Leitner-Poma won the bidding to replace both lifts out of Copper’s Center Village in 2018.American Eagle is a combination six place chairlift and eight place gondola.Long LPA terminal with three masts.Lift overview.Operator house at the return.Gondola loading zone.View back down the lift line.Arriving at the drive terminal.There is a small cabin/chair maintenance building.Gondolas unload on the downhill side of the top terminal.This was the very first in North America with a direct drive. Three others opened within a few weeks.Side view of the top terminal.Upper terminal seen from below.Towers 19 and 20 with Storm King visible in the background.View up the lift line.Lower part of the lift.Another view up the long lift line.The bottom terminal in the village.Gondola maze area.Towers 1 and 2.A Sigma Diamond cabin.A cabin nears the lower station.Riding up the line.Upper station overview.Huge generator for backup electricity.Wooden under skin.Tower 19 and both carrier styles.View down the line.Middle section of the lift.Lower lift line view.Looking uphill at tower 10.There are special rollers on the inside of the cabins to keep them level in the chair load/unload zones.Combo assemblies on tower 8.Another view up the lift.Tower 6.There are four chairs for every one cabin.Lower terminal seen from above.Because the gondola section runs slower than the rest of the terminal, chairs appear to stack up.Ski racks on a cabin.View from the drive terminal.The upper station seen from above.Another view of the drive station.Tower 12.Side view of the return with its sister lift in the background.The lift line seen from I-70.
There are four fewer towers on the chondola than there were on the high speed quad, 20 towers instead of 24. And yeah, that line sag is pretty large since tower 8 on the quad was about halfway between the current chondola’s towers 7 and 8:
You also see this with the final climb, as the span between towers 14 and 15 covers what was originally handled by two combi towers, towers 17 and 18:
I’ve noticed a ton of sag in every large L-P detachable lift I’ve ridden that was built in the last 8ish years. I’ve never seen a Doppelmayr detachable (ever) with that much sag. I’ve seen long spans on Doppelmayrs, but never that much sag. All of L-P’s bubble chairs in the east have the same sag as AMEagle, and I don’t think it’s just stretch in the haul rope because all 3 of them have been like that since they opened.
it doesn’t have anywhere near as much as Sunburst, Bluebird, Snowdon, Eagle, and Flyer. Every comparable lift build by Doppelmayr has considerably less sag.
American Flyer had a rather large amount of sag in some parts of the lift line for the first year due to the weight of the bubble chairs. Two points were so problematic that they added infill towers this year between towers 16 and 17, and between towers 22 and 23.
Both times I’ve been to copper with this lift built, it went down for mechanical issues. The problem is is backs up the flyer real badly. It was pretty bad last time because it was a super busy ikon base pass blackout date(copper is one of the few places in Colorado that doesn’t have blackout dates). The bright side of that is I got the Excellerator lift to myself!
Copper’s Master Plan from 2011 called for an infill lift that would allow someone to get from American Flyer and points west to Solitude Station without using American Eagle, bypassing the Center Village.
One thing I forgot to mention is that American Eagle has some issues on the 6 chairside. The lift operators make people load 3 chairs instead of 4 because there is a problem with the sensor.
Btw the Inline loading for Flyer kind of helped, but it still stops a lot though. They left the bubbles outside on the line and they had frost all over them.
I saw some bad stuff happen at the base of the flyer. A kid getting launched off the thing right when he got on somehow. A ski patrol getting hit by a chair trying to get across to the other side and getting pinned to the ground, and just beginners not knowing how to ski and falling.
Solitude construction was suspended this summer, part of the fallout from losing five weeks of the season. It will resume next summer, with a new goal date of 2022. While it is being finished the Eagle will not open during the summer.
I think they are still building it as they only operated woodward express this summer, and I believe they plan to operate american eagle in the summer in the future
Fun, errr, not-so-fun-fact about this lift: a cabin fell off the line during testing. A worker was sloppy and left a piece of metal from the construction process where it fell and got stuck in the grip, preventing it from attaching properly.
Considering it ruined a cabin which costs 10s of thousands of dollars, it was for someone. I’m guessing LPA picked up the tab on it but it definitely was a pricey mistake.
The hangar arms on the chairs are much longer than on other LPA lifts, and I’m pretty sure this has to do with the fact that the chair load and unload areas have to be designed such that gondola cabins aren’t making contact with the ramps. It’s noticeable when doing a direct side-by-side between the American Eagle’s chairs and the chairs on any of the other LPA six packs on the I-70 corridors, even the chairs on the American Flyer….
Yes. The mound you see unloading from the present lift is the old terminal footer/grip building foundation. Slopes broke up and hauled off the original P-1 footer, but the P-2/P-3 shared footer is pretty big and is still there- just buried. We might get rid of it at some point in the future but it’s not really in the way.
The information board outside the loading area says that the capacity for each cabin is 6 people, but inside a Sigma sticker shows that maximum is 8. Does anyone know why this is?
Yes. We’ve found that it’s not impossible, but very difficult to load eight people in the time/distance we have between door opening and closing. Think of our cabins as roomy six-passengers instead :)
The yellow ones are automatic. The mid 20teens ones such as on our sunburst are stainless steel and manual. They are fairly heavy and awkward as it requires getting it in a slot.
This lift feels honestly a little excessive. I don’t see any reasons for CM to make this a Chondola. There is no beginner terrain, or any attractions at the top, so why didn’t Copper just go with a six-pack?
If our brand-new, multi-million-dollar midmountain lodge isn’t an attraction I don’t know what is. We have constant non-skier traffic up the gondola side. Non-skiers love it because they can join their skiing family members on the hill for lunch. We also run dinners up there and a gondola cabin is much better for night rides, as cold as it gets up here.
Lift Blog 
So are there 120 chairs and cabins overall on the lift. How many of those are cabins?
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24… one cabin for every 4 chairs
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Do the math 120 chairs, 1 cabin per 4 chairs.
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There was one thing I noticed when I rode American eagle is the line sag between tower 7 & 8. Is the sag suppose to be normal or not?
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There are four fewer towers on the chondola than there were on the high speed quad, 20 towers instead of 24. And yeah, that line sag is pretty large since tower 8 on the quad was about halfway between the current chondola’s towers 7 and 8:
You also see this with the final climb, as the span between towers 14 and 15 covers what was originally handled by two combi towers, towers 17 and 18:
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I’ve noticed a ton of sag in every large L-P detachable lift I’ve ridden that was built in the last 8ish years. I’ve never seen a Doppelmayr detachable (ever) with that much sag. I’ve seen long spans on Doppelmayrs, but never that much sag. All of L-P’s bubble chairs in the east have the same sag as AMEagle, and I don’t think it’s just stretch in the haul rope because all 3 of them have been like that since they opened.
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Ramcharger 8 has a decent amount of sag
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it doesn’t have anywhere near as much as Sunburst, Bluebird, Snowdon, Eagle, and Flyer. Every comparable lift build by Doppelmayr has considerably less sag.
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American Flyer had a rather large amount of sag in some parts of the lift line for the first year due to the weight of the bubble chairs. Two points were so problematic that they added infill towers this year between towers 16 and 17, and between towers 22 and 23.
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Ram charger has bubbles too. Not only that, but it has 8 person carriers, which ought to be heavier than 6 place ones!
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The Eagle’s profile is such that it doesn’t really need the extra towers. 8 on the old lift in particular was fairly neutral.
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Both times I’ve been to copper with this lift built, it went down for mechanical issues. The problem is is backs up the flyer real badly. It was pretty bad last time because it was a super busy ikon base pass blackout date(copper is one of the few places in Colorado that doesn’t have blackout dates). The bright side of that is I got the Excellerator lift to myself!
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And not to mention even with inline loading, the flyer still stops a lot.
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Copper’s Master Plan from 2011 called for an infill lift that would allow someone to get from American Flyer and points west to Solitude Station without using American Eagle, bypassing the Center Village.
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One thing I forgot to mention is that American Eagle has some issues on the 6 chairside. The lift operators make people load 3 chairs instead of 4 because there is a problem with the sensor.
Btw the Inline loading for Flyer kind of helped, but it still stops a lot though. They left the bubbles outside on the line and they had frost all over them.
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I saw some bad stuff happen at the base of the flyer. A kid getting launched off the thing right when he got on somehow. A ski patrol getting hit by a chair trying to get across to the other side and getting pinned to the ground, and just beginners not knowing how to ski and falling.
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I assume a lot of those things are things that are more attributable to human error than to the lift itself.
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Bubbles do have frost on them on occasion. It’s not worth taking the Bubbles off every night just to keep frost off them
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does anyone know if they will complete the new solitude station building for the next ski season, or has that been delayed for covid related reasons
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Solitude construction was suspended this summer, part of the fallout from losing five weeks of the season. It will resume next summer, with a new goal date of 2022. While it is being finished the Eagle will not open during the summer.
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Where was the original Solitude Station? It’s not visible in any of these pictures
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It was further downhill from where the Aerie is now, right across the skiway from the bottom of E-lift.
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I think they are still building it as they only operated woodward express this summer, and I believe they plan to operate american eagle in the summer in the future
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Fun, errr, not-so-fun-fact about this lift: a cabin fell off the line during testing. A worker was sloppy and left a piece of metal from the construction process where it fell and got stuck in the grip, preventing it from attaching properly.
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Yeah it really wasn’t a big deal.
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Considering it ruined a cabin which costs 10s of thousands of dollars, it was for someone. I’m guessing LPA picked up the tab on it but it definitely was a pricey mistake.
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The hangar arms on the chairs are much longer than on other LPA lifts, and I’m pretty sure this has to do with the fact that the chair load and unload areas have to be designed such that gondola cabins aren’t making contact with the ramps. It’s noticeable when doing a direct side-by-side between the American Eagle’s chairs and the chairs on any of the other LPA six packs on the I-70 corridors, even the chairs on the American Flyer….
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They’ve actually installed little metal steps on the hanger arms to help patrollers climb down the longer arms in a rescue.
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Video includes full rides on both the American Eagle and American Flyer, with the Eagle first and Flyer second.
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Was the top terminal moved downhill a bit when it was replaced?
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Where the chair offload ramp is presently is about where tower 24 was on the old lift.
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Yes. The mound you see unloading from the present lift is the old terminal footer/grip building foundation. Slopes broke up and hauled off the original P-1 footer, but the P-2/P-3 shared footer is pretty big and is still there- just buried. We might get rid of it at some point in the future but it’s not really in the way.
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The information board outside the loading area says that the capacity for each cabin is 6 people, but inside a Sigma sticker shows that maximum is 8. Does anyone know why this is?
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Yes. We’ve found that it’s not impossible, but very difficult to load eight people in the time/distance we have between door opening and closing. Think of our cabins as roomy six-passengers instead :)
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What are those yellow things in the terminals?
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Those are the weather doors.
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Those are weather doors for protecting the interior components of the terminals. They’re common on new LPA and Doppelmayr detachables.
Here’s Doppelmayr’s equivalent:
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The yellow ones are automatic. The mid 20teens ones such as on our sunburst are stainless steel and manual. They are fairly heavy and awkward as it requires getting it in a slot.
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This lift feels honestly a little excessive. I don’t see any reasons for CM to make this a Chondola. There is no beginner terrain, or any attractions at the top, so why didn’t Copper just go with a six-pack?
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The gondola cabins are for the benefit of foot traffic to Solitude Station.
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If our brand-new, multi-million-dollar midmountain lodge isn’t an attraction I don’t know what is. We have constant non-skier traffic up the gondola side. Non-skiers love it because they can join their skiing family members on the hill for lunch. We also run dinners up there and a gondola cabin is much better for night rides, as cold as it gets up here.
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Would this and American Flyer have been D-Lines if Doppelmayr won the bidding?
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No. If we had gone with the Austrians we would have built a couple of Uni-Gs with A grips, same as our existing H and K lifts.
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The gondola loading area looks pretty short. Are the gondolas difficult to load?
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I mention it several posts above, but sorta. We load six instead of eight.
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What’s interesting is in the summer they only put bike carriers on every 10th chair. Winter Park does every other chair.
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Super small thing, but it looks like the Leinter Poma logos on the terminal are 3d instead of decals.
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