- The on-demand Ropetaxi gondola in Switzerland suffers from outages, slow speeds and confused riders after opening.
- Gore Mountain’s Northwoods Gondola goes down for a week and counting due to a gearbox bearing issue.
- The Heavenly Gondola is also out of service while bearings are replaced.
- Both Doppelmayr and Leitner-Poma are expected to bid on the Cannon tram rebuild with completion targeted for December 2026.
- A child is injured falling from the Gold Coast chair at Palisades.
- The strong earthquake in Japan shakes running chairlifts.
- Windham Mountain Club runs out of weekend Ikon reservations for most of the winter.
- The Forest Service approves replacements for Mineral Basin and Gadzoom at Snowbird, the proposed Brighton Chondola and a Coach replacement at Bogus Basin.
- Snowbasin plans to replace the Becker triple.
- Boyne Mountain will spin lifts 75 hours straight for a good cause.
- Alterra President and CEO Jared Smith participates in an interview with Colorado Public Radio covering a range of industry hot topics.
Lift Blog 
After they built the DeMoisy Express for this season, it kinda makes sense that Becker would be the next lift Snowbasin would be interested in replacing, since Becker’s on the most direct route to DeMoisy. (The alternative being Needles Gondola or Wildcat and Middle Bowl to the Needles Lodge, and then a lengthy traverse over to drop into the basin on Main Street.) Though of course this Becker Express would also be very much a lapping lift too, not just a way of accessing DeMoisy.
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I’d rather see Porcupine upgraded imo.
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Before Becker
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Will be interesting to see if they keep going with LPA or switch back to doppelmayr to match nearby Little Cat and Wildcat lifts.
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I heard Snowbasin signed a longer term contract with LPA. Based on recent trends, it could be a toss up. Definitely harder to tell now a days.
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For Snowbasin It’s all about who comes in with the lowest bid and can get the job done when they want it done, whereas for sister resort Sun Valley, they are still favoring Doppie.
I’m heartbroken that Becker is going to be replaced, but I had a feeling it would for awhile now, after we saw them do that Middle Bowl upgrade. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Porky get upgraded in the next 2-4 years, although the Becker and Porky twins are very healthy and reliable. I was thinking maybe Becker could be a good lift for Nordic, with some upgrades, but I also am thinking that Nordic can likely get a good deal on a new fixed grip with bids from Doppie and Skytrac/LP
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I think with Snowbasin, their lift projects for the future are as follows:
* Becker gets replaced with a high speed six pack with at least 2,800 pph capacity due to the larger amount of terrain it services (both as a lapping lift and it being a direct route to get over to the DeMoisy Express).
* Porcupine will probably just get replaced with a 2,400 pph high speed quad since it doesn’t really serve that much terrain.
* Add more chairs to the Middle Bowl Express to boost capacity if that’s doable. With the DeMoisy Express open, I think Middle Bowl needs more lift capacity, especially seeing as it’s easier to get back into Middle Bowl coming from DeMoisy than from the gondola. (From DeMoisy, you just turn right upon getting off the lift and you can drop directly onto Dan’s Run. From the gondola, you have to take a traverse from Main Street starting just below tower 20 on DeMoisy.)
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agreed about Porky being a HSQ, but I have not skied at my favorite mountain in about 10 years so I don’t know what the wait times are like there anymore. Even 10 years ago it wasn’t terrible, except on weekends sometimes. It sure was though before SB added all their new lifts back in 98! up to 30min wait times at Porky. I skied Porky in the morning and then in the afternoon when things got very busy I moved over to MB.
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wait times meaning for Porky only.
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+ Pajarito is spinning Townsight for the first time in ~5 years tomorrow.
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That’s GREAT news, Kent, I am wishing all the best to Pajarito NM and the Townsight lift.
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Not sure if the approval docs for Becker state this, but I wonder if the alignment will be the exact same?
The reason I ask, is because it would seem that extending this down to the bottom of littlecat would make sense.
This most certainly is meant to get more usage and feed into the strawberry and DeMoisy pod. But right now the only direct access to Becker is through the wildcat parking lot. Also, quick access to middle bowl. I could hypothetically see them get this lift open on opening day to get better access to middle bowl for laps on middle bowl.
Makes sense now but the wildcat lot was supposed to go away with the club med hotel. My guess is it will eventually go away. But once that parking lot is gone? It would require a ride on little cat to get here.
I’m also really excited to lap some of the terrain on this lift. I like a few of the runs here.
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I think the caveat to extending Becker down to the Littlecat base is that such a lift would have to cross over Wildcat. Not to mention it looks like it’d be a tight squeeze trying to fit Becker’s bottom terminal in between the terminals for Littlecat and the Needles Gondola.
The only way I could see such an extension of Becker work is if you had a midway load and turn station where the triple currently starts.
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I think adding any more traffic to the Little Cat area is probably not a good idea. I wonder if Snowbasin would consider having parking lot shuttles drop people at the old base area. Might be a good way to spread people out, keep the learning slope for learners, and not overspend.
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Aren’t they going to re-develop the old parking area/day lodge area, or is that somewhere else? I can’t remember what they were planning to do with the new master plan for that area and the rumors of building hotel(s) and other buildings in that upper lot area?
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Neat little article celebrating James Niehus here: https://www.fox13now.com/news/uniquely-utah/meet-the-man-who-turned-utah-ski-maps-into-works-of-art
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I watched the care flight come in for the kid who fell off Gold Coast and we all feared the worst. Rumors spread fast. I’ve heard a few stories about what happened, but don’t want to spread falsehoods. Starting that afternoon though, every lift op is coming behind the chairs of children and pulling them back against the seatbacks.
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Would be cool to see Mineral Basin and Gadzoom get replaced and become D-lines.
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An actual gondola down at Hochoetz, Austria today, apparently trees fell on the line: https://tirol.orf.at/stories/3239844/
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Mineral Basin can arguably make more sense for a D-Line than Gadzoom given the differing circumstances of these 2 lifts. Mineral is in more avalanche prone territory, unloads on a ridge, has the most crowds of at the bird and can often be more subject to weather holds than Gadzoom is. Gadzoom is the main out-of-base lift here at Gad Valley, but can sometimes break down due to mechanical problems but not the most unreliable in the world. Gadzoom does have redundancies with Mid-Gad and Wilbere whereas Mineral has none. (except for Alta-Bird or Ikon passholders where they can take Baldy out) The New Mineral should feature 90 degree unloading clockwise in order to provide more space on the ridge rather than aggressively moving more dirt than necessary to make more room. Gadzoom can be a UNI-G unless Snowbird chooses D-Line for it as well. I just want Mineral to get the special reliable treatment.
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