The Oma’s Meadow zone at Sugar Mountain will sport a shiny Doppelmayr high speed quad next season. The upgrade from a double to quad will be Sugar Mountain’s fifth lift installation in seven years and ride time will improve from the current nine minutes to under three. The project caps off nearly $20 million in recent improvements. Last year Sugar Mountain and Doppelmayr partnered to install the Big Birch quad and the mountain’s two existing detachable lifts were built in 2015 and 2019. No other North Carolina ski resort operates even one detachable lift. “Not only is the speediness a welcome upgrade but the detachable feature of the chairs slowing upon entering the base and summit stations makes for an easy and gentle loading and unloading experience for all levels of skiers and riders,” said Sugar Mountain Resort owner Gunther Jochl.
The 2,225 foot long Oma’s express quad will carry 2,400 passengers per hour and increase the resort’s overall uphill capacity from 11,660 passengers per hour to 13,460.
Lift Blog 
This sounds like a money laundering operation. There is more uphill capacity than will ever be needed.
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They do get more than 200k annual skier visits, so having three detachable lifts is plausible. Length and time-wise, it is not really needed. However, it does allow them to say that 100% of their terrain is accessible from detachable lifts.
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That is a wild accusation. A resort that charges up to a grand for a season pass, and $50-80 for single day tickets can generate good cashflow. Given what has been said about >200K annual visits, this sounds like an operator who understands investing back into the ski experience, and may also have the good sense to do CapEx while the going is good (I’m assuming they’ve had the sort of Covid ‘boom’ that many indie and regional ski areas have enjoyed).
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Crazy that a place like this will have more detachables than places like Sugarloaf and Jay next year.
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They were doing booming business when I was there last. Got the impression the really know what they’re doing. I rode to old chair a couple times. Don’t remember it being that slow. Could be 9 minutes with stops though.
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It seems like they’re gonna run out of trail capacity before another lift needs replacement. Any chance of expansion off the north or west aspects of the mountain?
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Lord knows they could use another easy route off the top. The mess of crashed people on Northridge was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Hopefully the new lift will draw some people away from the six.
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Northridge needs to be widened to handle the extra traffic from the six-pack and the summit double lift. I don’t see how Sugar can expand anymore terrain aside from a wider Northridge with the temperature volatility of the Southeast – they would need to vastly expand on snowmaking first to more quickly cover the terrain they do have
The Oma’s Meadow high speed quad is a good way to draw people away from the summit to an under-used skiing area of Sugar Mountain (the new quad on Big Birch further helps move people away).
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They could use more acreage, especially with the increased uphill capacity provided by the new lifts. As is, the only one non-diamond route down from the top is Northridge which is narrow bumpy and overcrowded (skiers trading paint like NASCAR drivers). I’d like to see them open an intermediate run behind Tom Terrific that would tie in to Sugar Slalom. Sugar Slalom always seems to have a ton of powder and it is hardly used since you have to ski one of the diamonds to access it. I remember as recently as 2002 they had a T-bar lift for Sugar Slalom, it was a great place to get in short laps when everything else was slammed,
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I could definetly see an expansion to the north side. That land isn’t owned by them but is vacant, and could be turned into a “backside” and up the resorts skiiable terrain significantly.
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That’s what I was thinking! That backside is kinda perfect for building ski slopes because it’s not very rocky and not too steep but still has about 800 ft of vert
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