- Mt. Holiday, Michigan seeks $4 million for lift and mountain improvements.
- The Government of Venezuela reportedly owes Doppelmayr more than €100 million and now sources parts and service from Chinese companies.
- The Arizona Gondola misses Independence Day weekend and remains closed due to a mechanical issue.
- Doppelmayr will open a substantial parts and service facility in Mexico to serve the growing Latin American market.
- Bolton Valley opens late for summer due to a lift part supply issue.
- The Forest Service seeks a new operator for Spout Springs, Oregon.
- Grand Targhee and Doppelmayr fly towers for the Colter expansion.
- Critics allege the Little Cottonwood 3S gondola would cost more than a billion dollars.
- Mammoth Mountain seeks Forest Service approval for lift and trail development surrounding the Main Lodge.
- Sierra at Tahoe posts another fire recovery update.
- Thanks to Aidan Wilson for the below photos of Utah Olympic Park’s big expansion.
Lift Blog 
Is Spout Springs worth saving?
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Guessing the owner’s 1.25 million asking price for Spout Springs was too much? Been on the market since 2015. Did the chairlift ever get repaired? The locals have to think it’s worth saving. Only ski area with night skiing anywhere in the area.
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Only ski area with night skiing in the area, sure, but there are also only two other ski areas within a two-hour drive
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Oregon and the PNW have a severe lack of ski resorts/lift served terrain. It’s not for lack of amazing mountains/terrain, snow, population, or avid skiers. There is this large group of people who think only they should be able to ski. They simultaneously complain about how crowded it is and but thwart any attempts to expand existing resorts or build new ones. Because their friend back country skied that terrain once 7 years and said it was beautiful and we should protect mountains.
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I agree with you, actually. The fact that they’re so remote is a testament to lack of ski area development in the region. Look at how many ski areas they have in BC compared to Washington or Oregon. Oregon has 12 ski areas (if you count Timberline and Summit separately). Washington has 15. Meanwhile, Idaho and Montana with their much lower populations have 19 and 15 respectively with much lower populations. British Columbia gets more snow, sure, but they have 5 million people compared to Washington’s 8 million and Oregon’s 4 million. BC has 34 ski areas which is more than double all the US states I mentioned, except for Idaho.
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I remember hearing there was a plan at one point to build a ski area on the east side of Mt Adams in Washington as it sits on Yakima reservation land but the Yakima never went through with their plans to build it due to a variety of factors.
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The reason BC has so many more ski areas than WA or OR is that BC is the ski destination for the rest of Canada and also gets a lot of international traffic due to easier entry requirements compared to the US. In effect, BC is like Colorado or Utah for Canada. In contrast, there is almost no ski destination traffic to WA or OR, it’s almost all local day trippers. BC clocks around 8 million skier visits annually (almost twice the population of the province) while WA does around 2 million. I’ve always wondered why Washington, with our abundance of mountains and glaciers, can’t support a major destination resort along the lines of whistler. I suspect it’s a combination of weather, distance from major population centers back east and a general lack of interest in encouraging tourism here in WA.
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If I remember correctly, BC’s visits are around 6 million – and 2 million of those are to Whistler. Without WB, their numbers aren’t that impressive. Destination resorts drive traffic, and BC is more friendly to new and expanded ski resorts than PNW. In turn, BC gets more visits and resorts than PNW.
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