Instead of building two new chairlifts at Alpental this summer, The Summit at Snoqualmie will instead build one lift at Alpental and another at Summit West in partnership with Doppelmayr. The Summit encompasses four distinct ski areas and is in the midst of a multi-year investment push called Summit 2030 that will now see at least five new lifts installed over four years. Alpental is a major focus of the plan with two lift replacements and one completely new expansion lift. Phase one was a replacement Sessel lift, which debuted this season. A brand new International triple will follow above Sessel this summer. Snoqualmie previously announced Chair 2/Edelweiss would also be replaced in 2024, but that has now been postponed one year to 2025.
Crews have already completed many of the foundations for both International and Chair 2, which ascend extremely steep terrain and have limited to no road access outside of snow season. In fact, crews this week transported the new haul rope for International up the mountain over snow in advance of this summer’s construction. “Shifting the Edelweiss timeline will allow the construction team at Alpental to focus all their efforts on completing International prior to the 24/25 season,” the resort noted. “We’ve mentioned it before but work on International is extremely challenging and time-consuming due to the lack of road access and gnarly terrain.”
Simultaneously with the International project, crews will now replace the Wildside triple with a new fixed grip quad at Summit West for next season. Wildside dates back to 1974 and had broken down occasionally in recent seasons. Summit West has traditional service roads and work can more easily be completed there at the same time as International. “[Wildside] is a much simpler installation with easier access for the construction team and is a great opportunity to get another aging lift replaced,” said Snoqualmie. Unlike the current lift, the realigned Wildside will feature a loading conveyor and restraint bars.
New Chair 2 at Alpental will now debut in winter 2025-26, the fourth season in a row with a new lift on Snoqualmie Pass. In the meantime, skiers can enjoy one more season on the classic Riblet to the top.
Lift Blog 
Hopefully they’ll give the poor lifties some lights at Wildside. Last time I skied there at night, there was no lighting near the loading area.
LikeLike
I don’t understand the Summit’s insistence on putting loading carpets on all its new lifts.
As I understand it, loading carpets can in theory provide 2 benefits: make it easier for people to load an otherwise difficult-to-load lift, and allow a higher rope speed on a fixed grip lift (to reduce ride time) without making it harder to load.
In my experience at Snoqualmie, however, the loading carpets don’t accomplish either of those things. To me, carpets actually increase the number of mis-loads (the carpet gets slippery and people crash; the gate timing doesn’t work, etc) and decrease overall capacity because 1-2 chairs are sent up empty after the lift stops each time. This happens frequently at Pacific Crest, Holiday, and the new Sessel.
Maybe a bunny hill lift is one thing, but skiers who ride Wildside (like Sessel & PC) should be able to load a fixed-grip quad without the help of a carpet. And these lifts are short; ride time is not a concern (they don’t actually run them faster anyway, probably because they have to stop so often). To me, these carpets are an unnecessary expense that actually makes the skiing experience worse, not better.
I’m not completely anti-carpet; I’ve seen them used effectively (Ramcharger & Swifty come to mind). But I don’t get where Snoqualmie is coming from putting a carpet on lifts like Wildside & Sessel.
LikeLike
I love the carpet at Challenger at Big Sky.
LikeLike
Good point about Challenger, but that’s a fairly long lift (4,300 ft; 9 mins even with the carpet). Wildside is less than half that length (2,000 ft), and ride time today is only 4.5 mins. Wildside carpet’s ride-time benefit will be negligible compared to the hassles it causes. Hopefully the extra capacity of the quad (they haven’t released those numbers yet from what I’ve seen) will make up for the increased number of stoppages the carpet will cause.
LikeLike
Of course there are a lot more factors at play (gates, contour loading, location on the mountain, etc.), but in my experience in terms of number of misload-related stoppages it goes:
Loading carpets aren’t as good as HSQs, but they’re definitely way better than a typical fixed-grip lift, on average.
LikeLike
You nailed all the reasons we tried, then removed, two loading carpets at Crystal in the mid-90s.
LikeLike
The cheering in the summer of ’00 when the heli crew up flying concrete and towers for new 3 lifted the old Chair 9 carpet out of Silver Creek or wherever it’d gotten off to and dumped it in F Lot was loud and unanimous. I think all us mechanics where happier with getting rid of it than any other change of any kind at that time. (3 new lifts in 4 years.) All I remember about it was that you and your successors always buried it in snow. Carpets are like GripWalk, designed by engineers answering questions that are best answered with practice that leads to better technique. New Chair 4 at CM has a carpet and not only does it still run ridiculously slow and stop a lot, the carpet makes it much harder to load for those of us used to actually taking care of ourselves.
LikeLike
The carpet on Pacific Crest has significantly decreased the number of times this lift has to stop during the week. I have coached ski racing at the Pass and raced City League for the last 25 years and as a result have ridden this lift thousands of times. The carpet has really improved this lift. A high speed quad would likely have fewer misloads, but the carpet on this lift has definitely improved the skier experience.
LikeLike
Yeah, I never rode PC when it didn’t have a carpet, so I can’t compare. Perhaps PC was a bad comparison since it’s typical clientele skews towards the low-intermediate range (racers being a notable exception). I think everyone agrees it should be a detachable anyway.
I still stick by my view that the carpet has made the new Sessel worse, and that Wildside, the new International chair, and the Chair 2 replacement will be worse-off for skiers if they have a carpet. Whatever money they will spend on these carpets could be better used elsewhere.
LikeLike
If you don’t like loading conveyors & you think they’re bad (I think conveyors are defeating the purpose of detachable lifts & are just as bad on fixed grip lifts), then I would suggest writing to Stephen Kircher, the guy who runs Boyne resorts.
LikeLike
Spending money at Snoqualmie pass for Sking just doesn’t make any sense at all, it’s not worth going to except maybe in the summer…..
LikeLike
Why? If I didn’t work at a ski area (heck, it’s true even though that’s all I’ve ever done), I’d be perfectly happy skiing a place like this. If I wanted something different I’d book a ski trip every so often, but there’s something about a smaller home joint that appeals to me. I will admit I have a soft spot for Rainqualmie as it was one of the places I grew up skiing, but even so.
LikeLike
Strange comment. It’s not the biggest, highest, snowiest, or raddest ski area in WA, but it’s the most convenient for a huge chunk of population. Especially if you’re skiing with or teaching your kids, the trek to Crystal/Stevens/Baker is often not worth it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think they regularly clock a half million annual skier visits up at the pass so a lot of people disagree with you. Snoqualmie has had two major markets for decades: Seattle kids learning to ski and skiers who lack the money or time to ski at bigger mountains. It’s still that way.
LikeLike
You cats are way kinder than I was gonna be. This comment looks like an AI that learned English from Reddit.
LikeLike
Glad they are investigating in an improved experience. I like the carpets, they do help less experienced skiers from what I’ve seen. My wishes would be for more paved parking lots. Too often the parking lots are a sloppy mess with enormous ruts that feel like some off road adventure. Second more interesting runs though treed areas. Summit Central and West just feel like giant toboggan runs straight down with no interesting features.
LikeLike
I think that the new Wildside chair is a waste, and instead they should make the East Peak chair an express chair.
LikeLike
It states in the article that they shuffled lifts because of changing priorities. Wildside is getting up there in years- it’s celebrating its 50th (!) anniversary this year- and despite my fondness for Riblets I recognise that they’re getting old and more difficult to maintain. (So is chair 2 at Alpental, but see again the article, which points out the difficulties in construction up there.) Long story short, it’s not really a waste considering that Wildside is and has been the only lift serving that terrain with the removal of T-bird and Beaver Lake.
Chair 1/East Peak isn’t really long enough for a detach in my book, and since detaches are quite expensive I doubt Snoqualmie is willing to spend that kind of coin on their least-visited portal. They’ve done some decent upgrading there in recent years and I’m guessing Hyak is now low on their list.
LikeLike
Replacing Wildside makes sense to me. It was always part of the plan, just changing up the order of things a bit. I assume it’s based on the condition & maintainability of the lift. It’s certainly a classic. I noticed the old derelict lodge at the top was removed this summer also, probably in preparation for this.
East Peak was presumably refurbished when it was installed in 2010 (moved from Silver Fir). Plus, Wildside runs 5 days/wk but East Peak is only open on weekends.
LikeLike
I joined a group doing trail runs on the Summit slopes. I saw the new lift installation at Wildside up close this past Tuesday evening–it looks great.
Also heard a strong rumor that East/Hyak will be open on Fridays for the 24/25 season, and if all goes well, they may add Thursdays in the future. Skiing Hyak midweek would make the Summit experience considerably more appealing to me.
Much of the reason that Hyak wasn’t open midweek was limited staff to run the lifts and operate the mountain. Supposedly staffing options are much improved this year. Hope that’s true!
LikeLike
Things are moving very quickly on construction. International drive terminal is nearly complete, and parts for the return are staged in the parking lot. No sign of towers, but considering the rapidly melting snowpack anything requiring heavy vehicle access will probably get moving right after closing day, and everything else flown in later.
Over at West, the old Wildside top terminal and at least some of the towers are disassembled in the parking lot. The remaining Thunderbird towers were also removed and are in the lot. No major signs of construction on the new lift, but once the terminal work on International is done I imagine they’ll move over to Wildside to start work on foundations so they can fly towers for both lifts at the same time this summer.
LikeLike