- Troll, British Columbia secures a million dollar grant to double ski terrain with a new T-Bar next year.
- Snowbasin may not host events for a second Utah Olympics but Deer Valley and Park City are on board.
- Baltimore explores building a harbor crossing gondola.
- Big Sky’s stunning new tram will open December 19th.
- Vail Resorts debuts gondola cabin artwork by diverse artists at Park City and Stowe with Whistler Blackcomb up next.
- Vail brings lift mechanics from Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio to help finish the Mountaineer at Attitash.
- A rigging mishap sets back reopening of Chair 4 at Cuchara.
- Sugar Bowl replaces two damaged towers on the Crow’s Peak triple.
- Sierra at Tahoe modifies lift towers due to wind load changes from Caldor Fire tree removal.
- Discovery, Montana completes a solar power facility adjacent to the Anaconda triple capable of providing 65 to 70 percent of the lift’s energy needs.
Lift Blog 
If Snowbasin doesn’t get on board, I’m really curious where Downhill and Super G events would be held. DV and Nordic don’t have the vertical in the existing footprint, PCMR’s steeps don’t connect to the base, and Sundance’s layout breaks up the steep pitches and it’s flatter at the bottom. They already wrote off the Cottonwoods, which makes sense, as much as Primrose or anything off the Collins side would be a dream course.
I don’t know the terrain at Wasatch Peaks Ranch, but it almost seems like Mayflower may have to host. They would have more freedom to shape the course, but it wouldn’t see as much usage after the games. It’s just a shame because Grizzly is a great run, and Wildflower may be better.
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I think that you’re underestimating the required vertical for a Downhill, which is 800m. There’s only four mountains in Utah that have that much lift-served vertical: Snowbird, Snowbasin, Wasatch Peaks Ranch, and Mayflower. Mayflower would be one of the worst DH courses of all time given how much cat-tracking is gonna be needed to ski the whole vertical, so if it’s not Sowbasin, then it’s got to be WPR.
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Wasatch Peaks Ranch is an interesting candidate. I am unfamiliar with the terrain having never skied there, but if the resort is able to accommodate a course when no one else can, they can use it as leverage for their current legal battle.
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I’ve skied the runs used at Snowbasin, Palisades, and Louise, and been around the runs for Whistler and Beaver Creek. I know the terrain requirements. I think Snowbasin is the obvious candidate for it, but I wanted to go through a process of elimination for the others. I forgot Pow Mow, but it doesn’t make any sense terrain wise or logistically.
I expect Snowbasin to play hardball, but eventually host it. In the event they don’t, I think the only options are Mayflower, WPR, and Nordic expanding significantly toward the ridgeline. Mayflower and WPR certainly have the resources and don’t actually get very much snow, but I just can’t see the run being world class. I also don’t see Utahns being excited about the 1% hosting a signature event. The USFS and locals weren’t very happy with the Nordic expansion proposal, but it does sit on the same ridge as Snowbasin, and MCP seems willing to invest and try to negotiate deals . I seriously doubt it would happen, but it’s worth a thought experiment.
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Not the same ridge; Ogden Canyon splits the Lewis Peak mound from the Mt Ogden group. It’s 830 or so vertical metres from the highest point on the ridge down to the barn. I didn’t think it was that high on the east side.
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How would WPR work considering its a private resort?
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It would probably work much better than a public resort, since they don’t have to worry about lost revenue from added security and closing half the resort.
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My guess is that DV/Mayflower would be the leader in the clubhouse to host the DH if Snowbasin bows out. Would be pretty easy to sketch out a decent course meeting all FIS requirements starting at the top of Bald Mtn, down through the Mayflower pod at DV (perhaps Stein’s Run) and then into the Mayflower Resort terrain.
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Snowbasin may play a little hard to get in order to secure something in return. For the 2002 Olympics, they secured a land swap with the USFS that gave them all of the base area land they are now attempting to develop in addition to the Allen Peak Tram.
As a backup plan, South Peak at Mayflower looks like it may be able to accommodate the races.
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How did they leverage the Allen Peak tram during 2002?
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Prior to hosting the Olympics, Snowbasin’s footprint was a lot smaller. Little Cat was the beginner chair, Wildcat and Becker covered the lower half of the mountain, and Middle Bowl and Porcupine covered the upper half of the mountain. Strawberry and John Paul were both out of bounds. Snowbasin wanted to expand into these two areas and secure a large land swap for land around the base area but the USFS said no.
When the Olympics came around, Snowbasin was naturally the choice to host the downhill, super G, and combined races, albeit in the yet-to-be-developed John Paul area. An act of Congress overrode the USFS decision to give Snowbasin the exact deal it wanted in exchange for building out the vision and hosting the events.
After this deal occurred, it was “suddenly realized” that the proposed John Paul Express would end short of the needed starting point for the downhill course. From a resort-building perspective, John Paul Lodge was a better terminus for John Paul Express and it made little sense to build a lift to serve 500 vertical feet of a few expert-only runs. The government could try to bring Snowbasin to court to force the lift’s construction, but this could take years and the games were only 4 years away. The government could also build the tram itself, but it would probably be sold to Snowbasin at the conclusion of the games anyway, and likely for a steep discount, as the alternative would be a costly removal. So, Snowbasin offered to build the tram if the government paid for a new access road on what was formerly USFS land now owned by Snowbasin. The road was more expensive than the tram, but it could more easily be viewed as a permanent public good. After a quick analysis revealed the downhill races would need to be held in Colorado if the tram was not built, Congress passed legislation mandating that the USFS pay for the road.
Overall, Snowbasin received a land swap it desired, an expanded SUP area, the ability to bypass almost all needed permits and environmental approvals for any construction from 1998 until the Olympics, a new $15 million access road, and a $14 million check for hosting the events itself. For its part, Snowbasin did spend $73 million on new lifts, lodging, facilities, etc.
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Could Nordic Valley use this as leverage to get permitting for their expansion?
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I’m surprised the Olympic Commission is already ruling out resorts in the LCC. I get that right now, it makes no sense with how unreliable the road through it is, but with the LCC gondola being approved and most likely operational by 2030, it would solve any congestion and unreliability issues that currently hinder LCC resorts, and make Snowbird and Alta attractive event hosts. Guess we’ll have to wait and see
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LCC gets too much snow to host a race event. The course needs to have a firm surface, which just isn’t possible given the volume and frequency of snow in LCC most years.
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lol that has to be the hardest flex like as a resort being like “we can’t host racing events because it just snows too much”
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I was really rooting for Cuchara but I have to wonder if this mishap is a setback or the end of the road.
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Baltimore’s cable car plan seems utterly bizarre to me. Looks like they’re planning to have both stations at height (several hundred feet up at least) so you’d have to take an elevator on either side. From google maps it looks like the gondola would be under 500 feet long and the section of the harbor past the gondola is a small, very touristy place that no large ships enter; it’s just a couple museum ships, paddle boats, and small speedboats in there so I don’t understand why they would need to make it several hundred feet high. It’s less than a 1 mile/20 minute walk through a nicely pedestrianized, car free area to just walk around the harbor between the two proposed gondola stations. The whole idea of putting a gondola there just seems like a ludicrous waste of money to me. If they’re going to put in a gondola then they should at least make it a little longer and choose an alignment where the terminals are on the ground, not hundreds of feet in the air.
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What damaged the towers on crow’s peak at sugar bowl?
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I think Snowbasin is just holding out to see what the options are, and possibly figure out if there is anything they need out of the deal. JP and the downhill courses are really compartmentalized at the resort, and I think they designed it that way. During course set-up and venue build it was all on that lift, and their expanded parking lot was the stadium. The Olympics impacted all the resorts that year, and they were not as busy, as most of the attendees didn’t ski… we actually liked skiing during the games as there were less crowds on the slopes, more crowds in town. Snowbasin’s venue was the best, easiest access, and with no real village, everyone just returned to SLC and Ogden. I get that it is a complete pain in neck to host the event, but it is temporary. If the downhill gets moved anywhere else, there will really be some environmental impacts that could all be avoided by re-using the existing infrastructure. Although, I don’t think the snowmaking under the tram has been maintained, I’ve never seen it running since. But really, it begs the question, what does Davey and Snowbasin want in return?
I was out of the ski school by the time the games rolled around, but all my friends still employed at the resorts weren’t teaching very much… they were all the army of volunteers on the courses. If you’re looking at the Olympics as a economic engine, the resorts don’t see the kick until the next year, and subsequent years. It’s worked out to Snowbasin’s advantage from 2002. Really, the worst thing about hosting at Snowbasin is the tourists stopping at the exit on the Mtn Green off-ramp… there’s no stop sign, just turn left already.
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While it’s not on topic I think there will be people here to answer. I drove by snow valley CA today and I saw that they had shorted chair 2 as expected what I didn’t expect to see was that the old top terminal was still in the same location it used to be and hadn’t been moved down the hill. There was a new identical terminal at the end of the new lift. Can anyone tell me where this came from?
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The terminal came from Snow Valley’s old chair 1.
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They just can’t leave the politics out of anything.
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