- Sunday River explains why Jordan 8 came before Barker replacement.
- Brighton proposes swapping Crest Express for a six place D-Line.
- Snowbird looks to replace Wilbere.
- This document details Snowbird’s temporary one car tram operation.
- A hearing to consider the sale of Jay Peak is scheduled for August 26th.
- Eaglecrest and Mt. Spokane join the Freedom Pass alliance.
- Flash flood cleanup closes the Palm Springs Tram for the week.
- A power outage leaves guests waiting hours at the top of the Sandia Peak Tram.
- Eleven ski areas in the White River National Forest paid a record $24 million in profit sharing to the Forest Service last year.
- Steamboat and Doppelmayr fly towers for the Wild Blue Gondola.
- The Los Angeles Dodgers display a Sigma 3S gondola cabin which could provide future stadium transport.
- Mt. Shasta releases a preliminary map of the Grey Butte expansion.
- Bartholet begins construction of the first Ropetaxi with cabins that will move individually based on passenger demand and destination.
- The restoration plan approved for Keystone’s Bergman Bowl requires annual monitoring through 2033.
- Boston Mills/Brandywine will auction double and quad chairs next week.
Lift Blog 
The snowbird link regarding Wilbere is no longer working.
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For some reason the Forest Service’s new Pinyon Public document site only works on desktop computers.
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Doesn’t work on my desktop computer, Windows 10/Chrome
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FYI, The actual document folder was blank and had zero things in it. Only thing was the folder was titled “Wilbere Lift Replacement, Snowbird Ski Resort (62690)”
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That’s all there is right now.
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Replacing Wilbere has been discussed for a number of years, so it is good to see progress being made.
The Mt. Shasta map is missing a trail from the existing resort to the bottom of Gray Butte. I assume there will be a trail on USFS land from the top of Coyote Butte but it is missing, whereas the return trail is marked (and already cleared as it is an existing dirt road).
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I’d rather see mineral basin or gadzoom get replaced first just due to the crowds they Handel and also shorten the line in mineral basin. In my opinion that is a much bigger issue than Wilber. But hey that might just be me.
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I still don’t understand how the Mt Shasta expansion works. Obviously Get Back is one way in or out. How do you go the other way?
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Via Lemuria.
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While you’re cruising through Lemuria, don’t forget to learn from the dolphins and let the crystals infuse you with that good magnetism.
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After seeing how much $$$ Boyne has pumped into some of their resorts I’m really excited to see them finally put some money into Brighton. The lift fleet at Brighton is quite old and crest is easily the busiest. Will be great to see a 6 pack d-line lift here.
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Well.. Great Western and Crest are up there in age, but Milly and Snake are just fine, and Majestic is not very crowded and Explorer doesn’t even matter…
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Have you ever been to Brighton on a Saturday. There is a line at every lift.
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Does anyone know why Sunday River built the custom glass enclosures around Jordan 8’s D-Line Terminals? Is it for wind protection during loading/unloading or just for aesthetics?
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I believe its for chair storage. They aren’t building a barn since D line can park at the station.
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Oh okay makes sense! Thanks
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Why would snowbird want to replace wilbere? There was almost no line at the lift when I go skiing at snowbird. If the lift is worn out, wouldnt it be cheaper to rebuild/replace worn out parts? Snowbirds biggest problem right now is mineral basin, it needs to be upgraded to a higher capacity lift.
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Here’s an analogy. Let’s say you are a construction company that has a “truck” and a “executive vehicle”two cars and the money to replace one of them. Both are needed, but the “executive vehicle” is less important. Your truck is a GMC Sierra 1500 (Mineral Basin) from 1999, whereas your “executive vehicle is a Volkswagon Beetle from 1971 (Wilbere). For now, both vehicles are working fine and aren’t having issues.
Obviously, it would be nice to have a modern truck that is more capable. It would also be temporarily cheaper to doing maintenance on the Volkswagon Beetle rather than replacing it. However, over the long run, you will save money replacing the vehicle considering maintenance costs go up over time, and the Sierra still has plenty of lifespan left in it.
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I might be wrong, but I seem to remember them wanting to replace Wilbere for racing purposes as well.
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You make a good point, I still think mineral basin needs to be the biggest priority as far as a new lift however than spending money on a chairlift that hardly gets much ski traffic. Id like to see wilbere around longer just because its one of the 2 last remaining chairlifts that are orignal to the resort (not including reused/relocated lifts)
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IIRC, Snowbird has plans to expand the Gad Valley base and Wilbere was supposed to be related to that with a slight re-route and regrading to make it a more attractive pod for intermediates and below. Did I just make that up?
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If snowbird decides to replace wilbere id like to see it go further uphill
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Not sure where it would go if further uphill. Only logical place would be close to the top of Big Emma, but then you are basically just duplicating the Mid-Gad lift, so not sure I get it.
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It definitely cannot go further uphill. Fluffy Bunny/Wilbere Bowl runout is already the most aggressive of the catwalks at Snowbird. Anything higher up than the current top terminal gets much steeper and wouldn’t be intermediate friendly. Wilbere is also the last original chair left, Gad 1 came out in 1997 and Gad 2 in 2014. Chickadee is a 1972 build, it wasn’t there opening year, and Mid-Gad was a new lift in 1980, it’s not the old Gad 1.
MBX is a huge problem, I don’t think anyone who has skied Snowbird will disagree with you, but Wilbere is a 50+ year old lift, and perhaps you could get more people to ski that area with a new lift.
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I know aspects of this have been discussed in previous postings, and I do not want to get into name-calling of VR, but wow reading the report of the errors and changes to construction methods in the remediation plan, it really boggles the mind that the project got as far afield from the approved techniques.
Obviously I’m not on site, but it’s hard to see how Keystone senior managers would have been overseeing this project in any sort of daily capacity without knowing in solid detail what was expected from the Forest Service approvals, and how much the contractor was failing to adhere to it!
I’m just incredibly disappointed in all of it.
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You’re getting 2 new lifts in back-to-back years, one of which is a D-Line bubble 8, and you are still disappointed?
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Have to say I’m kind of underwhelmed at the explanation for why Jordan 8 happened when it did. If I understand correctly, the re-prioritization of that lift was done at the behest of a Boyne exec who parachuted in, overruled local mgmt and decided that a relatively rare wind-hold event should be the main driver of investment over fixing issues they experience every day in the core of the resort. Not buying this decision-making process nor the underlying logic that drove it.
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Agree with you. It is also overlooked how on many of the windy days, Aurora, Spruce, and the Chondola/North Peak express will also go on wind holds. Without those four lifts, it is impossible to get to Jordan (unless you drive and park at the hotel but no one does that), so even if the Jordan 8 is open in heavy winds, it will still be impossible to even get there. With a mountain that is so horizontal instead of vertical, fixing one lift does not necessarily reinvent the mountain, especially when that lift is on the far edge of the resort. Don’t get me wrong I am excited for the new lift, but until the Western Reserve is fully realized, this lift has a lot less positive impact than Boyne execs are making it out to be. Replacing Barker first would have way more immediate positive impact.
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