- COO Al Henceroth breaks down the numbers behind Arapahoe Basin’s quest to maintain a quality experience through capacity management.
- Solitude intends to replace the aging Eagle Express within the next few years.
- An Indiana public broadcaster devotes five minutes to comparing bare bones operations at Vail-owned Paoli Peaks with Perfect North Slopes, which operated more lifts more hours per day over a much longer season.
- A broken sheave on the high speed quad at Marble Mountain leads to a 220+ skier rope evacuation; the lift may remain down for some time.
- Park City shows off the new alignment for the upcoming Eagle Express.
- Telluride appears destined to spend lots of money on its gondola, either as a major refurbishment or total replacement.
- A child is unhurt after falling from a Sugarloaf high speed quad.
- Eight months after a rooftop fire, Big Snow American Dream eyes a Memorial Day reopening.
- Moosehead Lake developers say the cost of a detachable six pack increased a million dollars in six months and financing remains an issue.
- The Seattle Times profiles a successful season turnaround at Stevens Pass.
- BigRock Mountain raises $1.2 million toward the purchase of a Doppelmayr quad chair.
- In Utah tram board news, Alta has sold the Sunnyside detachable triple to an unidentified mountain; Wasatch Peaks plans to build a third lift.
- Mission Ridge posts a bit of a wild wind video.
- Sierra-at-Tahoe will spin two chairlifts one weekend in April as it continues Caldor Fire recovery.
Lift Blog 
I’m quite surprised that Alta decided to sell Sunnyside rather than replacing Wildcat with it. That would have been a perfect lift to replace Wildcat. I wonder who the unidentified mountain is.
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Alta selling Sunnyside is a bit of a surprise. It seemed like a good fit for a Wildcat replacement. Maybe they plan on keeping the double for more than a few more seasons. I wonder if it’s heading to Soldier Mountain. I heard rumblings when I was there that they were wanting a high speed triple to replace the main lift. It seemed odd as I don’t think a brand new detachable triple would be much cheaper than a quad.
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I think Alta thinks it will be more efficient to replace Wildcat with a new high speed quad with wider chair spacing.
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A Soldier Mountain replacement would be great. It would be a bit smarter to put the top of said triple higher up the mountain, but I don’t really know the plans. Alta could also give it to Beaver Mountain (giving me another excuse to go there) since they gave the old Supreme triple to them.
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It is headed to Soldier Mountain according to the seemingly senior-level lift guy I was chatting with at Alta on Saturday.
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I heard something different.
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Maverick?
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I hope Brundage gets the Sunnyside Triple.
also wtf was that short
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I hope Loveland gets the triple to replace lift 6. #wishfulthinking
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The one Garaventa CTEC at a nearly all Poma/LPA mountain, I don’t see it.
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Lift 6 is being replaced this summer with a new LPOA triple.
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So the replacement for chair 6 is back on for next year? I currently have a season pass to Loveland and haven’t heard it was for next year from anyone yet.
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You just heard it from me.
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Peter knows all! I check in daily on this site so Thank you for breaking news and keeping us in the know!
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Hi Peter,
WiNdham Mountain in NY just announced they will replace the existing “D” lift with a brand new High speed detachable quad for 2022/2023 season. Yet no details have been shared that I have seen in press, just their pass holder community comms. Wanted to put on your radar!
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The current alignment does not warrant a detachable, that alignment pretty much screams Alpen Star Quad with loading carpet. Unless it runs to where Wraparound meets Whiskey Jack, thus serving a large, mid mountain, beginner/intermediate pod, this decision is very much a headscratcher.
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It’s definitely getting replaced with a detachable. There are signs indicating it around the mountain. It’ll be good for beginners since it’ll be easy to load. One can only hope they run it faster than East Peak’s 625 ft/min…
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New wyoming ski area? https://www.shirleybasinskiarea.com/
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I’m not sure what I just looked at, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a real ski area. If you go to gallery, there’s no way a ski resort could actually get away with that little of snow. And the address at the bottom of the page is the address for Hogadon ski area, which is built in the trees, much unlike what the photos show. Really all you have to do is go to gallery to be able to tell that there’s no way that that area actually exists. Probably just a couple of friends having some fun in the middle of nowhere after a snowstorm and decided to make a parody website.
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Everything about that website just screams “school project” or “parody website” to me
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You can tell that some of the people in the photos are photoshopped in. I’m pretty sure that is fake.
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Well it does state 22-23 so any gallery photos are photoshopped as they clearly aren’t opened yet. Trail map shows future parking/lodge. I just saw it on skimaps this morning and wondered if it was something being built this summer for openeing next year. Website is more advanced than many other ski area sites so that’s alot of work for a fake area.
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The trail map labels the would-be access road as “to US 487”. US 487 isn’t even a real road. I did a project similar for a school thing a while back, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a project.
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If you find the town of Medicine Bow, highway 487 travels north towards Casper. Right where the highway turns left is Shirley Basin Road….so it does exist on Google maps. Hogadon is on Hogadon road and not at all close to this location. Sorry I get excited seeing new areas open. Props to whomever got this website up and running…real or not!
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The ski lesson with backrub looks like a killer deal! Sign me up. And who needs a pond skim competition when you have a jump a snow fence competition. Definitely not a parody, they are innovators.
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The new alignment for Eagle definitely makes more sense than the suggestion some of us have had about it having a turn. Especially given the number of lifts it will absorb traffic from: traffic headed from the lower lots to Payday or Crescent won’t have to interact with the beginners using First Time or the park traffic on Three Kings because they can just use Eagle’s midstation. Meanwhile, by extending Eagle to the top of King Con, traffic headed for Silverlode or the Canyons won’t have to ride King Con to access Miner’s Camp.
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Honestly, I am surprised they are not also removing 3 Kings given the location of the midstation.
All three lifts (Eagle, Eaglet, and 3 Kings) are relatively new triples that should have life left in them. I know this is unpopular for some, but I would love to see them reinstalled elsewhere at the resort as low-capacity expert lifts to eliminate some hiking. Up Pinecone Ridge across from Thaynes, up to either Murdock Bowl or One Hundred Turns from Upper Boa, Jupiter Peak or Scott’s Bowl, etc. Hike-to-terrain has its place, but at least for me, it belongs at a place more like Alta than Park City.
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Remember High Meadow hasn’t even been reused anywhere.
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Vail Resorts seem to be wary of selling off old lifts or even lift parts, it’s too bad as many small ski areas would be interested in their used equipment as it has been well maintained. I would think VR would do better than scrap price for the lifts seeing that new equipment is unavailable or financially out of reach for many small resorts right now.
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at 1800 ft is it even worth reusing? Maybe just use it for parts. New motor room for an existing lift, towers for other lifts?
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While it won’t be very useful at Park City, Vail does have a lot of Midwestern ski hills that a 1997 Garaventa-CTEC quad would be a perfect fit for. Same goes for Eaglet.
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I feel they’re keeping Three Kings with the intention being that Eagle’s midstation is for non-terrain park goers headed for Payday while park-goers use Three Kings.
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At that point with Three Kings surrounded by two adjacent detachables, I can’t see it being used very much. Vail normally doesn’t like to operate redundant lifts unless they have to and with staffing issues right now, it would make more sense to remove Three Kings entirely. It doesn’t serve much purpose to begin with with its loading area pretty far uphill from the parking lot. Eagle doesn’t have a whole lot of lappable terrain and the midstation allows the new Eagle to have some purpose other than in the early morning.
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Makes me wonder a bit how the race trainers will access the course off of the soon-to-be-former Eagle lifeline.
This also makes me think about them moving stuff around. Wonder if they’d actually reuse Silverlode either at Saddleback or Pioneer, or something like that. Plus modernize some fixed-grips. A local can dream, right?
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With Silverlode’s age, it becoming a parts donor for Payday, Bonanza and McConkey’s seems likelier.
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I wouldn’t be too certain of that, Saddleback always seems to pretty big lines for such a congested area near Red Pine Lodge. Silverlode is only from 1996, I would think it has quite a bit of life left. Saddleback is around 1000 feet shorter than Silverlode so if part supply was an issue, there would probably be leftover parts from a relocation. As for the existing Saddleback, it would be just fine for a replacement for Pioneer. If there’s anywhere on the mountain that could use the existing Silverlode, Saddleback would make the most sense for managing the choke point around Red Pine Lodge.
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Vail resorts has not been as interested in supporting race training at PC as the former ownership was, hence the expansion of the Utah Olympic park with the fixed grip installed a few years ago and the new HSQ coming this year. Both lifts will be specifically for race training, so I expect the ski teams will move there.
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Has Wasatch Peaks released any sort of trail map other than the initial master plan?
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Nope.
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I am happy to see progress being made at Stevens Pass. Congrats to them and great work.
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lets hope they dont replace eagle express before I get to ride it at least once.
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