Skytrac will build the first truly new lift at Mount Bohemia over the next three years, replacing a used Riblet triple built in 2000. Bohemia announced a new drive terminal will be installed next summer, a top return terminal in 2024 and new towers and triple chairs will follow in 2025. The phased lift replacement will spread the capital cost of the project out over multiple seasons and bring Bohemia into the era of modern lifts.
“These build outs have been done by Skytrac all over the country,” said Mount Bohemia, using the above example of a Skytrac Monarch drive terminal retrofitted on a 1961 Riblet double at Mt. Spokane, Washington. “In a very short time Bohemia will have a completely brand new triple chairlift that will increase uphill capacity by roughly 50 percent. It will reduce our maintenance season on the new lift to four weeks allowing us to run the new chairlift for scenic lift rides all summer and fall.”
Lift Blog 
Interesting. Are they going to immobilize the tension carriage on the top terminal, or temporarily immobilize the bottom?
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Could be a fixed-drive. They do make tension returns- we have one.
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I was scratching my head when I read this at first but iirc they do have an issue where they only can load the chairs as 2s and not 3s.
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Ironically it’s because of their clientele and audience, not because of anything specific to the lift. Very few children and a whacked out gender ratio (even for a ski resort!) mean they’d overload on weight if they loaded three per chair.
The owner talked about this on the Storm Skiing podcast.
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I’m surprised they didn’t go with a quad here, since lines are starting to get pretty big on Saturdays which is why they stopped selling day tickets then, and it just doesn’t seem like Boho’s gonna stop growing in season pass holders. I know they are planning on a new Honey pot lift soon (maybe reusing the triple) as well as one in the Haunted Valley, but for out-of-base capacity, this is it, so I’d think they’d want as much as possible.
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Do you have any info on the planned alignments for the Haunted Valley and Honey Pot Lifts?
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This is a line following the flagging for the Haunted Valley lift https://i.imgur.com/NkipWHt.jpeg
For Honey Pot, Lonie talked about it in his interview on the Storm Skiing Podcast https://www.stormskiing.com/p/podcast-102-mount-bohemia-owner-founder#details
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It’s probably a lot easier, aka cheaper, to convert an old riblet double into a triple. A quad would probably require a wider gauge, then the added weight needed for a capacity improvement would mean you might have to replace sheaves, drive, tensioning, maybe even a tower or 2 all at once. Possibly some foundation improvements.
This would completely defeat one of Skytrac’s big selling points to local areas with their multi stage lift upgrade program. You can pay for a monarch drive, have a few bad seasons and put off paying for new carriers.
A quad would limit that flexibility and require a bigger upfront cost.
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Excuse me, this is a designed triple originally. It still would use something closer to Riblet’s standard double line gear and spacing.
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I think the decision to go with a triple is as much about total cost as it is about limiting their capacity. I don’t think they want their area saturated with people all over the main area around the triple. Especially important when you are trying to preserve powder and keep your glades free of large groups of people in the same area all at once. Having lines at the new triple will entice people to move to the double chair or over to the Haunted Valley chair once that is complete. If Bohemia still has issues with lines they could always add a lift at Outer Limits to support Outer Limits and Middle Earth and spread people out even more.
The snow cat thing is cool but an old low capacity double would be cool for access to parts of Voodoo. There is a ton of expansion potential there and it could be done while preserving the snow cat experience.
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This will basically be a “chairlift of Theseus”.
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