- A ranch in Hawaii scales down its proposed gondola in hopes of allaying community concerns. Even so a State Representative plans to introduce a bill to ban chairlifts and gondolas from ever being constructed in Hawaii.
- A lightning-caused fire burns the drive terminal of Camp 10, Wisconsin’s Red T-Bar.
- Mountain High revives the Discovery lift damaged in a 2024 wildfire.
- Alterra introduces Reserve add-on passes with line cutting privileges and other perks at Big Bear, Blue Mountain, Crystal Mountain, Solitude, Sugarbush and Tremblant.
- Thousands of Crystal skiers aren’t happy about the Reserve Pass.
- Steamboat takes another step toward a detachable base area transit gondola.
- Hermon Mountain, Maine will close after this season if a buyer can’t be found.
- Hickory, New York leaves Indy Pass.
- Skytrac commissions its on-site wind turbine.
- Waterville Valley shares a wild picture of bubble chairs during a fall winds and a T-Bar construction update.
- Deer Valley unveils its 25-26 trail map depicting eight new lifts.
Lift Blog 
Is Pinyon Express no longer a bubble lift? They didn’t use the bubble shape for the lift on the trail map like they did for Keetley.
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Pinyon should still have Bubbles.
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I saw the bubbles in the East Village Parking Lot since June so yes I can confirm
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The Reserve backlash is completely overblown, as we saw this same show occur at Powdr mountains a few years ago. It is purchased by so few that it does not make a noticeable dent in lift lines. Additionally, a Reserve equivalent already exists at the Alterra resorts that did not get this product, namely Mammoth/June (the Black Pass) and Stratton (the Speed Bear Pass), and the lines there are no worse as a result.
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Black Pass is $10,000 and Speed Bear requires you be part of what is effectively a country club. Crystal reserve is $1,500 for the year. Solitude reserve is $700.
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The root of the problem is there’s simply not enough skiing around Seattle for the number of affluent people. Crystal needs more terrain, parking, and lifts. If the reserve helps pay for that then great. I suspect it will not.
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I’ve probly mentioned this in other threads, but Crystal’s problems are largely intractable. There is little to no room for more parking. The terrain footprint is at capacity due to the Park and the Wilderness and the PCT. It appears on the Google machine that there is untapped terrain on the east side of the drainage, but the PCT and its attendant potential litigation kills that, all the way from Three Way to north of East Peak. It’s already been broached, and the PCTA won that pretty easily. (I’ll admit I personally side with the PCTA cos not every square inch of skiable needs to be developed.) That leaves the existing footprint, which has little in the way of additional skiable terrain. The TLC section between Chair 9 and Silver Basin is flat-top into short and really steep, with some deep creek draws, not really worth cutting trees for, and definitely worth leaving trees for those storm days. The Kelly’s Gap zone is small, already skiable, and with some pesky (and historically deadly) cliff zones underneath, which makes encouraging skiers less than exciting. Lower Northway has some space, but it’d be a big infrastructure push unless they just want a flat spot and some port-a-lets and only net at easiest some steep blues. Finally, Old Chair 7, which I personally think would work nicely if the powers that be wanted to invest heavily in snowmaking. Modern grooming alleviates some of the 1970s era reasoning for closing that part of the hill, but it naturally doesn’t hold snow as well due to afternoon sun (yes, it does happen in the Cascades, I swear I’ve seen it once or twice) and its low elevation. Even if they carpet-bombed the whole drainage with every perfectly planned run the SE Group could goad them into having my Pa cut and DJ regrade, there is almost no flat space for parking other than building giant parking garages, and should that be accomplished, there’d still be the problem of sewage under-capacity, which has already been a very stabby thorn for years, even after the new facility was built. Now we’re 30, 40 years out into a very uncertain future, and we haven’t even addressed the 410 situation, which in WA is likely the most intractable situation cos all the minimal funding this Top 10 most regressively-taxed state can muster goes to big, flashy projects in The Sound and that one highway in north Spokane. The state can’t finish those projects, or even repave most highways, let alone expand a rural route that is a dead-end half the year. So, we’re left with buses that need to be driven–due to the state’s unique way of clearing snow in the White River drainage–from Enumclaw or further by fairly-to-very skilled drivers all of whom can make more money driving OTR trucks. Unfortunately, the best-case scenario is the Crystal fad fades and people give up on skiing there, which I recognise is not gonna happen soon, if ever.
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I Love some of the new trail names at Deer Valley! Pay Rock is my favorite 🤘
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Hellcat
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I like all the run names on Revy. Hellcat, Cataract, Non-Descript, Nemesis.
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eh.. trail names don’t mean much but cool lift names are critical!
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Glad they where able to bring back Discovery at mountain high, one of the last lifts left with full Yan Aluminum sheaves. Hoping to get over there and ride it before it inevitably gets removed.
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A ropeway ban? How shortsighted can you get?
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Really liking how Deer Valley’s map could be seamlessly tweaked to include the expansion terrain. Reminds me a bit of how Breck didn’t have to do much work to their 2007-2013 digital trail map when they had to modify it to include the Peak 6 expansion (though this only lasted three years before they had James Niehues create the current map).
Do hope they’ll get that infill high speed quad for Big Dutch Peak built sooner rather than later (maybe alongside opening the Hail Peak lift), as that’s a lot of trails that for the time being can only be lapped via the gondola’s midstation. Plus, that lift will provide a secondary route to Park Peak for those who have an aversion to gondolas. For now at least, those not wanting to use the gondola can ride Keetley and Sultan to the top of Bald Mountain, then ski down Homeward Bound to Green Monster (to get down to the blues that can be lapped by Vulcan), or ski Homeward Bound over to Pinyon, and ride Pinyon to the top of Park Peak (to access Revelator’s trails and the handful of trails that are designed to be lapped using Vulcan and Revelator in tandem).
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