- The proposed Park City gondola system I wrote about last week could be tied to a 2030 or 2034 Salt Lake Olympic bid.
- Another Mission Ridge bubble update.
- Timberline Helicopters, the leader in ski lift flying for the Western United States, adds another Black Hawk to its fleet.
- The State of Virginia proposes building a chairlift at Natural Bridge State Park near Lynchburg.
- Vancouver explores another winter Olympic bid.
- Vail Resorts retires some former Peak Resorts lifts: Mad River at Mad River Mountain, the Double Chair at Alpine Valley and Black Forest at Big Boulder (all Hall doubles).
- One of Marble Mountain’s chairlifts will sit idle this season and the ski area won’t open until January.
- Chairs are being sold off from three of six chairlifts at closed Sugar Loaf, Michigan.
- TimberlineMountain.com goes live with a new trail map.
- A late season fire scorches 60 acres near Tamarack’s Summit Express.
- Receiver Douglas Wilson looks back at saving Tamarack during the 2008 financial crisis.
- Wachusett adds new graphics to the Polar Express, which is named for sister company Polar Seltzer.
- Sugarbush’s new chief discusses the future of Slide Brook Express, possible expansion and potential lift upgrades.
- Poma’s business is down 30 percent but the French company will keep its 1,300 employees working.
- One project keeping Poma busy: a showcase urban 3S in Toulouse.
- The Jackson Hole Aerial Tram will carry 25 passengers at a time this winter.
- This is how gondola Wi-Fi works.
- Aspen Snowmass prepares to debut its first DirectDrive lift.
- Sun Valley’s new lift, pictured below, gets named Broadway. Updated trail map here.
Lift Blog 
Why didn’t Sugar Loaf try to sell the VonRoll triple chair to another resort? It looked to be in decent shape and and wasn’t super old either. Was the lift too short for anyone to want?
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Biggest reason… The owner at the time the resort closed and for the next decade was an idiot. he lost his liquor license, other businesses he owned were failing and had a criminal record. The liquor license was a huge blow to a resort hotel. Horrible decisions were made in regards to the operation of Sugarloaf in the years before it closed and even worse after it closed. They owned 2 golf courses and condos that the owner sold off to try and make some money for legal fees. The action of selling the golf and selling the condos made a sale of the resort impossible. There just wasn’t enough revenue potential. Golf is a big aspect for ski resorts in the Michigan. Without it you only lose more money in the summer months. The chairs and lifts were just abandoned in place and nothing was done to maintain them which further sealed both the fate of the 6 lifts and the future of the resort. The triple chairs were removed at some point where as the double chairs were not. There probably was an effort to sell those chairs but who knows if they could even be sold. There were lawsuits and the owner may have been prevented from selling off the chairs or anything else of value after a certain point. The whole Sugarloaf saga is still ongoing. A black eye on one of the most beautiful parts of our country. Several weak attempts have been made to bring it back but have all failed. The current owner made a strong first impression but has stalled on the project and again the local community is growing impatient. Now the resort is so rundown that virtually nothing can be salvaged. From the hotel itself to all aspects of snowmaking, lifts and other equipment would all need to be replaced. Skiing will likely never return as the price tag to revive skiing would be enormous and skiing is just not that profitable in the Midwest. A good rabbit hole for a boring late night for sure. A few good videos exist on youtube of it’s current state.
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Sugarbush was my home mountain growing up so that was a really interesting podcast. Thanks for posting that…
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I think Vail made the right call to remove Black Forest; the return on investment wasn’t there since the capacity isn’t needed. Peak had bought a new comm line in 2019 so it seemed like they intended to fix the tornado damage, but it seems that Vail had other plans.
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