- Doppelmayr USA’s Katharina Schmitz joins the Ski Utah podcast to talk lift technology, next year’s projects and more.
- According to Forest Service documents, Alta plans to replace Sunnyside and Albion this summer with a single six place chairlift.
- Sierra at Tahoe President John Rice takes SAM podcast listeners through the harrowing Caldor Fire disaster and recovery effort.
- White Pine, Wyoming is sold to new owners.
- Kimberley announces the Northstar Express will be inoperable for the entire season following last month’s fire.
- Vail Resorts says Stevens Pass faces its most acute staffing problems, replaces the General Manager the same day as a Seattle Times front page story comes out.
- Nine people successfully catch a child who fell from a chair at Mt. Washington.
- Big White seeks more parking at the Black Forest base in advance of two planned lift installations.
- Steamboat repairs the Sunshine Express; Storm Peak Express lives up to its name.
- Mt. Bachelor will be without the Skyliner Express for an indefinite period.
- Keystone closes the River Run Gondola for three days of maintenance (now back open).
- Redevelopment of the Meadows parking lot at Steamboat could include replacing the Wildhorse Gondola with a higher capacity detachable.
- BigRock Mountain’s quad chair fundraising gets off to a strong start.
- Vail Resorts and Park City ski patrollers reach a tentative contract agreement, likely avoiding a strike.
- Despite the headlines, Vail Resorts’ skier visits are actually down from the last two seasons as of January 2nd. Ski school, dining and retail/rental revenue are all up from last year but still down significantly from pre-Covid 2019-20.
Lift Blog 
And so falls another high speed triple. This’ll be the second Leitner-Poma high speed six pack to be called Sunnyside, for the record (after the one at Winter Park). By the end of the summer, I think Ruthie’s will be the only high speed triple left in the whole of the United States. 😢
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Who’s to say that Sunnyside won’t be relocated elsewhere at Alta? It’s a 1999 Garaventa CTEC lift with 1800 pph. It could be reused elsewhere, possibly as a Wildcat replacement or Grizzly Gulch expansion.
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Doubtful. Not a 1999.
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plenty of life left in it.
I would be surprised if we don’t see this lift installed somewhere else (either at Alta or a different resort all together).
This would be prefect for Wildcat.
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Hopefully, hate to see old lifts go
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could be a Doppelmayr, nothing confirmed yet.
Interesting they threw away the idea of a chondola, considering the number of beginners who use Sunnyside after they graduate from the base learning area.
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I think Alta is one of the ski areas that could go with any manufacturer. They never have shown a tremendous amount of loyalty to any one company or another, even the YAN and CTEC periods were broken up by each other.
Side note, one of Peter’s old articles names Sunnyside as one of the most overused names. I hope they keep the Albion name instead, though it won’t happen.
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When Supreme and Cecret were replaced, it made sense to use the Supreme name since that was the longer of the two lifts.
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Speaking of Alta, did Supreme and Cecret go to any other resorts or were they scrapped? I don’t recall them selling the Cecret chairs so maybe they went somewhere?
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Sunnyside would be perfect for Wildcat or Grizzly Gulch, with the former the more likely candidate. It should have enough lift left to be reused, having only been installed in 1999, and Wildcat does not need a capacity beyond 1800 anyway.
Replacing Wildhorse with a proper gondola at Steamboat is a no-brainer, especially if its lower terminal is moved downhill closer to the Meadows lot and a full garage is built. The lot is so close to US-40 that it could really take a lot of cars off of Mt. Werner Circle and other roads higher up the hill. If this is done, the next step would be to remove car access to Mt. Werner Circle in between the two roundabouts to create a new pedestrian plaza and better extend the village. The gondola square garage would have its entrance moved to the existing emergency access point adjacent to the northern roundabout, and the road north of the southern roundabout would be reduced in size and limited to access into the Gondola Square Condo garage (all dropoff traffic for both busses and cars would move down to the base of Wildhorse 2.0). The Knoll Lot and area in between it and the Steamboat Grand could then be developed. This is a large-scale, predominantly real estate-driven idea, but Alterra has shown a willingness to invest in improving Steamboat’s base.
It does not surprise me that Vail’s skier visits are down. Weather is typically the biggest factor in determining whether or not people flock to the mountains, and the West was pretty dry until mid-December (and the East still is). Plus, their three Tahoe mountains had to deal with closures and limited access due to excessive snow during the usually packed Christmas holiday week.
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