- Massanutten takes down its Borvig J-Bar.
- Breckenridge posts a Freedom SuperChair progress report along with a new trail map.
- The Atlantic Gondola carries its first passengers in Nova Scotia.
- Kicking Horse shows how it feeds a captive grizzly bear by throwing food from the Golden Eagle Express.
- Heavenly ends summer operations early due to smoke and fire danger.
- The Caldor Fire threatens both Sierra at Tahoe and Kirkwood.
- Alta Sierra narrowly escapes being burned by a different fire.
- Environmentalists use balloons to demonstrate their opposition to gondola cabins and towers in Little Cottonwood Canyon. The last chance to comment on the gondola proposal is September 3rd.
- All remaining resorts in Australia and New Zealand close due to Covid and operators are devastated.
- Highlander Lift Services & Construction is hiring team members to help build the first two lifts at Utah’s Wasatch Peaks Ranch.
- Michigan’s Alpine Valley is under new ownership, widely rumored to be Wisconsin Resorts Inc., though I have been unable to independently confirm that.
- Holiday Valley makes progress on its self-installation of a new Doppelmayr detachable.
- A new lawsuit alleges the State of Vermont knew about and failed to protect investors from the fraud at Burke Mountain.
- County planners recommend rejection of the Pandora’s expansion proposal on Aspen Mountain.
- Parks Canada again says no to a Banff-Norquay gondola.
- The Forest Service seeks public comments on Whitefish Mountain Resort’s Chair 4 replacement project.
Lift Blog 
The J-bar only served the big terrain park. It wasn’t used at all last winter. Massanutten changed this around in 2020-21 and put bigger features on the bottom half of a rarely used blue trail that was widened. History: the trail that became the big terrain park was a teaching area decades ago.
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Will be interesting to see who takes Massanutten’s J-Bar. Being a Magic passholder it would make a perfect terrain park lift for them. Much better than the existing tube tow.
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i understand the opposition to the gondola, but if they dont do that they will end up with loud busses and roadkill and more pollution.
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Not just environmental concerns, people on the Little Cottonwood road is just straight up dangerous. Snow tires and all wheel drive are needed to make it up the road in the winter. For the amount of accidents caused by the road and the pollution from cars, I still don’t see why the environmentalists are freaking out. Out of the other options for Little Cottonwood, widening the road would be a huge environmental impact (I don’t know how that would even work) and adding more busses wouldn’t do anything. The existing busses aren’t heavily used to begin with and with the lack of usage with the bus service, it is more vehicles on the road. Doing nothing is not an option either.
It’s not like gondolas are that much of an environmental impact. With the claim that fossil fuels are being used to run the gondola, there’s always the option of solar (https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/site-la-paz-1051.html). Some of the claims the environmentalists were making appeared that they were trying to shoot down the project without knowing the details first.
It’s not like a gondola is out of character for the area either. Gondola transport is being heavily considered on the other side of the canyon in Park City. Similar access lifts exist, examples being the gondola at Silver Mountain and many in Europe (Kanin in Slovenia comes to mind).
Either way, something needs to be done at Little Cottonwood.
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It actually boggles my mind how Save Our Canyons is using a sightlines argument for environmental purposes (even though they have done it before and will likely do it again). Any solution to improve or modify the road changes the actual environment, so true environmentalists would prioritize any aerial solution that does not do this. This faux environmentalism is simply rooted in their desire to keep LCC for themselves and dissuade newcomers from enjoying it as well.
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It would be so much better if they just admitted to their selfishness.
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I agree whenever I see “environmental” opposition to things like this it really angers me. Something like the Squaw Alpine gondola had the same type of opposition despite the fact that it would actually be beneficial to the environment.
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yeah but cars use fossil fuels so that argument makes zero sense.
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That is exactly my point. These groups are more focused on the enviromental eyesore rather than the actual impact. Some of the ski area proposals these groups are against make sense in that an animal habitat is threatened, but the major complaints aren’t about habitats. They’re about problems that have already been addressed in the proposals.
The last terrain expansion by a ski resort in Little Cottonwood was Mineral Basin in 1999. The reason for opposition could be that the groups have a legacy to keep up and will do everything they can to keep Little Cottonwood the same as it was 30 years ago.
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I have always been surprised as to why the county is even involved in the Pandora expansion. Isn’t the expansion, or at least the lift, entirely on USFS land, meaning it is a federal, not county, issue? And if Aspen is instead the owner, giving the county some jurisdiction, why not do a land swap with the USFS to give them the land and, therefore, the ability to approve the project? I just feel as though there is probably a way to bypass the county and go to the much friendlier USFS, which would absolutely make Pitkin County executives upset, but at this point be worth it due to the ridiculousness of the process.
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It is partially on private land which is owned by skico but has been zoned for minimal development. SkiCo has straight up threatened to build mcmansions on it to spite the county board if they don’t change the zoning which is a pretty hilarious flex but also they should do it haha.
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The Pitkin BOCC thinks re-zoning the Pandora parcel for ski area development would open the door to overdevelopment in other parts of the county. The current zoning allows for super-low density housing only. I think the Pitkin commissioners are being paranoid, as well as a bit snarky with SkiCo. Much of Ajax is on private land dating back to mining claims from the 1880s, so the Forest Service has little to say about it.
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Breck appears to be using a new font for the trail and chairlift labels.
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New font or not, you have no idea how stoked I am about ski season.
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That new chair is going to be sweet.
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I’m still not sure what my proffered solution is, but everyone can agree the situation in LCC isn’t tenable long term. Something needs to change, especially as Salt Lake keeps growing, and much of that is concentrated on the south side, in South Jordan and Lehi, where Alta and Snowbird are the closest of the big ski areas.
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Alpine Valley, MI now shows a ski pass option with Bittersweet, Alpine Valley, WI, Pine Knob, Searchmont, so it looks like it was purchased by Wisconsin Resorts,
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