- Vail Resorts reports improving pass sales and will build four new lifts in 2025 at Andermatt-Sedrun, Perisher and Park City. Vail also teases future projects at Vail Mountain and Park City.
- A snowboarder is airlifted after falling 47 feet from the Ruby Express at Keystone.
- Nordic Valley, Utah looks to public tax dollars to fund new lifts.
- The State of Colorado contributes $250,000 toward reopeing Cuchara’s Chair 4.
- The union representing lift mechanics, electricians and patrollers at 13 western resorts changes its name to United Mountain Workers to reflect broadening ambitions.
- Drayton Valley, Alberta permanently closes, will liquidate assets including its T-Bar.
- The proposed private ski resort with D-Line gondola near Steamboat submits permit applications.
- It takes 8,400 horsepower worth of generators to run Steamboat’s Wild Blue Gondola off the grid.
- Meanwhile a dispute over using natural gas for snowmelt delays progress on a detachable replacement for the Wildhorse Gondola at Steamboat.
- Homewood’s master plan is recommended for approval next month.
- Grouse Mountain may replace the cabins on the Red Skyride.
- Sponsored job: Shop Technician at The Gondola Shop in Fruita, Colorado.
Lift Blog 
I’m curious about the other projects planned for Park City Mountain. The owners of the Park Record wrote a nice piece in April about the need for the town of Park City to work with Vail rather than opposing its every move. The NIMBYism is out of control.
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Completely agree. Every member of the Park City Planning Commission needs to be fired and replaced. I’ve spent way to much time watching videos from the Planning Commission meetings and it’s a complete joke. Do they not realize they live in one of the most popular ski towns in this country and that development and upgrading is inevitable and outright needed if they want to stay competitive?
It’s a really good thing the Deer Valley East expansion is almost entirely in Wasatch County, cause it probably never would have been approved if it was in Park City’s jurisdiction.
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stay competitive with who? I think you spend too much time w your head buried in your phone looking at social media.
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you haven’t lived through a ski town completely losing itself and alienating it’s own residents… Have you?
I think there is very real and valid criticism of the current committee, but simply assuming they should all be fired is fairly simplistic reasoning.
Ie; approving 2 capacity improvement lifts then denying them when local opposition emerged. That’s not great for long term business relations with Vail, or anyone who wants to invest locally.
But on the other hand, there may be a local concious decision to NOT want a relationship with Vail and Alterra, at least not without some written and legal commitments to limit their scope. They don’t want to be the next Steamboat and transform from local millionaires and the upper end of the working class, to even more borderline billionaires and millionaires making up the base class. This has been the pattern with pretty much every major resort Vail has owned for more than a decade.
They might want a model more like Tahoe, where the TRPA and the public basically got to tell Homewood they’d never have a private resort, but still allow new lifts and expansion zones in their jurisdiction when it makes sense. Getting to this will involve telling Vail no and using leverage. Kinda like the currently striking PCMR ski patrol.
Vail has blown up PCMR and the town. They haven’t invested nearly enough in infrastructure, wages, or planning to match the growth they’ve driven or the profits they’ve yoinked out of UT. Can you really fully fault the citizens for demanding better? Even if their voice and demands aren’t perfect.
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Firing everyone is likely extreme, however a major shakeup is probably necessary. Unless there is some sort of illegal activity going on, residents do not have a right to decide who does and does not conduct business in their town. Frankly, there are too many people who do not understand this. Reasonable regulations and boundaries should be in place so that PCMR can conduct normal operations for a ski resort without needing approval for what would be a routine project elsewhere. If businesses need to offer residents substantial concessions to conduct normal operations, it almost becomes extortion.
At a fundamental level, the needs of residents typically contradict the needs of a ski resort in any town, and there is usually friction between the two parties. The former generally want fewer people and higher home valuations, while the latter generally want more skiers and more affordable housing options for workers. Here in Park City: Deer Valley has a much better relationship with the town than PCMR, and it is not a coincidence that Deer Valley has an atypical business model that restricts visitation and wants high home valuations!
Vail Resorts has not been a perfect operator, but they have honestly done a fairly decent job here. They have spent over $100 million to improve mountain infrastructure since the resorts merged, they have substantially increased wages for the lowest earners at their resorts, and they have tried to plan projects to increase the ratio of overnight guests to day trip skiers, the former of whom drive less and cause less congestion than the latter. At the same time, Park City’s anti-growth campaign to “not become the Steamboat” has resulted in average home prices now being higher in Park City than in Steamboat.
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Completely overrunning a town beyond all infrastructure and design is exactly why regulations matter.
While it’s true the residents can’t say “we don’t want Vail”, they can certainly say (and put into policy) regulations that would limit many of the parasitic elements of Vail’s model.
My opinion boiled down; Vail is milking PCMR too hard. It’s featured in east coast marketing. They haven’t expanded or significantly built capacity since… They bought it.
Is that on them or the town? Both. They aren’t a good fit together, even by resort vs town standards. The acquisition felt like some small town shenanigans to begin with. They probably should have bought another Utah resort or actually committed to a massive PCMR development plan beyond the lands and reach of the town. Ala.. their next door neighbors. Or Powder Mtn. Instead they sank their money into small Midwest and east coast mtns, never did much impressive at any of their western resorts, including PCMR, and then acted confused when there wasn’t local cooperation.
So when it comes time for Vail to try to do what they want, they have a solid history of annoying almost every local group, even those that might normally be neutral or supportive. Every move will have every possible regulatory roadblock put up. This shouldn’t shock them. It’s fairly predictable. It’s why you buy Schweitzer, or A-Basin, or even Steamboat or Telluride. The negatives at all of them are manageable and have been managed. At PCMR… Not so much.
And to the house values now being higher because of the local attitude, I’d argue it has a lot more to do with Vail’s marketing and epic pass travellers than locals wishing for housing price increases.
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When Vail bought Canyons in 2013 & PCMR in 2014, those two mountains and Deer Valley combined for ~45% of Utah skier visits. Now, it is ~40%. Overall visitation is up simply because Utah skier visits have exploded. Blaming this fact on Vail is misguided, as the effects of social media, Utah becoming a more prominent force on the national and international winter sports scene, and Utah’s own population booming have all had a larger impact than Vail’s marketing (which also has a much lower budget than Alterra’s despite having more mountains).
The complaint about a lack of capacity is also just not true. PCMR has more skiable acres than any other US resort (not including Pow Mow’s inflated statistics), and this is noticeable when some areas of the resort remain uncrowded during holiday weeks (something that always shocks me). Yes, crowd flow needs to improve to mitigate some of the notorious choke points, but I would argue it has made great strides in recent years with projects like Over and Out and the Sunrise Gondola. In fact, two even larger attempts to improve crowd flow, the Eagle/Silverlode replacement and Vail’s predecessor’s SkiLink idea to have a new portal from BCC, were only not implemented due to public outcry leading to the government blocking the projects!
The town of Park City simply refuses to acknowledge the world it exists in. Permitting has made it almost impossible to build a new ski resort in the US since the 1980s, and there are more skier visits than ever before. Instead of allowing Vail to use its own capital to make improvements to handle these increased crowds, Park City would rather fight every investment in false hopes that the larger crowds descending on the town simply disappear.
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I’m sorry, but $250,000 to reopen Chair 4 at Cuchara? $6,000 max. Government waste. The lift is able to run. It doesn’t need a new drive.
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Did they ever get it connected back up to the electrical grid so that it doesn’t require the Sheriff’s Department generator to run off of?
They are also borrowing snow making and grooming equipment and need some other basics.
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The $250K is investment in economic development, not just revival of an ’80s Riblet.
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$6k? Where do you get this number Mr Halmrast? Do you have lift and / or drive experience? The difference in numbers $250k vs $6k may need a bit more research..?
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This lift had a load test in 2022 to my knowledge and seeing if it ‘did’ pass, I can only assume minor things would need to be updated, but I could totally be wrong. A lot has already been spent on getting this lift up and running and it’s hard to know what else it would need. It has been sitting for a long time, but I don’t think it would need a new drive as it is running.
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That midstation terminal looks mighty impressive!
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