- A skier tries to jump over Lake Louise’s Top of the World Express, runs into a chair instead.
- Powderhorn closes the Flat Top Flyer all week for maintenance.
- Magic Mountain celebrates the last new lift opening of the year.
- Epic Pass prices increase approximately 8 percent, Crans-Montana will be added subject to closing.
- Ikon Pass increases a similar amount, goes back to unlimited days at Crystal Mountain, Washington.
- Indy Pass adds Big Moose, Maine; Mt. Eyak, Alaska; Mt. Washington, British Columbia; Powderhorn, Colorado; Steeplechase, Minnesota; Wintergreen, Virginia and Wisp, Maryland.
- Massachusetts issues an RFP for operating Blue Hills Ski Area.
- A man dies aboard a chairlift at Lookout Pass due to a medical emergency.
- Timberline Lodge closes Bruno’s for the season due to gearbox failure.
- The world’s longest gondola is on track to open late next year in the Caribbean.
- Powder Mountain hints it may alter plans to make three quad chairs private for homeowners next season.
Lift Blog 
In addition to his injuries, wouldn’t that collision have a high risk of derailing the haul rope? I bet LL is not happy about this.
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Yeah I was thinking the same thing based on how much the chair was swinging.
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https://nbcmontana.com/news/local/whitefish-mountain-resort-opens-first-high-speed-6-seat-chairlift
From this source I learned that each six passenger carrier on LL’s Top of the World Express weighs about 1000 pounds and according to Liftblog’s charts is being pulled downhill on a cable at 1000 feet per minute (16.6 feet per second . The lift cable would not even have flinched, given the distance between the towers. Now if he did this close to the tower, the grip on the swinging chair might not line up with where it is supposed to go, and could have a collision with tower sheaves, which would be bad.
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Apparently the jumper wanted to make a viral video of him jumping and passing under the cable between two chairs, but missed his mark.
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Blue Hills really needs a higher capacity summit lift (and has for decades). With only a five year lease, I don’t think anyone is going to do that. Given the increasing effects of climate change in the northeast, they really need to be able to offer something like lift served mountain biking in the summer to be viable. This current winter, they didn’t get open for Christmas, only had a carpet for MLK. It’s been tough for them. Wachusett operates on a lease that last decades, I don’t know why the state always does short term leases for BH.
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Not exactly lift related, but since it is in the News Roundup, I figure it’s worth a mention:
I have said it before, but there is obviously quite a need for an Ikon product below the current Base Pass that is above the quite limited (and, frankly, mostly useless) Session Pass. The Crystal Midweek, Schweitzer Sunday-Friday, Solitude Midweek Plus, Stratton Select, Sugarbush Local, and Winter Park Season passes are all ~$700 and really should be packaged together to form a single product. Add in Big Bear, June, Snow Valley, Snowshoe, Tremblant, and Blue access, plus perhaps some sort of restricted access at Copper, Eldora, and others, and there would finally be an actual product to take on the Epic Local Pass. Frankly, they could really go a step further and merge the Big Bear Anytime, June Mountain Season, Snow Valley Anytime, Snowshoe Mountain Unlimited, Tonik, Blue Mountain 5×7, Winter Park Midweek, Solitude Midweek, and Crystal Afternoon passes, all of which are ~$500, to form a competitor to the Epic Regional Passes.
The Ikon Pass has succeeded in taking the top of the market, with its superior lineup able to charge a premium over the Epic Pass, but its over-reliance on partners for any sort of combined pass limits how low it can compete. Creating a lower-tier pass with Alterra’s own properties by essentially merging products it is already selling is really a low-hanging fruit idea to tackle the last segment of the market it has yet to compete in.
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