- More huge lift openings this weekend: Creekside Gondola at Whistler Blackcomb, Disciples 8 at Boyne Mountain, Jordan 8 at Sunday River, Sunrise at Stowe, Wild Blue and Greenhorn Ranch Express at Steamboat and maybe Game Creek at Vail.
- Wildwood at Sundance will hopefully spin again Saturday after opening then closing due to a motor failure.
- Palisades Tahoe expects to reopen the Base to Base Gondola early next week as one continuous lift. Red Dog is delayed until January.
- The Colorado Sun looks at lift supply chain challenges.
- Cascade Mountain issues a letter to guests about delays with its lift project.
- Closed Mont-Sainte-Anne offers passholders a Stoneham season pass, a full refund, or a 15% refund and pass for once the mountain reopens.
- Jackson Hole’s owner wants to replace Sublette next.
- Mt. Shasta looks for creative solutions to uphill ingress to and egress from the new Gray Butte lift.
- Locals weigh the future of Silverton’s Kendall Mountain Ski Area.
- A child falls 20 feet from a lift at Brian Head.
- As snow and ice cripple Portland, the city’s Aerial Tram ramps up with 24 hour operations.
- Breckenridge reopens the Peak 8 SuperConnect after yesterday’s incident. Updated statement from the resort copied below.
Breckenridge Ski Resort confirms at approximately 10:35 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 22, a chair dislodged from the haul rope of the Peak 8 SuperConnect as it was reaching the top terminal. One guest was on the chair at the time and fell approximately 13 feet. Ski patrol responded immediately. No injuries were reported and the guest declined further care.
The Peak 8 SuperConnect was closed for the remainder of the day on Thursday. The resort’s lift maintenance team was on site at the time of the incident and worked with the Colorado Tramway Safety Board to report the incident.
At the time of this event, the resort was following all standard operating procedures. The wind direction was predominantly favorable for operation of the Peak 8 SuperConnect when it opened for the day at 10 a.m., however an abnormal wind gust across the top terminal, in addition to the chair coming into contact with components of the upper terminal, created the circumstances of this event.
Since the event, the resort’s lift maintenance team has conducted a thorough inspection of the Peak 8 SuperConnect and consulted with the Colorado Tramway Safety Board. The lift resumed operations at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23.
Lift Blog 
I love how big sky say there the biggest in North America 😂
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They kinda have bragging rights, even though they’re kinda out of a lot of peoples’ price range and also far from any major metro areas.
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4th Biggest Tee Em just doesn’t have that ring, though. Feels weird to defend the Kirchers, but to be fair, PowMow has cats and helis to push it to ~8500, Whistler a mid-mountain 3S spanning a deep canyon to connect two independently-developed former rivals, and PC also a decent-length mid-mountain gondola connecting two distinct ski areas. Big Sky may have annexed a bunch of acreage from two other joints to get here, but it’s all on the same massif and does not require that sort of ridiculously expensive shenanigans to tie it all together. (They obviously have other types of ridiculously expensive shenanigans.) One could even argue that Bachelor, at ~4300, is the biggest skiing, as one can ski all of it from the top of one lift, should the weather gods allow. Places like Vail and Heavenly and Sun Peaks ski best if one concentrates one’s effort to a pod or a few adjoining pods so there’s less time transitioning. What is marketing if not stretching the truth at least a little, or maybe a lot?
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It sounds like Sublette’s detachable replacement may be coming as soon as 2024 given they are “replacing the ‘z'” this summer (I am not sure what that means). Overall, the mountain seems to be sticking to the aggressive timeline laid out by Mary Kate Buckley when she proposed replacing Thunder and Sublette and adding a Lower Faces lift by 2026.
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Regarding the “z”, I didn’t know either. But I was intrigued so I looked at Google Maps on terrain view and there it was. Just look at the egress from Sublette back to the base area and it will pop off the screen. Basically a couple of tight switchbacks that you’d imagine would inhibit ingress and egress for both man and machine.
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If you are referring to South Pass Traverse, that makes sense. It is narrow along that single switchback, which would likely make it a pain to drive heavy machinery up the mountain from the base toward Sublette. Straightening it all out will likely require some significant grading, as it is pretty steep there.
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Interesting about the Doppelmayr lift wildwood at sundance we too had a motor have a complete bearing failure right after load test while doing final punch list items this year, guess there was a bad batch of bearings in that manufactures products this year.
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Last year at my former mtn (49N) we got a new Doppelmayr detachable & we were very fortunate to have a complete problem free year and the lift still runs great and is a complete workhorse.
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Doppelmayr builds a good product not knocking them a bit, I am referring to the motor manufacturer as we source from many of the same suppliers as doppelmayr.
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I forget what manufacturer most of 49N’s motors are (I’m at Big Sky MT now) but bearing failures, to field failures to improper/winding failures are all part of the electric motor game! I just know that sometimes they become a royal pain to get out of the terminal depending on size of the motor.
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