- Mission Ridge sues Chelan County over the permitting process for a proposed three lift expansion.
- The Forest Service approves Winter Park’s Pioneer Express replacement project.
- It will take awhile for the Utah Department of Transportation to wade through 13,000 Little Cottonwood public comments, the most the agency has ever received for a project.
- The town of Tupper Lake, New York considers leasing Big Tupper for human powered recreation.
- Indy Pass founder Doug Fish expects to quadruple redemptions from 96,000 last winter to 400,000 this season.
- New trail maps start to appear showing new lifts: Snowbasin and Welch Village this week.
- The first towers go vertical for the Olympic Valley-Alpine Meadows Gondola at Palisades Tahoe.
- Sierra at Tahoe provides a fire recovery update.
- The rest of Australia’s resorts are cleared to reopen, though some have already called it a season.
- The towns of Telluride and Mountain Village are evaluating three options for the aging gondola: gradual incremental upgrades, a major overhaul or total replacement with a decision targeted for next fall.
- Some Banff leaders still support a gondola to Mt. Norquay despite Parks Canada opposition.
- A far left group targets Poma in France. Unhappy about the company supplying a ropeway to a nuclear waste storage project, the group claims it removed bolts from Poma lifts in the Alps.
- Trollhaugen says supply chain delays are impacting installation of a new Partek chairlift, though it still should be completed for this season.
- London’s Emirates Air Line gondola will be renamed in 2022 as Transport for London seeks a new naming rights partner.
- On the always great Storm Skiing Podcast, Taos CEO David Norden talks timing and lift types for the many upgrades in the resort’s new master plan.
- The Purgatory Express is closed due to technical problems yet again.
- Whiteface details summer updates to Cloudsplitter, Face Lift and Freeway in addition to the new Bear quad.
Lift Blog 
Good to hear about Winter Park. The Pioneer lift will be replaced by 6 pack with a mid-station at tower 7. Capacity will go from 1,900 pph to 2,800 pph. This is a welcome replacement as the run-out to the lift is extremely flat. This should increase the number of people using the terrain as it is usually underutilized because of the run-out and the old lift has had some issues in the past.
Also included in the approval was additional parking on Mary Jane side, regrading of several trials, some snow making replacements, renovation of Sunspot, and upgrading Lariat from a rope tow to a conveyor lift. The high voltage replacement lines were not approved, I have no clue if that would affect any of Winter Park’s plans.
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I really hope they don’t add a mid-station as you would have to load every other chair. What would be nice if instead of having the bottom being in the same place they can move it to the top of the hill where tower 2 currently is.
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I would imagine they would have to the do loading every other chair or some other frequency.
In the approval it says Pioneer will be in the same alignment so I don’t think the bottom station would move. In older master plans (1981) there were additional lifts outlined to serve new terrain at the bottom of the Pioneer lift. The most recent master plan (2016) which is also probably dated has the mid-station listed but no other new lifts near the bottom of Pioneer. If there are no future lifts planned near the bottom of Pioneer they should definitely move the bottom up to tower 2 as that terrain literally does nothing.
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I keep thinking the midstation isn’t going to make the cut. Given where it would be located, it would just make more sense to do the rest of the runout rather than have to install gates to send every other chair through empty.
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I’ve skied afternoon powder off Pioneer on a weekend day in mid-winter. I’ll happily take a flat run-out for that.
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Towers are up on the new HSQ at 49* North (check their Insta). Pretty sweet.
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RIP Frank Drake, founder of Mt Hood Meadows. After the passing of Dave McCoy last year, Frank may have been the last of the generation of ski resort entrepreneurs who started the business during the boom of the 60s and early 70s
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What’s with lifts getting struck by lighting and then breaking down? First we had Arizona Gondola now they said Purgatory Express is now shut down due to lightning damage.
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If any electrical components are damaged and need replaced, they may have a very long lead time. Some things like fail-safe IO modules have lead times already well into next year. And unless you’re building ventilators for COVID responses, you’re not buying your way to the front of the line.
And yes, you could say they should have them on hand, but it’s also just as likely that a particularly bad event could have taken out more components than anyone could have on the shelf.
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Supply chains are a nightmare right now, especially for global items. Even industries you would expect to be immune are feeling the effects.
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Lightning strikes can be wicked at Arizona Snowbowl, especially for a top drive lift near the top of Mt. Agassiz. It will be a challenge to protect the drive station of Arizona Gondola but I’m sure that MCP has plans in the works to do that.
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