- A Forest Service report details what Keystone did wrong in Bergman Bowl, the lift will not not be completed this season.
- One Gunstock Area Commissioner resigns, another is removed from office and another appointed. Staff reopened the resort yesterday.
- Forbes interviews Doppelmayr Managing Director Thomas Pichler.
- NSAA launches a lift service bulletin database for members.
- In Argentina, a mechanic dies after his legs become caught in chairlift machinery.
- Apex Mountain Resort is evacuated due to a nearby wildfire.
- Ex Jay Peak owner Ariel Quiros reports to prison.
- Sommet Gabriel’s new Doppelmayr quad will be called La Laurentienne.
- The new triple at Dodge Ridge will be Triple Nugget.
- ORDA awards a $3.2 million contract to Skytrac for construction of the Bear Cub Quad at Gore Mountain.
- Snoqualmie and Doppelmayr conduct a heli mission to scope upcoming International triple construction.
- Vail Resorts completes its acquisition of a majority stake in Swiss ski resort Andermatt-Sedrun.
- Alta opts not to remove Albion until next year.
- Here are some pictures of an Epic Lift Upgrade project on track at Vail Mountain (thanks to reader Mark.)
Lift Blog 
I am glad Gunstock is back open and hope they can sort things out and find a way to earn the trust back of the customers and the employees.
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Conflicts between the commissioners and managers, etc., has been a long problem. Manager Fritzie Baer, who pulled the area out of its postwar slump, nearly resigned because of the commissioners. I highly recommend the book on Gunstock’s history.
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The decision to keep Albion around for another year seems like Alta borrrowing a page from 49 Degrees North’s decision to keep the old Chair 1 around for Northern Spirit’s first year of operation.
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Eh it’s just good operating procedures. allows plenty of time to break in the new lift, get acquainted with it, work the bugs out, and have some peace of mind in knowing you have a back-up in case something stupid happens like at Arizona Snowblow with that damn new Arizona Gondola thingie and also a few of the other mountains that recently got new lifts, only to have failures in the first season of operation that lasted longer than a day. Extra parts and logistics is still not back to where it was pre-pandemic. Probably another reason or two I am missing as well that they want to keep her around an extra year.
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Fortunately we never ended up needing it, Northern was/is a very reliable lift and we are very happy with it, I recently moved to MT and miss working on that mammoth machine.
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When the news first broke about the Bergman SNAFU, I had assumed an errant bulldozer had proceeded a bit too far into the alpine. But from the forest service brief, it seems their were multiple violations indicative of a systemic disregard for the parameters of the agreement. Which is frankly surprising. if corporate homogeneity delivers anything of value, it’s operational excellence and an ability to navigate compliance and red tape. But then again, operational excellence was largely absent from Vail resorts last winter, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that carries over to summer capex.
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Vail cant run a company if no one applies, it’s not just an issue for them but for plenty of businesses across the country.
Instead entitled boomers like yourself expect people to always magically do the jobs for you and then complain when your out of reality expectations arent meant.
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Rude comment
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Maybe if they offered comparable wages and benefits to their competitors people would apply.
They came in and slashed wages across the board at x-Peak resorts and lost a lot of help.
They then promised a national minimum wage of $15/hr yet that was only for their flagship resorts. Many of their areas gave far less for wages. You get a $1/hr to be a snowmaker (very hard manual labor in horrible cold/wet conditions) or groomer (highly specialized). This at the same time fast food jobs in their resort towns were offering more per hour for year round work plus a singing bonus. What a joke.
Then they promised in relation to their PR disaster that they’d institute a new national minimum wage of $20. Yet they still are offering $15 or less to new hires. “Oh sorry we won’t bother to pay you *that* until next season.” Despicable bait and switch.
There is no excellence at Vail properties. They are a race to the bottom the same as McDonalds and WalMart.
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Higher wages might help in some areas of the united states, but they would have to pay some very big bucks to those working here in Colorado. Trying to afford to live in the resort mountain communities is damn near impossible for ski mountain employees. Even with employee housing assistance..
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I thought the original comment was well thought out. Vail has known staffing would likely be an issue since they announced the large lift investment. If they were unable to handle installing 20+ lifts company wide given the current business climate, a reasonable answer would have been to be less ambitious and focus on what could be accomplished. Bergman was certainly one of the more complex projects.
We also have a wide range of ages in the ski community, which is one of the cool things about it. There aren’t a ton of things that bring Boomers and Zoomers together, so let’s celebrate our shared enjoyment not only of skiing, but of the lifts that make it possible, not throw mud at each other.
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I am not following the logic of how the OP expects “people to always magically do the jobs” when he is listing legitimate problems with Vail while adding relevant commentary and not even mentioning jobs. It is a much more thoughtful response than one that says, “Vail bad, Boomer!”
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