Burnt Ridge was a major expansion undertaken in 2008 and anchored by a Leitner-Poma Omega detachable quad.The return terminal up top.Another look at the top station.The top few towers.The breakover.View down the middle part of the line.Looking up line.Steep lower section.Towers 1 and 2.The drive station seen from above.Arrival side at the bottom.Lift overview.Side view of the drive.Loading area in winter.Combo assemblies on tower 3.Riding up the line at tower 4.Tower 9.Nearing the summit.
The state run ski areas use the same drive/tension configurations that other resorts do. This lift is bottom drive and dual tension as is the Adirondack Express 2. From the introduction of the Challenger terminal to now, nearly all Poma detachables have dual tensioning where the entire terminals move. The exceptions are gondolas and some 6 packs with gondola terminals that have an internal tension carriage at the return. Gore’s gondola is of course configured this way. It is top drive. The detachables at Whiteface and Belleayre are all Doppelmayr and they always used an internal tension carriage that is typically at the return. Cloudsplitter at Whiteface is top drive and the other 3 are all bottom drive with tensioning at the return. Doppelmayr could install lifts with dual tensioning, but this was rarely done. I’m surprised Cloudsplitter doesn’t have dual tensioning because of its length.
Dual tensioning is really only useful in short terminals such as the Challenger, Omega, and LPA quad lifts. The active side only has eight feet of travel on the Omegas, for example, so there may be less time in between shortening splices. You can reposition the passive side to take up some slack, which gives you more room at the active side. Cloudsplitter has a ton of carriage travel so there’s no need for dual tensioning.
The Burnt Ridge expansion was such a waste of potential. No matter where you are coming from, it is necessary to traverse to access the lift. Once at the top, there is only one non-glade trail that does not require a traverse at the bottom to return to the lift. I have nothing against the abundance of glades, and they are great when the snow is good, but they still need to have more offerings given the huge space available. To fix all of this (without relocating the bottom terminal of the lift), they need to do two things: cut more trails and add an access lift to the top of Burnt Mountain from either the main base or the bottom of North.
Rode Gore Friday. Pipeline was closed from snow melt, Echo was closed for racing, this lift was open to ski Sagamore, and backwoods only. Hedges was used as an egress out of this terrain pod. More terrain off this lift can make it a great area. However, when Echo is closed for racing, this lift becomes hard to access (cedars traverse) and hard to egress away from (hedges to North Quad). Another trail of this lift to supplement the Backwoods trail and move racing away from Echo could really help this lift out.
I was unlucky enough to witness 53-year-old Kevin Colwell, surrounded by ski patrol trying to revive him after the horrible incident on Sagamore yesterday while I was riding up this lift. A horrible thing to witness for sure. Rest in peace Kevin.
Lift Blog 
So do the state owned ski areas in New York all use return tension stations on their detachables? I thought that was quite uncommon.
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The state run ski areas use the same drive/tension configurations that other resorts do. This lift is bottom drive and dual tension as is the Adirondack Express 2. From the introduction of the Challenger terminal to now, nearly all Poma detachables have dual tensioning where the entire terminals move. The exceptions are gondolas and some 6 packs with gondola terminals that have an internal tension carriage at the return. Gore’s gondola is of course configured this way. It is top drive. The detachables at Whiteface and Belleayre are all Doppelmayr and they always used an internal tension carriage that is typically at the return. Cloudsplitter at Whiteface is top drive and the other 3 are all bottom drive with tensioning at the return. Doppelmayr could install lifts with dual tensioning, but this was rarely done. I’m surprised Cloudsplitter doesn’t have dual tensioning because of its length.
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Dual tensioning is really only useful in short terminals such as the Challenger, Omega, and LPA quad lifts. The active side only has eight feet of travel on the Omegas, for example, so there may be less time in between shortening splices. You can reposition the passive side to take up some slack, which gives you more room at the active side. Cloudsplitter has a ton of carriage travel so there’s no need for dual tensioning.
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Cloudsplitter actually does have dual tensioning. The previous comment was from before I had the chance to see inside the drive terminal.
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The Burnt Ridge expansion was such a waste of potential. No matter where you are coming from, it is necessary to traverse to access the lift. Once at the top, there is only one non-glade trail that does not require a traverse at the bottom to return to the lift. I have nothing against the abundance of glades, and they are great when the snow is good, but they still need to have more offerings given the huge space available. To fix all of this (without relocating the bottom terminal of the lift), they need to do two things: cut more trails and add an access lift to the top of Burnt Mountain from either the main base or the bottom of North.
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I’m pretty sure due to Gore being state owned they only can cut down so many trees and they’ve almost hit that limit
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Rode Gore Friday. Pipeline was closed from snow melt, Echo was closed for racing, this lift was open to ski Sagamore, and backwoods only. Hedges was used as an egress out of this terrain pod. More terrain off this lift can make it a great area. However, when Echo is closed for racing, this lift becomes hard to access (cedars traverse) and hard to egress away from (hedges to North Quad). Another trail of this lift to supplement the Backwoods trail and move racing away from Echo could really help this lift out.
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Yesterday the power went out on the entire mountain so two of my family members had to get rope evacuated from this lift.
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I was unlucky enough to witness 53-year-old Kevin Colwell, surrounded by ski patrol trying to revive him after the horrible incident on Sagamore yesterday while I was riding up this lift. A horrible thing to witness for sure. Rest in peace Kevin.
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