49 Degrees North was started by the same family that operated the Chewelah Peak Ski area, I grew up 1 mile from 49 and down the road you can still hike the old Ringer Lift line and some tower bases and the top counterweight system is grounded but still there.
Fully a Monday morning quarterback here, but I had a thought reading over the blog.
Instead of a base-to-summit detachable to eventually replace C-1 as is discussed elsewhere on here, with its associated cost, why not go the Mt Baker or Red Mountain all-fixed-grip route and replace both C-1 and C-2 with new fixed-grip quads. The new C-1 quad would start at the current mid-load, much like how Red cut Motherlode in half when they installed Silverlode.
To me this makes sense for the same reason there is the mid-load on C-1: the abrupt transition from advanced terrain to mild intermediate terrain at that point on the mountain. At current prices both could be built for less than one HSQ. Ride times on each would be just fine, like the relatively short lifts at Baker (and unlike C-2 at Mission Ridge, which got and is getting another HSQ).
I’d be more of a fan of the base to summit HSQ in this case. It would take less time to ride than a Fixed Grip C2, and there’s a blue trail pretty much directly connecting the summit to the top of C2 and there’s other decent blue terrain near the top. This is unlike Red where from the top you either have to drop a double black or loop around the entire mountain on a traverse.
A base to summit hsq would also cut operational costs because they wouldn’t have to run C2 or C4 unless it was crowded.
The only thing that wouldn’t work in that model is that C4 starts down in a pit and serves most all of the west side of the moutain, it runs most every day, and the only other way out is skating/hiking back to the bunny slope or nowadays the carpet and back to C1, C4 is a critical lift. And on the base to summit HSQ………. just about everyone that skis 49N thinks this is the best way to go! C1 is long at 6,650ft, and even if it ran full 515 (it usually runs 490-500 to reduce slowdowns, which happen anyway) it’s still a 13 min ride. Not to mention SLI parts are getting harder to come by C1 could donate a TON of parts to keep C2 & C3 running.
I hope they do replace chair 1 soon. I could spend the rest of my life lapping ridge run but when I read that a carrier fell off the rope a couple years ago I had to say no thanks
I was at 49N yesterday. The liftline for the high speed quad has been staked out. It will be just to the west of the current Chair 1 lift line, and end at the very top of the Chewelah Peak (as opposed to just north of it, where the current SLI ends). I was also told that the current lift won’t immediately be removed (will likely be removed after a year though).
I’ve seen the concept art of the new UNI-G Doppelmayr detachable quad through the ads 49 Degrees North has put on social media, as well as on a billboard in Spokane.
The concept art for the new lift is comedic to me. The skiers waiting to load on the chair are so low, the chair would simply hit them on the head, not to mention they’re standing in the area where the chairs would accelerate to full speed out of the bottom terminal.
The lack of a lift shack, controls, or even an operator to staff the incredibly tall bottom terminal and watch skiers and snowboarders get slammed in the head by the chairs hanging five feet in the air is the icing on the cake! Plus the chair seats are shaped like feed troughs for livestock lol
Concept art aside, I am HEAVILY hyped and can’t wait to visit 49 next season and get some rapid laps in on their long runs!
I was saying the same things to some of my friends, it was making me uncomfortably mad on just how inaccurate then art was. The perks of knowing a lot about chairlifts…
Also, as someone that has skied 49 multiple times, that’s not even how the mountain under chair 1 is. Right after the bottom terminal there is the end of a terrain park, it it stays relatively flat until the old mid station. However, they did get everything pas the mid station correct.
Apparently the new detachable quad will not have “Bonanza” in the name according to one of the comments 49 Degrees North made on Instagram. So it won’t be “Bonanza Express”, but they’ll reveal the name of the new lift soon.
Yes, the new lift is a top drive that has a whopping 900HP, 19 towers compared to the 31 of the old lift (33 if you count 16A & 16B at the midstation), and at 1,000fpm will result in a 6:36 ride opposed to the 13:28 of the old lift without slows or stops, which as many 49N regulars know, is/was quite rare! It has Agamatic/AG-104 grips, and the child friendly restraint bars due to the large amount of families that are known to visit the ski area. This is truly an amazing addition to the mountain.
So incredibly exciting!!! Can’t wait to ride this thing as soon as it opens, I plan to go on opening day. It’s gonna be amazing seeing this lift that I’ve viewed the construction on almost since day one.
Went to 49 Degrees North for their opening day of the 2021-2022 season! Northern Spirit is absolutely amazing! I’m shocked by how quiet it is for being an 800 horsepower, mile and a quarter long beast, and when I visited today they were running it at full speed too! The base area is way quieter now compared to the days of Bonanza running, but even the drive terminal at the top is way quieter than Bonanza’s… It’s amazing and honestly kinda funny that Northern Spirit despite being way larger, stronger and faster than its fixed grip double predecessor, manages to make only a fraction of the noise.
I remember hearing Bonanza all the way down in the parking lot, it was way louder than Grubstake and Payday since it was faster and longer with plenty more horsepower than the other two. I’ll kind of miss that iconic engine grumble, although Northern Spirit makes for a much more peaceful ambiance! I wonder what 49’s plans are when they remove that absolutely massive classic SLI double that is Bonanza… Keep it for parts? Scrap it? Sell it off to another ski resort? Sell the chairs and scrap the rest?
I’m heavily enjoying the growth 49 Degrees North keeps making! Go back 16 years, there was no Sunrise Basin lift, parking lot and mini base area, no lift up Angel Peak, certainly less runs off of Angel Peak, and no bottom to top high speed quad! I also saw when I was there that they cleared out some trees and an old staircase and flattened the area to prepare for an additional building at the main base area!
They also cut additional trails off of Beaver Slide, and I have a feeling they did this so that Beaver Slide wouldn’t be a green that leads to only black diamonds, now that there is no longer a midstation with the decommissioning of Bonanza.
But Northern Spirit definitely lives up to the hype – it’s smooth, comfortable, and travels that very long distance hastily, you can get a lot more of those long 49N cruisers and steeps in a day, if your legs can keep up!
Bonanza is being removed this spring, tower assemblies & sheaves will be the main components kept and saved for the other SLI’s. The towers will be scrapped, the bullwheels are slightly larger ling gauge than the next biggest SLI there (chair 2/Grubstake) & considerably wider in gauge than chair 3/Payday’s bullwheels. I think the chairs will be sold as they’re not compatible with the other two SLI’s (Bonanza’s are adapted for Riblet clips) though I am not entirely sure if they will or not. as for the electric motor, AUX diesel, and gearbox, I am not sure what will become of them. The rope will be completely scrapped, as will the clips (they’re slightly larger than Silverlode’s clips due to it being a larger rope). Part of me will definitely miss the old lift as I not only grew up skiing off it, I also learned a large portion of my lift mechanic skills on this lift, it holds a lot of memories, but it’ll be 50 years old this year & has carried 49N from the beginning, it’s a well earned retirement. We absolutely love the Northern Spirit Express, and the plan is to run it rather fast most all days, as a driving factor in the purchase in addition to reliability and availability of parts, was ride time. I’m super excited to see it received so well and look forward to seeing how much it does for 49N! Also the view from the summit in the morning when we go to start it up is flat out amazing.
I feel like 49 is in a really good place right now; Northern Spirit Express does a great job of handling crowds (though the mountain never feels crowded due to its acreage), the runs are well-groomed, the views to all the surrounding mountain ranges are superb, and the culture remains friendly and welcoming despite the growth that has been coming to the Spokane area since the pandemic.
Still though, I think it would be a terrific step forward for the mountain if they were able to expand a bit into steeper terrain and claim the mantle of having the most acreage of any ski area in Washington.
The best way to do this would be to install a chairlift and create a new terrain pod directly NW of the top of the Angel Peak chairlift. That area has steeper terrain than ~90% of the current ski area, which would help to dispel the idea that 49 is “flat and boring,” and I’m imagining that it would ski similarly to the Northstar chairlift at Lookout Pass (i.e. nicely steep terrain, heavy timber, and a NNW slope aspect that is super beneficial for snow quality. The bottom of the lift should be at around 4k ft elevation to balance vertical drop with reliable snowfall, and this terrain would entirely be located within the Colville National Forest (which is known to be pro-logging, so I don’t think regulatory/environmental approval would be a herculean task). A lift also served this terrain decades ago.
Lift Blog 
For those curious, 49 Degrees North never had a Ringer chairlift. That chairlift was located just down the road at Chewelah Peak Ski Area.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B018'07.2%22N+117%C2%B036'43.2%22W/@48.2969603,-117.6110603,1733m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d48.302!4d-117.612
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From what I understand, the Ringer at Chewelah Peak was the first Ringer ever built (the company built 8 of them in North America). Just for fun, here is a Ringer lift in Germany that’s still operational.
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tsf2-hornelebahn-5733.html
Here’s the Ringer at Chewelah Peak.
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49 Degrees North was started by the same family that operated the Chewelah Peak Ski area, I grew up 1 mile from 49 and down the road you can still hike the old Ringer Lift line and some tower bases and the top counterweight system is grounded but still there.
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always wondered what those concrete blocks behind Angel Peak were.
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Fully a Monday morning quarterback here, but I had a thought reading over the blog.
Instead of a base-to-summit detachable to eventually replace C-1 as is discussed elsewhere on here, with its associated cost, why not go the Mt Baker or Red Mountain all-fixed-grip route and replace both C-1 and C-2 with new fixed-grip quads. The new C-1 quad would start at the current mid-load, much like how Red cut Motherlode in half when they installed Silverlode.
To me this makes sense for the same reason there is the mid-load on C-1: the abrupt transition from advanced terrain to mild intermediate terrain at that point on the mountain. At current prices both could be built for less than one HSQ. Ride times on each would be just fine, like the relatively short lifts at Baker (and unlike C-2 at Mission Ridge, which got and is getting another HSQ).
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That is a really interesting idea. Perhaps emailing the management of 49* North wouldn’t be a bad idea.
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I’d be more of a fan of the base to summit HSQ in this case. It would take less time to ride than a Fixed Grip C2, and there’s a blue trail pretty much directly connecting the summit to the top of C2 and there’s other decent blue terrain near the top. This is unlike Red where from the top you either have to drop a double black or loop around the entire mountain on a traverse.
A base to summit hsq would also cut operational costs because they wouldn’t have to run C2 or C4 unless it was crowded.
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The only thing that wouldn’t work in that model is that C4 starts down in a pit and serves most all of the west side of the moutain, it runs most every day, and the only other way out is skating/hiking back to the bunny slope or nowadays the carpet and back to C1, C4 is a critical lift. And on the base to summit HSQ………. just about everyone that skis 49N thinks this is the best way to go! C1 is long at 6,650ft, and even if it ran full 515 (it usually runs 490-500 to reduce slowdowns, which happen anyway) it’s still a 13 min ride. Not to mention SLI parts are getting harder to come by C1 could donate a TON of parts to keep C2 & C3 running.
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I hope they do replace chair 1 soon. I could spend the rest of my life lapping ridge run but when I read that a carrier fell off the rope a couple years ago I had to say no thanks
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I was at 49N yesterday. The liftline for the high speed quad has been staked out. It will be just to the west of the current Chair 1 lift line, and end at the very top of the Chewelah Peak (as opposed to just north of it, where the current SLI ends). I was also told that the current lift won’t immediately be removed (will likely be removed after a year though).
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Well guys, it’s happening, C1 is being replaced with a brand new high speed quad.
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For those not in the know, chair 1 is being replace by a Uni G (according to concept art.) The old chair 1 ride is the most grueling thing ever.
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Finally!
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I’ve seen the concept art of the new UNI-G Doppelmayr detachable quad through the ads 49 Degrees North has put on social media, as well as on a billboard in Spokane.
The concept art for the new lift is comedic to me. The skiers waiting to load on the chair are so low, the chair would simply hit them on the head, not to mention they’re standing in the area where the chairs would accelerate to full speed out of the bottom terminal.
The lack of a lift shack, controls, or even an operator to staff the incredibly tall bottom terminal and watch skiers and snowboarders get slammed in the head by the chairs hanging five feet in the air is the icing on the cake! Plus the chair seats are shaped like feed troughs for livestock lol
Concept art aside, I am HEAVILY hyped and can’t wait to visit 49 next season and get some rapid laps in on their long runs!
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I was saying the same things to some of my friends, it was making me uncomfortably mad on just how inaccurate then art was. The perks of knowing a lot about chairlifts…
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The art doesn’t even show EJ chairs!
https://www.ski49n.com/mountain-news/details/new-chairlift-project
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Also, as someone that has skied 49 multiple times, that’s not even how the mountain under chair 1 is. Right after the bottom terminal there is the end of a terrain park, it it stays relatively flat until the old mid station. However, they did get everything pas the mid station correct.
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Apparently the new detachable quad will not have “Bonanza” in the name according to one of the comments 49 Degrees North made on Instagram. So it won’t be “Bonanza Express”, but they’ll reveal the name of the new lift soon.
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It’s called Northern Spirit & the existing SLI has been denoted to lift 8. It’ll be completely removed spring/summer of 22’
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This is so great to hear Ben, thanks.
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Some great photos on 49’s social media of the new lift.
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Also, Ben can correct me, but from what I’ve heard, the lift is going to be a top drive, which will be so nice ambience-wise at the base area.
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Yes, the new lift is a top drive that has a whopping 900HP, 19 towers compared to the 31 of the old lift (33 if you count 16A & 16B at the midstation), and at 1,000fpm will result in a 6:36 ride opposed to the 13:28 of the old lift without slows or stops, which as many 49N regulars know, is/was quite rare! It has Agamatic/AG-104 grips, and the child friendly restraint bars due to the large amount of families that are known to visit the ski area. This is truly an amazing addition to the mountain.
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How many chairs?
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116 chairs if I remember correctly
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Noticed that Northern Spirit has been put under “operating”, are there any chairs on the line yet?
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If you look at the webcams, you’ll see they are indeed on the line, very, very cool to see. https://ski49n.com/mountain-info/webcams
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So incredibly exciting!!! Can’t wait to ride this thing as soon as it opens, I plan to go on opening day. It’s gonna be amazing seeing this lift that I’ve viewed the construction on almost since day one.
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That’s my plan too, it’ll be nice to return.
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Went to 49 Degrees North for their opening day of the 2021-2022 season! Northern Spirit is absolutely amazing! I’m shocked by how quiet it is for being an 800 horsepower, mile and a quarter long beast, and when I visited today they were running it at full speed too! The base area is way quieter now compared to the days of Bonanza running, but even the drive terminal at the top is way quieter than Bonanza’s… It’s amazing and honestly kinda funny that Northern Spirit despite being way larger, stronger and faster than its fixed grip double predecessor, manages to make only a fraction of the noise.
I remember hearing Bonanza all the way down in the parking lot, it was way louder than Grubstake and Payday since it was faster and longer with plenty more horsepower than the other two. I’ll kind of miss that iconic engine grumble, although Northern Spirit makes for a much more peaceful ambiance! I wonder what 49’s plans are when they remove that absolutely massive classic SLI double that is Bonanza… Keep it for parts? Scrap it? Sell it off to another ski resort? Sell the chairs and scrap the rest?
I’m heavily enjoying the growth 49 Degrees North keeps making! Go back 16 years, there was no Sunrise Basin lift, parking lot and mini base area, no lift up Angel Peak, certainly less runs off of Angel Peak, and no bottom to top high speed quad! I also saw when I was there that they cleared out some trees and an old staircase and flattened the area to prepare for an additional building at the main base area!
They also cut additional trails off of Beaver Slide, and I have a feeling they did this so that Beaver Slide wouldn’t be a green that leads to only black diamonds, now that there is no longer a midstation with the decommissioning of Bonanza.
But Northern Spirit definitely lives up to the hype – it’s smooth, comfortable, and travels that very long distance hastily, you can get a lot more of those long 49N cruisers and steeps in a day, if your legs can keep up!
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Bonanza is being removed this spring, tower assemblies & sheaves will be the main components kept and saved for the other SLI’s. The towers will be scrapped, the bullwheels are slightly larger ling gauge than the next biggest SLI there (chair 2/Grubstake) & considerably wider in gauge than chair 3/Payday’s bullwheels. I think the chairs will be sold as they’re not compatible with the other two SLI’s (Bonanza’s are adapted for Riblet clips) though I am not entirely sure if they will or not. as for the electric motor, AUX diesel, and gearbox, I am not sure what will become of them. The rope will be completely scrapped, as will the clips (they’re slightly larger than Silverlode’s clips due to it being a larger rope). Part of me will definitely miss the old lift as I not only grew up skiing off it, I also learned a large portion of my lift mechanic skills on this lift, it holds a lot of memories, but it’ll be 50 years old this year & has carried 49N from the beginning, it’s a well earned retirement. We absolutely love the Northern Spirit Express, and the plan is to run it rather fast most all days, as a driving factor in the purchase in addition to reliability and availability of parts, was ride time. I’m super excited to see it received so well and look forward to seeing how much it does for 49N! Also the view from the summit in the morning when we go to start it up is flat out amazing.
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The Ringer chair was removed in 1968 with the demolition of the Chewelah Peak ski area
Pic of Chair
https://repository.mines.edu/bitstream/handle/11124/9473/R1199.jpg?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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The old ringer:
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I feel like 49 is in a really good place right now; Northern Spirit Express does a great job of handling crowds (though the mountain never feels crowded due to its acreage), the runs are well-groomed, the views to all the surrounding mountain ranges are superb, and the culture remains friendly and welcoming despite the growth that has been coming to the Spokane area since the pandemic.
Still though, I think it would be a terrific step forward for the mountain if they were able to expand a bit into steeper terrain and claim the mantle of having the most acreage of any ski area in Washington.
The best way to do this would be to install a chairlift and create a new terrain pod directly NW of the top of the Angel Peak chairlift. That area has steeper terrain than ~90% of the current ski area, which would help to dispel the idea that 49 is “flat and boring,” and I’m imagining that it would ski similarly to the Northstar chairlift at Lookout Pass (i.e. nicely steep terrain, heavy timber, and a NNW slope aspect that is super beneficial for snow quality. The bottom of the lift should be at around 4k ft elevation to balance vertical drop with reliable snowfall, and this terrain would entirely be located within the Colville National Forest (which is known to be pro-logging, so I don’t think regulatory/environmental approval would be a herculean task). A lift also served this terrain decades ago.
Thoughts? I hope this can eventually happen.
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