- It’s official: Sun Peaks retires the West Bowl T-Bar with planning underway for future lift access.
- A chondola is proposed to replace Dreamcatcher at Grand Targhee Resort.
- Mount Snow’s 2022 detachables will cost a combined $11.8 million and be constructed by Doppelmayr.
- Walt Disney World reveals it studied nine different layouts with up to four different lines before it built the Disney Skyliner.
- Bousquet debuts an all-new trail map. Nordic Valley too.
- Doppelmayr faces supply chain delays at Sundance; another resort will loan used chairs for the Outlaw Express until new ones arrive in January.
- Catamount also cites supply chain delays and expects to open its two used chairlifts around Christmas and Martin Luther King weekends, respectively.
- Crotched Mountain renames Park lift to Rover.
- Belleayre changes Tomahawk to Lift 8.
- Utah’s Eagle Point eyes building a 5,500 foot connector lift.
- Sunrise Park will reopen its summit lodge this season and plans to reactivate the Cyclone triple next winter.
- Whistler Blackcomb’s replacement of the Creekside Gondola is now a 10 place rather than the originally announced eight.
Lift Blog 
I wonder where the used chairs that will be loaned for Outlaw are coming from. Somehow the defunct Peru Express from Keystone seems like the likeliest donor to me, unless there’s another lift at some other ski area that’s going to temporarily lose some of its chairs.
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I confirmed as I suspected they are from the old Swift Current at Big Sky.
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That makes more sense.
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Is the hanger assembly compatible between the 90s era UNI terminals and the UNI-G terminals?
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Don’t know the answer to that, but maybe the hangers for the new chairs are done and ready and it’s just the carriers that aren’t finished.
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Peter,
Would you happen to specs on the dream catcher lift at grand targhee or a contact there.
We are a small ski area in Chile looking for used/reconditioned lifts.
Any contacts or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks for your efforts with Lift Blog!
Regards,
Jimmy
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A bit surprising Mt. Snow is going with Doppelmayr lifts seeing that all of their recent lifts have been with Poma or LPA. Would be interested to see if any traditionally Dopp resorts flip this year to LPA – Park City, Northstar, Heavenly, WB, Tremblant, etc.
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Are the other lifts way more expensive than the mt snow lifts? 6 million times 19 comes out to 114 million, that’s a long way from 320 million.
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In general, detachable six packs range from 8-10 million and detachable quads range from 6-7 million. Granted, these numbers are for a lift at its max capacity at a relatively long length with 100% new parts. The Doppelmayr datasheet only lists the terminal models, which could mean that other parts, such as the chairs and towers (possibly tower heads) could be reused. Transporting used parts costs a lot less than entirely new parts and Vail doesn’t send salvageable lift parts to scrap, as seen at Wilmot and Mt. Brighton where CLD-260 chain driven detachables were converted into 2-3 fixed grip quads with new terminals.
Back to the cost of the lifts being only 12 million, the six pack is most likely going to be new, which would probably be 8 million for the length of Sundance. That leaves 4 million for the detachable quad, which could either be converted to a detachable similar to how Bretton Woods converted their West Mountain CTEC quad to a detachable and how Belleayre converted their Superchief CTEC quad to a detachable. Since Sunbrook is a CTEC quad, it wouldn’t be out of the picture for such an upgrade.
My guess would be that Sunbrook would receive used parts from a 1st or 2nd generation Uni DS-104 grip lift. The question that brings up is how much of the parts will be new or used. The most logical solution would be a retrofit similar to Red Buffalo at Beaver Creek, where the terminals and grips were replaced with the chairs and towers reused. If Vail wanted to be cheap, they could do a refurbishment similar to Shedhorn at Big Sky where the old Ramcharger received a Uni-G enclosure, but kept the DS grips.
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The $320 million is Vail’s entire capital investment plan for 2022. Not just lifts.
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I wonder if Grand Targhee will go D-Line if they build the Chondola since Peaked Mountain will be D Line.
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As ridiculous as it sounds I can at least *attempt* to see how Superchief at Belleayre was in any way offensive, but Tomahawk? It’s the name of a tool.
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I agree, I will never understand why a name like tomahawk or superchief is offensive. It just boggles my head how some peoples brains work. Another example is the coonskin chairlift at telluride Colorado. Its a article of clothing that the native americans wore. Seems like now days anything offensive in the slightest manner shall be changed/canceled just because someone got there feelings hurt.
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At this point, I wonder what’s going to happen to a resort like Indianhead in MI. I sort of doubt all of the names will be changed though.
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I’m frankly surprised that those names made it that long considering Belleayre is owned by the ORDA (Branch of New York State Government).
I expect to see trail references to Native Americans removed in the near future as well.
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Keep in mind that virtually all of Belleayre’s trail names are native-themed. I can’t wait to see the names they would come up with if they were to put in the same creativity as they put into renaming Superchief and Tomahawk. Give it 20 years and we’ll all be reminiscing on the good times, going to New York State Public Ski Area #3 and riding Lift 8 to ski Trail 35
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I just hope they name at least one trail “Fresh Prince” :)
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Will Cyclone receive new chairs, or keep the old ones?
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Will be interesting to see if Cyclone comes back with similar chair spacing and takes the title of most chairs back from West Mountain at Sugarloaf.
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I’ll believe that cyclone will actually be fixed when I see it. The white mountain Apache tribe says a lot of shit and has proven themselves pretty incompetent at running a ski resort time and time again.
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I find it very strange if they basically tore down Cyclone and are now planning to reopen the same lift like 3 years later. They’ve shown in the past with Eagle Feather that they have no qualms with leaving a lift up even if it’s not operating. I’ve got a feeling they weren’t planning on reopening Cyclone in that form, and are either:
1. Changed their mind and now want to fix it
2. Planning to replace it with a new lift
3. Lying
Don’t really know which. It just seems weird for them to have done it this way.
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Or just massively incompetent and full of kaka. That place is probably the worst run ski resort in the world. Definitely America.
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Your username checks out.
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Judging from Peter’s pictures, they didn’t tear it down, they just removed the carriers and haul rope.
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It’s in a similar state to the mothballed state Winter Park left Outrigger in from when it was decommissioned in 2003 (after four years as the Eskimo Express’s relief lift) to when it got reinstalled as Eagle Wind.
Although in Outrigger’s case, they actually kept the haul rope on and repurposed it as a lift evac training for a year or so before they took down the haul rope.
This mothballed state could also be compared to say, Marmot’s Caribou double, after the Paradise high speed quad was built.
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Has Big Sky and Boyne announced what will happen with the old swift current once Sundance is done borrowing their chairs?
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No, but Swifty is going to be refurbished and reinstalled somewhere else at Big Sky (similar to Ramcharger/Shedhorn).
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I thought Swifty was going to another Boyne Resort. When did they announce it was going to Big Sky?
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I guess people still think it’s going to get reinstalled as an infill lift in the Moonlight Basin area.
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Yea I think some people still do. Isn’t it going to be West Mountain at Sugarloaf.
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The only 2022 projects Boyne has formally announced so far are:
1. Seven Brothers at Loon Mountain (old Kanc)
2. Disciples 8 at Boyne Mountain
3. Jordan 8 at Sunday River.
Anything else is speculation.
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If they announced that, it must have been recently and I must have missed it. They already downgraded West Mountain from a proposed 6 to a 4, so I figured they would at least make it a new lift. Plus, that is a 2023 project and I would think that Swifty would be reinstalled in 2022.
Given the lift’s profile, I really thought reusing it at Big Sky as the second Moonlight lift from the base to the top of Lone Tree made the most sense.
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I don’t think it is going to be a new HSQ because Boyne said they are not going to buy any new HSQa.
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@skitheeast- I’ve mentioned this before but it really doesn’t matter what a lift’s current profile is for it to be put up elsewhere. As long as it has the requisite horsepower and tower assemblies it’ll work.
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Not sure if this is the right place, but I just read about how excalibur at WB got a new haul rope, and it appears that it got a new enclosure at the bottom terminal. Would it be safe to assume that it isn’t going away anytime soon?
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Looks like the same enclosure as always.
Sometimes recent upgrades are the kiss of death at ski areas. Maintenance does a big ticket project or two then management decides to replace.
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