- U.S. skier visits totaled 60.4 million this season, down from last year but fifth highest ever.
- The Colorado Supreme Court rules a liability waiver doesn’t protect Crested Butte from a chairlift fall claim.
- Huff Hills, North Dakota may pack up and move to a new location.
- Leitner-Poma parent company HTI reports a 13 percent revenue increase with strong sales in North America.
- Alterra-owned Schweitzer postpones the next phase of the Schweitzer Creek Village expansion.
- Castle Mountain plans to reinstall a 1988 detachable from Sunshine Village as soon as next summer.
- The municipality of Park City approves Deer Valley’s proposed Lift 7.
- Park City Mountain to begin construction shortly on the new Sunrise Gondola.
- A Maine developer will try again to revive Big Moose Mountain.
- A proposed lift-served bike park in Conifer, Colorado moves toward public hearings.
Lift Blog 
So Lift 7 at Deer Valley is all set to be built?
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Yes with some conditions surrounding construction. I believe Lift 7 is not set to open until 2025-26. They may start concrete this year to get a jump on things.
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Peter, job well done. No other ski industry news source even acknowledged Yan’s passing much less posted his video. Not a peep from SAM or anyone else. No matter if you liked Yan or hated him he was a real pioneer and an icon in the ski lift industry. A couple of positive firsts for Yan. Planetary gearbox, rope position detectors, two legged Detachable terminals and the first to drive the accelerators and decelerators off the haul rope with PTO sheaves. Thanks for being bold.
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I agree with Kirk, thank you Peter.
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Thank you Peter!
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Seconded, Kirk. I was quite surprised to see this news here and only here. A friend of mine let me know about his passing, but aside from that I hadn’t seen anyone acknowledge the news. He was a pioneer in our industry for sure. SAM magazine always has a ‘people’ section that highlights promotions, awards, and passings. For this, they better have an article at least.
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The video was awsome! Thanks for remembering him Peter.
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With the long awaited approval of Lift 7, will it be built this summer or next?
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Initial work should begin this summer, with an opening set for the 25/26 season.
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I really love how the video focus on him as a person and not his lifts. It really taught me a lot about him. It was unfortunate that the accidents happened and he went out of business. I always loved the look of integrated sheaves on his detachables. May he rest in peace.
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Though his detachables stain his reputation, so many of his fixed grips spin on as a testament of his contributions to the ski lift industry. He pioneered quite a few things we take for granted now. Last chair is for you Jan, you won’t be forgotten.
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Wow, thanks for the video Peter. It was really interesting to see Yan’s live. It’s sad that their HSQ failed, because over that, Lift Engineering was really avant-gardist. RIP Yan.
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Weather we liked him or not, we shall all remember Yan forever 🫡🫡🫡
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We can see the old squaw valley yan gondola at 5:48 .
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That’s not the short-lived Keystone one?
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We all know the sad history with Quicksilver, yet the Yan video was a wonderful reminder that there were real people living real lives behind behind the sadnesses that happened. It is easy to forget that Yan was also a person … Thank you for posting.
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Loved the video! Jan deserves to be remembered despite all of the failures and flaws with his detachable lifts.
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Delighted to know that Sunrise is getting a jump-start this summer, can’t wait for it to spin at PCMR!
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Yan made beautiful lifts and tended to make changes to design more often than other manufacturers. The Yan sheave trains were stunning in their design and the detachable terminals themselves were so much more pleasing to the eye than other manufacturers at that time. The worst part about Yan lifts from an operators standpoint were the stock shacks… those were terrible!
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We call those stock shacks ‘telephone booths’- and even our current gen Z operators who have never seen one can get the point. Pretty sure those were where the beginner welders got their stick time, since there was a single design for decades and no further instruction was needed :)
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Phone Booth is an apt name! My first year being a lifty I was scheduled to bump canyon quad and my boss comes over on his sled and asks if I wanted to.drive a lift instead. I said yes of course and I hop on the back.
After a 15 minute sled ride he deposits me at the top of the triangular south ridge triple, and I sat in the phone booth for the day with the wind howling through the rusted sides of the phone booth and the heater could keep up! I could either stand up or sit down. If I wanted to move I had to go outside. It was a long day for sure and no one was riding it because it lived up to its nickname with the wind. “South Fridge.”
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Has anyone heard where the old 6 shooter at big sky is headed? Saw part of the terminal and some other equipment headed out of Big Sky today on a flatbed.
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Good chance it will be the new top lift at Sugarloaf.
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Yup. Strong rumor out there it will replace Timberline quad. Has the right length, the right weight and the right capacity for that line, so that tracks especially given the Boyne history of re-using chairs with life in them at their other resorts.
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I’ve never skied there (or even heard of the place until recently), but I’m a bit sad about the possible fate of Huff Hills. Looks like a fun place to ski, and from what I’ve read recently about it it reminds me of Monarch or Cooper. I’m quite curious as to why the landowners seem unwilling to grant the operators a longer lease than the current year-to-year contract they have, and don’t seem to respond to offers to buy the land outright. If it were mine, and I didn’t want to sell, I would at least say so and not ignore possible offers outright. The operators deserve a less murky idea of their business’s future.
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Yan was ahead of its time when it comes to detachable lifts, Tire contour and Overhead drive compared to the other 2 with Chain and Vault or Seperate fix drive
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