- With construction progressing ahead of schedule, Mi Teleférico in La Paz will open its 4th, 5th and 6th gondolas in 2017 – to be named the Orange, Blue and White lines.
- Costa Rica to study urban gondolas, along with Guanajuato, Mexico.
- Al Jazeera English tours Mexico City’s new gondolas that are improving the lives of working families.
- Doppelmayr to build another 3S carrying 80,000 passengers daily across Kilindini Harbour in Nairobi, Kenya from mid-2018.
- Two new gondolas in Austria – Giggijochbahn (Doppelmayr 10-MGD) and Eisgratbahn (Leitner 3S) – join the ranks of the most capable lifts on the planet.
- Bartholet’s first urban cable car opens in Brest.
- It was a $9 million summer at Cascade Mountain.
- Magic Mountain sale closes.
News
News Roundup: Multiplying
- The weather mostly cooperates with Waterville Valley’s ambitious late-fall expansion.
- Suicide Six is also building this November.
- Jay Peak misses tax payment ahead of winter season. So does Burke Mountain.
- Urban gondola ideas emerge in Branson, MO, Greenville, SC, Montreal and San Antonio.
- Another Bolivian city – Sucre – to get cable car network.
- Zacatecas, Mexico stops work on its new gondola, much of which Leitner has already delivered, due to environmental and cultural concerns.
- BC Safety Authority reminds skiers that rider (mis)behavior causes most lift accidents.
- Telluride wants to replace lifts 7, 9, 10 and 14.
- Saddleback Mountain Foundation raises $750,000 towards the purchase of Maine’s second largest ski area which closed in 2015. The group plans to replace the Rangeley double and Cupsuptic T-Bar with new lifts and eventually expand with a new Magalloway lift.
News Roundup: Transactions
- Skytrac begins construction on two new quad chairs at a new Rainforest Adventures park in St. Maarten.
- The old Casper triple from Jackson Hole won’t debut at Magic Mountain in time for this winter.
- New York hedge fund buys 13 ski resorts from CNL Lifestyle Properties, Enterainment Properties Trust takes Northstar.
- Saddleback Mountain Foundation agrees to purchase Saddleback for $6 million if it can raise enough money.
- Seattle real estate developer buys Silver Mountain.
- Steamboat’s local paper previews the Elkhead Express.
- First cabins fly on the Dominican Republic’s new urban gondola system.
- Doppelmayr’s latest Wir magazine is available.
- Some splice advice from Mountain Wire Rope Services.
- The Black Hawk finds new civilian life with Timberline Helicopters building lifts.
- Powder Mountain makes new lifts official, will become largest ski resort in the United States.
Eisgratbahn 3S Opens Today in Austria
The 2.8 mile 3S gondola Eisgratbahn, believed to be the world’s most expensive lift, debuts today after two long summers of construction. The two-stage system features 49 32-passenger Symphony cabins transporting up to 3,014 passengers per hour 4,000 vertical feet. The goal is to reduce the frequency of wind closures versus the former gondola lift. Congratulations to Leitner Ropeways and Stubaier Glacier on completing this monster project.
News Roundup: Vacation
Hello readers- for the next two weeks I am floating the Grand Canyon without access to the internet. I’ve scheduled a few posts for my absence, otherwise lift blogging will resume Nov. 5th –Peter from Flagstaff, Arizona.
- Ski season launches tomorrow at A-Basin. COO Al Henceroth is also looking for one of the resort’s original single chairs.
- Silver Mountain reportedly sells for a fire-sale price of $5 million. The resort’s gondola, formerly the world’s longest, cost $8 million in 1990.
- Doppelmayr goes to Moscow, Poma goes to Barcelona and Orlando.
- Wire Austin gets a website.
- Take a ride on the newly-named Hexago six-pack at Le Relais.
- In case you missed it, Gregg Blanchard of SlopeFillers fame interviewed me about Lift Blog.
- Woman sues Aspen Skiing Company over loading incident at the Snowmass Village Express.
- Vail Resorts to debut $100 million in capital improvements for 2016-17 including four new lifts. With Whistler-Blackcomb now Epic, the company will likely invest even more in 2017.
- 9News profiles the CPTSB.
Homeowners Buy Tamarack Resort, Pay Back Taxes to Save Lifts
Credit Suisse and Replay Resorts are out at Idaho’s Tamarack Resort. Today the Tamarack Municipal Association (TMA) announced it has entered into an agreement to purchase and operate the troubled resort that debuted in 2004 and filed for bankruptcy four years later. TMA becomes the fifth operator of Tamarack in 12 years and the first unified owner-operator since 2008. News of the sale and tax payment comes just four days before Tamarack’s two high speed quads were scheduled to be auctioned by Valley County. A TMA subsidiary called Tamarack Homeowners Acquisition Company paid $269,075 in back taxes this week for land and assets needed for the ski operation.
The association of property owners previously operated Tamarack from 2012 to 2015 while it was owned by New Tamarack Acquisition Corporation, an entity led by Credit Suisse. The Zurich-based bank loaned $250 million to the founders of Tamarack and gained control of the resort out of bankruptcy along with other creditors. Eight years later, the homeowners likely paid pennies on the dollar for what was once worth hundreds of millions.
TMA already owned the Buttercup quad chair since purchasing it from Bank of America in 2012. Tamarack at one point operated six lifts but lost its Wildwood Express chair in 2012 after years of failing to make payments to BofA. That lift was sold at auction (reportedly back to Doppelmayr) and ended up at Brian Head in Utah. Ironically, Wildwood now appears as a “Future Lift” on Tamarack’s trail map.
“Today marks the start of a new chapter for Tamarack where homeowners have secured the future ownership and operations of the resort,” TMA said in a release. “This ensures the long-term future of this incredible destination for guests, employees and homeowners as well as the wider community in Valley County and the State of Idaho.” Tamarack plans to open for the season on December 9th and snowmaking is already underway.
News Roundup: The People
- Packsaddle II at Keystone gets the first Skytrac tension-return station based on the Monarch terminal.
- Searchmont’s 1989 Doppelmayr quad chair will spin this season for the first time in six years. The mountain’s nonprofit owner could not afford to address two service bulletins until now.
- See how urban gondolas are evacuated if the need arises.
- Paris’ first urban gondola will be bigger than London’s.
- With orders from Sandia Peak, the Oakland Zoo and Jackson Hole, CWA has now supplied 2,000 cabins in the United States.
- Fernie flies a winter’s worth of diesel fuel – 5,300 gallons – to the Polar Peak triple by helicopter.
- See tons more photos of LST’s first detachable here.
- 42,584 passengers ride Mexicable in its first two days of operation.
- The Navajo Nation Law and Order Committee votes 5-0 to oppose the Grand Canyon Escalade.
- NewEnglandSkiIndustry.com has the latest on all four of New England’s new lifts.
- The new Doppelmayr DCD Chair will debut in Hochzillertal on one of five D-Line installations to be operating in Austria by the end of the year.
- Winch cables and chairs apparently don’t mix well.
- Doppelmayr posts a video tour of the proposed Wälderbahn next-generation 3S with sections of elevated guideways in place of cables.
- Montana Snowbowl throws in the towel on TV Mountain until next spring.
- Echo Mountain sale closes and the mountain will open in December.
News Roundup: Happenings
- Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto inaugurates Mexicable today with free rides all week and an impressive span of service: 4:30 am to 11:00 pm. Mexicable also features the first Leitner DirectDrives in North America.
- Doppelmayr looks at building a gondola network in Port-au-Prince, Haiti financed by China.
- Three public agencies agree to fund $15,000 preliminary study of Austin’s Wire idea with results to be released in nine weeks. Hint: 19 stations is way too many.
- El Paso’s Wyler Aerial Tramway, built in 1959, breaks down.
- Doppelmayr showcases its Koblenz urban 3S at Innotrans in Berlin. Leitner was there too.
- Sunday River sells chairs from South Ridge, Suicide Six sells more from its old double.
- Pebble Creek’s new owner has 4.8 million followers on YouTube.
- Fatzer and Doppelmayr splice the record-breaking Giggijochbahn and the stats are impressive: 4,500 pph, 134 cabins, 6.5 m/s, 62 mm rope.
- The most expensive lift ever built opens Oct. 22nd at Stubaier Glacier.
- America needs an urban gondola done right, Mike Deiparine of Engineering Specialties Group tells Wired.
- First cabin takes a trip on the Blue line, La Paz’s 5th urban gondola.
News Roundup: Six-Pack
- Granite Peak will announce a plan this fall for new runs and multiple new lifts.
- Crystal Mountain pushes back Kelly’s Gap high speed quad to 2021.
- James Coleman purchases Hesperus, adding to his collective that includes Arizona Snowbowl, Pajarito, Purgatory and Sipapu. A 1961 Riblet double from Mt. Bachelor is Hesperus’ only lift.
- Fatzer opens a new production plant.
- The United States overtakes France as the world’s most popular ski destination. The U.S. is the fourth largest lift market.
- Austin’s NPR station dedicates more than seven minutes to a discussion about urban cable. “Once we went to La Paz, we were up and running within 12 months,” Doppelmayr’s Randy Woolwine tells listeners.
- A six-pack rises at Arizona Snowbowl.
- Eagle Point unveils Vision 2020 with new lifts and expanded terrain planned.
- Next season might be the last for Blackcomb’s Horstman T-Bar due to glacial recession. This video demonstrates one of the pitfalls of the sinking T-Bar.
- SAM reports how Jay Peak employees have made the most of a bad situation amidst a federal fraud investigation.
- Mont Bellevue gets a Doppelmayr Eco quad with a return station design we haven’t seen before and two different-style bullwheels.
- Le Relais’ $5 million six-place chair is just about finished.
- Vail Resorts loses $65.3 million in the fourth quarter.
- Big Sky’s new six-pack will be named Powder Seeker.
- The first Poma EEZII-model compact detachable terminal is assembled in France.
- Whistler-Blackcomb releases Conflicted Obsessions documentary about climate change. “The gorilla in the room is the long-distance travel required to get to these special places,” admits W-B’s environmental resource manager.
Vail Nears Completion of New Sun Up Express
With construction underway on a new lift for the ninth time in ten years, Vail Mountain will have only three fixed-grip chairlifts this winter. Adding to what is already the largest detachable lift fleet in the world outside of Europe, Vail and Leitner-Poma are now building the mountain’s 19th high-speed lift in the famous Back Bowls to replace the Sun Up #17 triple. This is a major milestone for a mountain that in 1984 operated a whopping 19 fixed-grip chairlifts. Following on the heels of two new six-packs from Doppelmayr USA in 2013 and 2015, Vail switched back to Leitner-Poma for its newest high speed quad, which will be designated Lift #9. With its production facility down I-70 in Grand Junction, Leitner-Poma also supplied Vail’s Gondola One in 2012 and seven high speed quads in a row before that. Vail regulars will note that number 9 used to belong to the Minnie’s lift from 1972 until it was removed without being replaced in 2008.
The Sun Up Express will achieve 65 percent higher capacity than the 1992 triple version it replaces, which was actually one of the original lifts Doppelmayr built at Beaver Creek in 1980. Fun fact: B.C.’s Centennial was originally two separate triple chairs. What became Sun Up at Vail was the upper lift called Horseshoe. The triple chair is now history and will probably find a third home somewhere in the Vail Resorts empire or beyond.
Sun Up Express’ uphill capacity will be 2,400 skiers per hour which should help alleviate crowding on lifts 5 and 9. The Back Bowls and Blue Sky Basin will now have a combined seven high speed quads. Lift 9 will feature 82 quad chairs and 14 towers, most of which were set last week by helicopter. The lift will have a vertical rise of 1,115 feet and will be 3,865 feet long with a 670 HP AC top drive located near Two Elk Lodge. Sun Up Express will be Vail’s third lift with the new LPA (Leitner Poma Automatic) grips and terminals.
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