- A lawsuit against the proposed Los Angeles gondola is thrown out.
- Durango, Colorado works to replace both lifts at its community ski hill.
- The owner of closed Toggenburg Mountain agrees to maintain and not liquidate the property while it’s for sale.
- An upcoming eight seater in Austria will acheive the world’s highest chairlift capacity: 4,570 skiers per hour.
- The Rock Snowpark in Wisconsin changes its name back to Crystal Ridge.
- The new chairlift that was supposed to open at the Tennessee State Fair this year didn’t get finished in time.
- A few more hours to vote for the Ski Area Management & Leitner-Poma lift mechanic Rise Up Challenge.
Lift Blog 
Did I miss your mention of Mt. Ashland’s new chairlift?
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I’ve mentioned it multiple times.
https://liftblog.com/tag/mt-ashland/
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No response necessary. Lifts over a half century old do not bode well for any ski area. Wish Mt. Baker would join the 21st century, feel sorry for the lefties trying to assist with loading, digging holes in the snow to brace themselves to keep the chair from mowing down the guests.
Interesting that the big timer ski areas do not want to share any revenue with the local ski areas that are a big part on introducing the next ski generation to the sport.
Oh well, if I ruled the ski world…
Tim Connolly
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It’s been a while since I worked at Baker but it never seemed that lift operations were a problem there. Their oldest current lift is a 1992 Riblet, and the next oldest is one I helped build in ’01, so lots of newer stuff- when I was there the oldest lift I maintained was a 1952 Riblet, and the rest of the fleet varied from 1962 through the 70s to the early 90s. My old boss used to do a presentation on lift ops at the various regional trade conferences, and he had a time-lapse video playing in the background that showed chair 7 operating at mostly full speed with no stops for 7 hours.
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In point of fact, all but one standing lift at Baker is of the 21st Century. When I worked there, I chose to work the bottom of lifts as often as possible so I could interact and do actual work. It’s hard, yes, but I found it fun.
As far as Mt A goes, they do a great job with what they have. A sunny day on Ariel is unbeatable. RRSNF isn’t the most welcoming of changes, and there is a vocal, ready-for-a-fight contingent of the community on the north side that is about as hostile as it gets. That Mt A can spin lifts at all is honestly a bit surprising. Getting updates through the red tape is quite the process. Baby steps and patience.
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holy crap. Tim Connolly?????
engineering teacher????
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Glad to see Chapman Hill replacing their old rope tows. The hill is really steep and hard to ride the ropes. Original plan was to replace with a fixed triple and carpet.
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I’ll be interested to see if the Austrians can actually load/unload 8 skiers and riders every 6.3 seconds without slows and stops. Lots of screaming in German?
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You nailed it. Capacity is largely a number for engineers and salesman. I’m sure it will increase capacity compared to the previous chair, but the optimal number thrown out in advertising and sales pitches largely don’t account for the actual operation of the lift.
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it doesn’t help that that the euro approach to lifts/lines/capacity is basically “build enough capacity you don’t need to do anything else”. On actually busy days that are at or above lift capacity, it seems to turn into a bigger mess faster than in NA. Line management is basically a ticket check and then everyone has to sort themselves. It’s Europe so there are a lot of languages; it was pretty rare to see 2 groups figure out that they should and could ride together. I watched a HS6 load 2-4 people per chair on a busy day at mid-popular swiss resort.
So any European lift that relies on stringent line management has about 0 shot of actually loading at a higher capacity than 3,000 – 3,400 pph.
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@Sunapee you’re right that it will be really difficult (if not impossible) to actually squeeze 100% utilization out of a lift with that kind of capacity. As Ryan mentioned, the European approach for lift lines is brute force capacity and/or build another lift right next to it. Ischgl in Austria is a good example where you have multiple junctions that have a six-pack right next to another six-pack serving the exact same terrain pod. Two lifts utilizing 75% is still more people than one lift at 100%.
A place like Alta with their “front row” loading maze would probably get really close to 100% utilization on a lift this size, but that requires a really organized maze and buy-in from the skiers riding it, both of which Alta has in abundance. But Alta’s lift line culture doesn’t exist in Europe, their lift lines are a total free-for-all so filling every seat is a fantasy.
That being said, I do think that Skiwelt will get pretty decent utilization (and therefore capacity) out of this lift because Europeans are very accustomed to things like Loading Carpets & Gates that, when properly used, do help minimize misloads, especially on that large a chair with that short an interval. This keeps the lift moving at full speed, so even if a chair doesn’t go up full, there’s another one right behind it.
For most American skiers, such helper devices on big lifts are still very alien. Every time a US ski area builds one people scream bloody murder because they’re unaccustomed to it and wonder what was wrong with a “wait here” sign with a liftie calling them up.
Mammoth had this growing pain with Chair 16 last year because 99% of their clientele have never seen a loading carpet on a ski lift, so you saw a lot of teeth-gnashing and people slipping/falling on the carpet until later in the season when they started to figure it out. That issue is nonexistent in Europe because everyone learned how to get on the loading carpet when they were still in ski school.
Will the lift actually achieve 100% utilization? I doubt it, but it’ll probably get closer than you think and the lift line will still move faster than the old fixed-grips.
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That’s a good point about Europe. I’ve actually taken thousands of lifts rides both recreationally and professionally but the first time I encountered a loading carpet the season before last, I nearly went on my butt.
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The rise up challenge is cute. It’s not as hard to keep the year 1-5 young employees. The industry really needs to try and keep the 5 years-retirement group. Although that would likely require higher pay, better facilities, and management that actually listens so fairly unlikely.
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Interesting news about Togg. Frankly, I think the financial viability of any future reopening there depends entirely on when the proposed Micron factory near Syracuse ever gets built (as does a lot else in the CNY services and entertainment economies).
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Love that Doppelmayr dropped the overdramatic orchestra music in their videos for some chill ambient breaks.
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