Author: Peter Landsman

North America’s Declining Lift Industry

Peter Landsman1 Comment

I thought it would be interesting to do a statistical analysis of the types of lifts built over time in the US and Canada and see what lifts tend to still be operating today.  I previously looked at the average age of lifts in different regions of the US and Canada and found that most lifts operating today are more than 25 years old.  The statistics below will show why.

Fixed Grip Chairlifts Built by Type, 1958-2014
Fixed Grip Chairlifts Built by Type, 1958-2014

First I looked at fixed-grip chairlifts.  I was surprised just how long ago double chairlift construction peaked – way back in 1971, when 146 double lifts were built in a single summer.  That’s equal to all lifts built in North America over the past five years.  Triple chairlift construction peaked in 1984 at 58.  Just four years later, the most quad chairlifts were built – 36 in 1988.  I would have guessed this to be much later.  Since 1988, quad and triple chair construction has remained relatively constant and equal with almost no double chairs built.

Detachable Lifts Built by Type, 1963-2014
Detachable Lifts Built by Type, 1963-2014

On the detachable side, the number of gondolas built each year remains fairly steady, usually under five per year.  Of the 473 high speed quads built to date, most went in between 1986 and 2007.  Detach quads peaked in 1998, when 32 were built in one summer.  Six packs peaked two years later but have always been less popular than quads.  Last summer was the worst year for detachable construction since the technology was invented; just eight were built in all of the US and Canada.  2015 will be better with at least 16 being built right now.

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Work Begins on Jackson Hole’s Teton Lift

Peter Landsman3 Comments
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The view into Grand Teton National Park from the top of Jackson Hole’s new Teton lift.

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is celebrating its 50th anniversary in December which will coincide with the opening of new terrain and a shiny high speed quad called Teton.  JHMR’s first Doppelmayr detachable will serve three new runs in the area formerly known as the Crags.  This project is part of a major lift upgrade that included the new Casper detachable quad and will also include a second gondola.

Ready for a base terminal.
Ready for a Uni-G terminal next to the Lower Werner run.

The new lift will serve approximately 1,800 vertical feet of terrain between the Casper and Apres Vous lifts.  With a steep profile, Teton’s ride time will be under six minutes.  Having four detachable quads on the north side of the mountain will hopefully take some pressure off the aerial tram.

Funny to see Doppelmayr staging next to a new Leitner-Poma terminal.
Funny to see Doppelmayr staging next to a new Leitner-Poma terminal.

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News Roundup: New Controls

Peter Landsman2 Comments
Doppelmayr USA has redesigned all of their controls for 2015.
Doppelmayr USA has redesigned all of their controls for 2015.
  • Apparently Doppelmayr has redesigned their controls for 2015.  A new pedestal pictured above looks like an improvement, especially the speed selector replacing slow/medium/fast buttons.
  • Willard Mountain, NY files for bankruptcy, proving once again it is best to control all of the land your ski resort sits on.  The area has a Borvig and Partek doubles.
  • Saddleback Maine has put the drive terminal for its main lift up for sale on Resort Boneyard for $200k.  Hopefully a new lift is on the way.
  • Vail Resorts voluntarily raises the minimum wage it pays lift operators and other workers to $10 an hour.
  • Lots of improvements coming to Powderhorn in addition to their first detachable lift.
  • Whistler-Blackcomb to test snowmaking as a means to preserve summer skiing on Horstman Glacier, home to the only glacier-anchored lifts in North America.
  • West Mountain, NY is moving forward with making one old lift into two new ones.
  • Singapore opens its second Doppelmayr gondola line with three stations and 8-passenger cabins.

New Trail Maps

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Park City and Jackson Hole just started building new lifts but trail map illustrator James Niehues is already finishing illustrations for their 2015-16 trail maps.  Niehues planned to retire last year but apparently some projects are too good to pass up.  There is no question Mr. Niehues is the best in the business and I hope he keeps painting as long as possible.

Jackson Hole’s new Teton lift will open up a handful of new trails in between the Apres Vous and Casper areas this coming winter.  Mr. Niehues is repainting the portion of the map that was previously known as The Crags while the rest will remain true to his original 1991 painting.

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Jackson Hole’s new map showing the Teton lift pod. Photo Credit: James Niehues

Vail Resorts contracted James to paint an all-new, unified map of Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons Resort which will operate as one from 2015-16.  I was surprised and pleased to hear they were going with a painting instead of the awful computer-generated maps that Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Northstar have gone to.  Niehues admits he had to get creative with portions of the map to show 37 lifts and 7,300 acres of terrain acres in one view.  The final result below is impressive and shows why paintings make more compelling trail maps than satellite photos.

Illustration for the new Park City Mountain Resort. Photo Credit: James Niehues
Illustration for the new Park City Mountain Resort. Photo Credit: James Niehues

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Jumbo Glacier Resort is Dead

Peter Landsman8 Comments

British Columbia’s Minister of Environment has finally killed the Jumbo Glacier Resort, proposed to rival Whistler in the Purcell Mountains of British Columbia.  Jumbo Glacier is a spectacularly-remote place up a dirt logging road from Panorama Mountain Village and Invermere.  It’s more than 200 miles from Calgary, the nearest major city and airport.  The plan was to build 20+ lifts on 3,000 hectares of public land above 5,000 feet.  You can read the full master plan here.

Leitner-Poma poured some footings last fall in a last-ditch effort.
Leitner-Poma poured some footings last fall in a last-ditch effort.

The project was first submitted to the BC government in 1991 and received environmental approval in 2004.  The resort claimed they would get 2,700 skiers per day. This was always a red flag to me as 2,700 skiers is not a big number for a destination ski resort.  Take for example a mid-sized area like Mt. Sunapee in New Hampshire.  It has six lifts and a comfortable carrying capacity of 5,220 skiers per day.  2,700 could justify perhaps three or four lifts at Jumbo, not 23.

BC has no shortage of large ski areas struggling due to remoteness. Kicking Horse and Revelstoke are perhaps most similar to the Jumbo proposal. Revelstoke was supposed to have 21 lifts; they built three before running out of money in 2008. Lucky for them, the 27th richest person in Canada bought in and paid off over $100 million in debt.  Kicking Horse was in similar trouble when it was rescued by Resorts of the Canadian Rockies in 2011. Both of these resorts are on the Trans-Canada Highway, not 50 miles from a town.

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Pulse Lifts

Peter Landsman7 Comments

These days building a detachable lift means a capital investment of at least $3 million plus around $100,000 in annual maintenance.  A so-called ‘pulse’ lift offers the speed of a detachable system with similar infrastructure to a traditional fixed-grip lift.  Chairs or cabins are grouped together into ‘pulses’ and the entire lift slows down for loading and unloading.  When comparing types of aerial lifts there are always trade-offs; here they include low capacity and long headways.  Most pulse lifts can only move 300-600 passengers per hour and headway – the time a passenger has to wait for a carrier to show up – can be minutes instead of as low as six seconds.  Perfect for certain applications but unsuitable in most.

Pine Ridge lift at the Yellowstone Club, Montana.
Pine Ridge lift at the Yellowstone Club, Montana.

There are currently 17 pulse lifts operating in the US, Canada and Mexico; all but three are gondolas.  Nearly all were built in the last 15 years.  Panorama Mountain Village, Northstar California, Steamboat, Snowmass, Canyons Resort, and Le Massif all use pulse gondolas to connect village areas.  These lifts are usually less than 3,000 feet long and convenient for skiers and non-skiers alike.  Other pulse gondolas are attractions in their own right such the Iron Mountain Tramway at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, SkyTrail at Trees of Mystery, the Gondola at Royal Gorge Bridge Bridge & Park and the Riverfront Park SkyRide in Spokane.  There is also a new Leitner-Poma pulse gondola in Orizaba, Mexico with tripod towers that are hundreds of feet tall.

Spokane Falls SkyRide, built by Doppelmayr.
Riverfront Park SkyRide, built by Doppelmayr.

Snow Valley in Edmonton, Alberta has a very unique pulse chairlift built by Doppelmayr in 2008.  Instead of having groups of 3-5 chairs, it has just two groups of 20 closely-spaced quad chairs.  Because it is only 850 feet long, the lift can move 1,378 skiers per hour at up to 5 m/s, the same speed as most detachable lifts.  In fact the ride is only about a minute.  The lift slows to a beginner-friendly 0.8 m/s for loading and unloading.  Because of the low speed, skiers ride around the bullwheel at the top and unload facing down the hill.  It’s the only lift I know of with 180-degree unloading.

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News Roundup: Small Mountains and Big Cities

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Doppelmayr load tested Snow King Mountain’s new Rafferty Quad this week.
  • Construction on The Balsams Resort in New Hampshire may begin late this summer.  We could see new lifts there next summer.
  • A bit further south, Waterville Valley started cutting trees for its Green Peak Expansion.  Unfortunately they don’t have funding for a new lift or even a used one.
  • Also in New Hampshire, Tenney Mountain plans to reopen next season after being closed since 2010.  The mountain has a 1964 Stadeli double and 1987 Borvig triple
  • You can own one of Oregon’s ski areas for only $1.25 million.  Includes lifts with charming names like “Happy” and “Echo.”
  • The Harbour Skylink would be a four-stage gondola in one of the world’s great capitals.
  • Poma is currently building five gondolas in Latin America, two for the Metrocable system in Medellin, Colombia and one each in Bolivia, Chile and Mexico.  They recently received €1.3 million from the French government to lead a consortium promoting ropeway transportation in cities.
  • The world’s tallest observation tower is coming to Brighton, England, courtesy of Poma, who also brought us the London Eye and the High Roller in Las Vegas.
  • Sigma takes on CWA with 3S gondola cabins developed by Italian car designer Pininfarina, set to debut in 2018 on the world’s highest 3S in Zermatt.

Lift Profile: Sunshine Village Gondola

Peter Landsman6 Comments

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Sunshine Village is one of two ski resorts in North America with access provided by gondola rather than road, the other being Silver Mountain in Idaho.  Visitors park at the end of Sunshine Road and transfer to a Poma gondola for a 17 minute ride to Sunshine Village.  Along the way there are two angle stations, one where doors stay closed and the other with loading/unloading at Goat’s Eye Mountain.  All three sections share one haul rope driven by a 2,000 HP electric motor underneath the top terminal.  The Goat’s Eye angle station has indoor cabin storage and there are additional maintenance rails at each end.

When opened on November 22, 2001, Poma claimed the Sunshine Village Gondola was the world’s fastest 8-passenger gondola with a max speed of 1,200 feet per minute.  I don’t believe this was ever true as Whiteface’s Cloudsplitter Gondola opened two years earlier and can run 1,212 fpm.  There are now at least 15 gondolas in North America that can do 1,200 feet a minute or faster.  Regardless, Sunshine’s gondola is an impressive machine that moves 2,800 people per hour in each direction 15+ hours per day.  It cost $16 million to build.

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