- Several rope evacs this week – Heavenly, Mt. Baker, Snoqualmie and Maple Ski Ridge, New York.
- Sadly also two fatal falls from lifts at Cypress Mountain, BC and Ski Apache, New Mexico.
- A death at Timberline Mountain, West Virginia last week is also revealed as a chairlift fall.
- Levi, Finland signs on to the Indy Pass.
- Facing a large insurance payment in a few weeks, Camp 10, Wisconsin could close without community support.
- An update on the soon-to-open new T-Bar at Waterville Valley.
- A Doppelmayr gondola is proposed in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.
- Doppelmayr could also build a sightseeing gondola in Butte, Montana.
- Leitner-Poma is expected to supply the first lift for the Trails at Mena in Arkansas this summer.
- Doppelmayr and Leitner split an order for urban gondolas in Queenstown, New Zealand.
- Cannon Mountain continues structural analysis on the recently-retired aerial tram with a May target to solicit bids from manufacturers for replacement reusing tower and terminal structures (starts at 18:00.)
- A new map shows where the Showcase quad will run on Blackcomb Mountain.
- The brand new urban gondola in Paris is already carrying 12,500 riders per day, 14 percent more than forecast, and a second line is under consideration.
- During the Telluride strike, an entity controlled by local elected officials proposed buying a majority stake in Telski.
- Chris Cushing of SE Group discusses designing 100 new trails and 10 new lifts at Deer Valley.
- The North chair to reopen soon at Snow Ridge, NY after a year closed due to tornado damage.
- A look into the world of restoring gondola cabins instead of replacing them or an entire lift.
- Early season visits to Vail Resorts North American mountains declined 20 percent through January 4th compared to a year earlier.
- Update: An empty chair detached from Shedhorn 4 at Big Sky today. I’m told a grip did not attach properly leaving the bottom teminal. The empty chair ended up in the pit. Statement from Big Sky Resort: “Around 2:45pm today on Shedhorn 4 lift, a grip failed to reattach to the haul rope while exiting the bottom terminal. The chair was unoccupied at the time, and the lift’s automatic safety system immediately stopped operation. The team acted quickly to offload all remaining guests from the lift. Shedhorn 4 will remain closed while we thoroughly inspect every grip before reopening. We appreciate your patience as safety remains our top priority.“
Lift Blog 
Deer Valley’s gonna be a small country soon here
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I’m still shocked how many people die or are severely injured by fall from chairs in North American. While it does happen in Europe, it’s a very rare occurrence.
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It seems to be a cultural issue. In Europe and in the Northeast US, using the safety bar (and even having a safety bar on a lift) is completely ingrained in the culture (and is the law in some places). If anything I’d say the Western US has a strong anti safety bar culture (which my Upstate NY and Vermont raised brain struggles to comprehend, it’s more comfortable). Exactly to what degree this affects the overall numbers I don’t know.
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I know of one accident this month. The father opened up the restraining bar to soon and his son fell out. The boy went to the hospital on a helicopter. I lean toward the side that the standard rider operated restraining bars don’t make the lifts any safer. (obviously there are many opinions on this subject) The newer European automatic closing and opening restraining bars make for a safer ride.
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It appears that all 3 lifts where recent falls resulted in deaths had restraining bars. So proper use is key and pretty much impossible to enforce in the USA. Also there are no real restraining bar design standards in ANSI. In the European standard there are several specific dimensions that have to be followed.
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in the west, even if you convince the other lift passengers to lower a safety bar they will be itching to raise it three towers from the top. I think it’s either misguided machismo or just plain ignorance
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We used to have issued with too soon opened bars in Europe too. Austria now has magic signs that based on the angle show ‘keep closed’ / ‘open now’ based on the viewing angle. The open now shows far too late even for my fairly conservation preferences, though.
I’d be really curious if we there were any statistics on how common these types of incidents are in different Countries, or based on the above even regions. My Northeast skiing is so limited that I don’t really remember the bar discipline there. But I do have a Californian friend who always gets furious when someone closes the bar, which feels quite silly.
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Update from Big Sky on Shedhorn below. I’m told a grip did not to attach properly leaving the bottom teminal. The empty chair ended up in the pit.
“Around 2:45pm today on Shedhorn 4 lift, a grip failed to reattach to the haul rope while exiting the bottom terminal. The chair was unoccupied at the time, and the lift’s automatic safety system immediately stopped operation. The team acted quickly to offload all remaining guests from the lift. Shedhorn 4 will remain closed while we thoroughly inspect every grip before reopening. We appreciate your patience as safety remains our top priority.”
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Again? This happened last year too
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scratch that. It happened 2 years ago
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I see a trend 🤔
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This seems to be a pattern since both incidents are grip related, and its making me wonder what the thoughts are for the Shedhorn lift going forward. It was already 27 years old when it got relocated from Ramcharger, and now it is 35 with 2 separate grip incidents in the last few years. It was refurbished, but I know it didn’t get the same type of extensive rebuild as some of the more recent HSQ relocations Boyne has completed. At this point I wonder what the plan is and if this is starting to be seen as a failed experiment where they tried to push a lift too long and relocated it too late in its lifespan
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https://liftblog.com/2025/03/20/report-sheds-light-on-december-chair-collision-at-heavenly/
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My take is that it really seems like the mid 90s detachables (UNI Spacejet, 2nd gen Challenger, Stealth 2) are just way more reliable machines than their predecessors, and last way longer. I’m not qualified to state this outright but my impression is that the late 90s dopp HSQs are very similar to the standard HSQs being pumped out today in the NA market. They were incredible machines for their time.
Everything UNI, Competition or earlier seems unreliable and especially bad if it still runs with chains. I think Boyne has done very well relocating old detachables but Shedhorn seems like a lesson learned.
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@the skier, I feel this seems to be an issue specific to one lift. There are probably over a hundred lifts with DS grips operating in North America alone, and few of them had problems with their grips detaching. Perhaps it’s the resort’s maintenance of this specific lift, or the grips are just getting old and need to be replaced. Maybe the lift would be safer if Doppelmayr replaced all the grips on Shedhorn? It’s not just about the relocations, just that these lifts are older and need more overhauled parts and maintenance to be practical.
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