one really all that backed up?
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Sunshine is planned to be replaced with a 10 person gondola due to its length. Plunge is long due for replacement as it sometimes gets long lines (only 1,200 pph) and has a 13 minute ride time. Coonskin doesn’t get any traffic because it’s a fixed grip paralleling a gondola. If it went detachable you’d see a lot more people lapping it. And Oak would get more traffic after a plunge upgrade because it’d be a much faster route from town to the summit area.
Another problem with Coonskin and Oak street is that they are getting to the age where they might start being a liability soon.
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I’ve been thinking about a drone system to get skiers up a hill for the last few years.. And of course amazon beat me to making it real.
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You might want to correct the 4th item. Heavenly is the largest ski resort in California by acreage and vertical drop which is usually how ski resorts are measured. Until Squaw and Alpine are connected and are considered one resort, Squaw comes in 2nd.
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How much of that acreage is forest vs prepared runs? In that regard I think mammoth has them both beat
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I’ve been skiing there for decades and the 4,800 acres is more skiable as a percentage than most places. The reason is that the trees are widely spaced. Squaw and Mammoth are pretty much the same so I think acreage is a fair comparison for the top 3 California resorts.
I think the mistake here is that someone googled “largest ski resort in California” and Squaw popped up at the top.
In reality, I would say that a lot of Squaw’s acreage is unskiable due to steepness which would put them behind Mammoth, but then someone will point out that probably every cliff there has been dropped by the pros that ski there. So not skiable for me, but skiable.
Mammoth probably has more acreage that is skiable on average than both of them as far as snow cover and quality due the higher elevation. The 4,800 acres at Heavenly is probably only skiable 25% of the time due to freeze/thaw cycles and the amount of snow required to cover the huge boulders. Squaw is even lower in elevation.
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Squaw-Alpine definitely struck me as huge ski area/s. Rather than having a few defined areas where you could ski, it had a few defined areas where you couldn’t ski.
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