- Two riders who claim they were injured in a Riblet clip ejection incident in 2020 sue Red Lodge Mountain.
- Red Lodge names its new detachable lift Stache Express in honor of longtime General Manager Jeff Schmidt.
- Texas Parks & Wildlife has raised most of the $36 million needed to build a new Wyler Aerial Tramway in El Paso.
- Doppelmayr works with a Utah adaptive organization to make D-Line chairs more accommodating to sit skiers.
- A judge upholds Park City’s decision to block Eagle and Silverlode replacement projects at Park City Mountain.
- Park City continues to look at gondolas as possible public transportation.
- Deer Valley applies for its first lift construction permit for eastward expansion.
- Lutsen Mountains new trail map shows the new Raptor Express.
- Sundance seeks information on chairlift vandals (update: caught).
- Alterra appoints Mammoth and Steamboat leaders to new regional positions overseeing multiple resorts.
- The world’s largest urban gondola network in Bolivia plans more expansion as it nears 500 million rides.
- County commissioners allow the nonprofit seeking to reopen Cuchara to resume work.
Lift Blog 
Whelp.. No upgrades for Eagle and Silverloade at PC. Ah well.
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It now sets a precedent for other communities that have concerns about parking and traffic to use this to slowdown or prevent over development.
Ironically Vail Resorts announced they are planning to submit plans for parking structure and create gateway connection from transit center to Canyons Village. A little late but at addressing the parking issue, just not at Park City side.
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Yup. Good point David, but for many folks, especially in Utah and Colorado and nearby, development is happening much much too quickly. They want things to slow down a bit and for the governments and companies and corporations to get the picture on what the people who live in these communities are seeing.. too much construction, too many people moving in or coming to visit, and too crowded and congested.
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Well they can do things on the Canyons side far more easily because the town of Park City doesn’t have jurisdiction over that side of the interconnect.
At this point, I’d say PCMR might be better off putting a high speed quad on Dreamcatcher since that seems like an ideal project to get people to stay in that region as opposed to merely passing through on their way from Tombstone and Iron Mountain to Miners Camp or vice-versa.
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I don’t understand building and expanding the parking at Canyons Village because most of the traffic that is happening is after the Canyons Village turn-off. I would also assume there is much more demand for increased parking on the PCMR side than in canyons. I think converting some of the existing lots on the PCMR side into a multi-level parking garage would be most effective.
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A free-flowing lane of traffic can move upwards of 1800 vehicles/hour if everyone is traveling at a constant speed of around 30 mph, but a road like Park Ave, Empire Ave, or Lowell Ave can only accommodate ~1200 vehicles/hour per lane due to inconsistent speeds, varying driver behaviors, etc. At its weakest link, or the chokepoint, the flow here is down to one lane.
Let’s say Vail builds a 450-space parking garage at Mountain Village, which is massive and about the size of a 3-floor garage covering the entire Main Lot. On even semi-busy days, upwards of tens of thousands of skiers swarm PCMR. With average vehicle occupancy in the ski industry typically peaking around 2.5 and usually being closer to 2, parking is a scarce commodity even after this garage’s completion, hence it will fill in addition to the existing lots. Assuming the spots are all reserved so zero cars show up and are turned away, which is incredibly unrealistic even with a reservation system, this garage will produce an additional 22.5 minutes of traffic from Mountain Village to Park Ave when everyone drives to and from the resort. This may not sound like a lot at first, but it is the equivalent of a 22.5-minute train crossing that backs up all existing traffic every morning and afternoon. Quite the mess!
Cars are incredibly space-inefficient, so feeding demand with additional supply is often akin to feeding a bottomless pit. To actually accommodate the demand for parking and road space at Mountain Village would likely require building an expressway from Kimball Junction that ends at a multi-acre, 100-ft tall parking garage. This obviously cannot be done here, so demand needs to be artificially lowered to reduce road congestion in Park City. Examples of lowering demand would be tolling Park Ave, having free parking on the outskirts of Park City, at Canyons Village for example, while all parking in Park City itself is paid at a high rate, or instituting a transit system that people actually want to use over driving.
TL;DR: You cannot build your way out of road congestion or parking demand in Park City. Instead, incentives need to be in place to move cars out of Mountain Village and Old Town. Building a garage at Mountain Village would create a traffic nightmare.
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Americas latest new ski area’s website is up and selling tickets. Granted it served by only carpet lifts currently, it still is a new area and any new ski area is positive. http://www.hoedownhill.com
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$60 for tubing and $80 for skiing on a tiny hill with only carpets? 🥴
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$60 for 2 hours of tubing on “America’s longest tubing hill” is a deal. Closest tubing hill to Denver is $45 per hour.
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It is not a deal for a tubing hill in Windsor, Colorado. $10.00 all day might be.
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“Looking ahead to this winter, Extell executive Kurt Krieg said Alterra has applied for a conditional use permit to work on a connector lift that stretches across the mountain into Summit County.”
Can anyone translate this into English? Any ideas on which lift this may be referring to?
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Probably refers to “Lift 3” in the Mayflower expansion. They want to open one connector lift next winter so the portal can provide access a season early, even if you won’t be able to ski the terrain yet.
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