- Austria’s Saalbach, Zell am See-Kaprun, Mayrhofen, Hintertux and Silvretta Montafon join the Epic Pass as partner resorts, bringing Epic to nine European destinations.
- Poma releases its 2024 Reference Book highlighting projects around the world.
- Eaglecrest may not meet a 2028 deadline to complete its used pulse gondola.
- America’s only summer only ski area will open this year for the first time in three.
- Whaleback meets a $250,000 fundraising goal for lift repairs.
- Opposition organizes against proposed Grand Targhee expansion.
- Bluewood, Washington to sell chairs if its new lift project is on track by September 1st.
- Hawaii’s first gondola is proposed on the North Shore of Oahu.
- A gondola is floated for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
- Also Anaheim, California.
- Marmot Basin’s visitation drops 30 percent due to last year’s fire in Jasper.
- Silver Mountain delays summer opening due to gondola repairs.
- Timberline Helicopters, the company that installs the majority of lift towers in the West, breaks ground on a $13 million expansion in North Idaho.
- The nonprofit organization that’s been trying to revive Cuchara, Colorado inks a 40 year operating lease for the mountain.
- Vail Mountain intends to begin work on the lift projects I wrote about last week next summer, subject to Forest Service approval.
- President Trump proposes a 50 percent tariff on imports from the European Union starting June 1st.
News
News Roundup: Retrofits
- US ski resorts report their second best season ever with 61.5 million visits.
- Colorado releases a detailed report on Winter Park’s gondola tower evener beam failure last December. Leitner-Poma will retrofit or replace similar beams on existing lifts and modify the beam’s design for future installations.
- The Kicking Horse gondola hanger failure remains under investigation but the resort will replace all hangers and not operate the gondola until mid-summer at the earliest.
- Homewood to install its D-Line gondola in 2026 after years of delays.
- McCauley Mountain to sell Hall chairs from the former Big double.
- The Covid-delayed Timber expansion at Tremblant is back on the table.
- The White Mountain National Forest seeks comments on Waterville Valley’s proposed village-to-mountain gondola.
- Eaglecrest, Alaska continues to lose money with its planned gondola still in the parking lot.
- Salt Lake Community College launches a training program for lift maintenance professionals.
- Wildcat’s Snowcat triple, which missed all of last season, to get a new haul rope, drive, controls, comm line and operator houses.
- A Park City billionaire acquires the PCMR Town Lift plaza, envisions a future gondola.
News Roundup: Ropera
- Deer Valley updates its expansion site to show Lift 6 as two detachable quads (6A and 6B) instead of a six pack with mid-station.
- Vail Mountain seeks permission to replace Orient Express #21 with a six pack, swap Little Eagle #15 for a detachable quad and remove Wapiti #24.
- Leitner-Poma discusses the impact of tariffs on the SAM huddle.
- Burke Mountain emerges from nine years of government receivership with new owners.
- Mount Saint Louis-Moonstone, Ontario teases a new era coming to the Outback side of the mountain.
- Leitner introduces its next generation monocable detachable called Ropera, combining technology from Leitner, Poma and Bartholet. The launch customer will be Speikboden, Italy with a six place chairlift.
- Leitner and Doppelmayr release annual yearbooks.
- Snoqualmie unveils new renderings of the Edelweiss project at Alpental.
- A Colorado man succumbs to injuries sustained in a fall from Keystone’s Ruby Express last December.
- Powder Mountain tells the Utah tram board it’ll install between one and four new lifts this summer.
- A jury declines to award millions to a Mt. Bachelor skier who fell getting off a chairlift.
- Killington to donate and match proceeds from closing day to Whaleback Mountain’s chairlift replacement fund.
- Snow Partners to launch a new multi-mountain pass product offering three total days at six to ten Eastern resorts.
- Mt. Ashland, Oregon looks to replace the Ariel and Windsor doubles with Skytrac triple chairs in 2026.
News Roundup: SLI Retirements
- Big Moose, Maine hints at reviving summit lift access.
- Austria’s KitzSki and SkiWelt could connect to form the world’s largest ski area.
- Lake Louise cuts trails for the long-awaited Richardson’s Ridge expansion.
- Hatley Pointe decommissions the SLI-built Laurel double.
- Telluride seeks approval to replace its last two SLI doubles.
- Big Sky to be the North American launch customer for the Doppelmayr S-Line surface lift, replacing the Bear Back Poma.
- Big Sky will also enclose the Lone Peak Tram‘s top terminal this summer.
- Doppelmayr releases its latest customer magazine featuring projects at Big Sky and Deer Valley.
- Snowmass to keep the Elk Camp quad spinning for bikes through August 4th while work begins on its replacement.
- Eldora seeks approval for unspecified projects from its master plan.
- A court blocks the proposed Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium gondola for now.
- Wachusett looks to sell the Polar Express to another ski area.
- I stopped by Deer Valley for a quick look at the progress to build two gondola sections and four detachable chairlifts this summer.
News Roundup: Passport
- Vail Resorts reports skier visits down 3.1%, lift revenue up 3.4%, ski school revenue up 2.7%, dining up 2.2% and retail/rental down 4.0% with pass sales for next year down slightly in units.
- Burke Mountain to be sold to Bear Den Partners for $11.5 million.
- Park City explores possible routes for a Main Street-Deer Valley gondola.
- Ski Utah continues advocating for a Little Cottonwood gondola.
- Telluride seeks approval for yet-to-be-specified projects from its master plan.
- Boyne launches two multi-resort pass products good at all their resorts.
- Local artists to transform Park City Sunrise chairs into works of art to be auctioned for charity.
- Italy opens a criminal investigation into last week’s fatal tram incident involving a haul rope failure and track rope brake failure on one of two cabins.
- Steeplechase, Minnesota turns to crowdfunding to finance expansion.
- Leitner-Poma Canada is hiring lift installers for a project at Whitewater, BC.
- Loveland to operate the new Lift 7 quad as a triple.
- Killington is full steam ahead on Superstar replacement.
- Red Lodge Mountain begins repairing the chairlift involved in a fatal incident last month.
- Palisades Tahoe invites local high school students on mountain operations tours to aid with recruitment.
News Roundup: Court of Appeals
- Sipapu, New Mexico proposes replacing one of the last detachable Poma lifts in the United States.
- Four people are killed in an aerial tramway crash in Italy.
- Skiland, Alaska rope evacuates its only chairlift.
- Kicking Horse closes for the season without its gondola; any compensation for passholders affected by five weeks of gondola closure to be determined at a later date.
- Two new gondolas near completion in West Virginia.
- South Carolina’s only gondola is almost ready to roll.
- Bretton Woods formally announces the Bethlehem Express replacement project.
- A Utah court of appeals hears arguments from Park City the town and Park City the ski area re: canceled 2022 Eagle and Silverlode lift projects.
- Vail also tussles with South Lake Tahoe over Heavenly parking and taxation.
- Titcomb Mountain, Maine fundraises to build a new T-Bar as soon as this summer.
News Roundup: Pacific Northwest Icons
- HTI, the parent company of Agudio, Bartholet, Leitner, Poma, LPOA and Skytrac, reports stable revenue of €1.4 billion and record R&D investment of €41 million.
- Leitner teases “the exclusive launch of a groundbreaking new standard for monocable uni-directional ropeways” at Interalpin.
- Leitner also nears completion of a material transport gondola that includes a 1,600 foot underground tunnel.
- The next phase of the Bartholet RopeTaxi on demand gondola network is delayed to December.
- President Trump tempers announced tariffs on most countries to 10% for 90 days.
- Calls continue for the Government of Quebec to terminate its lease with Resorts of the Canadian Rockies for Mont-Sainte-Anne.
- Freakonomics tackles the economics of ski areas with help from Loveland and Mt. Ashland.
- Mt. Hood Meadows to retire the Blue double without replacement, raffle the chairs.
- Alpental plans an all weekend celebration for the retirement of iconic Chair 2.
- Doppelmayr breaks ground on its new Salt Lake City building.
- French authorities propose nearly €2 million in fines against MND and its investors for alleged disclosure and insider trading violations.
- You can buy an Overbrook chair from Ski Butternut
- McCauley is also selling chairs.
- CBS drama Fire Country to feature a ficticious ski lift disaster tonight.
News Roundup: Contingency Plan
- Homewood to reopen next season but its D-Line gondola delivered in 2023 won’t be installed this summer.
- Powdr abandons plans to sell Mt. Bachelor.
- Powdr’s sale of Eldora is said to be in the final stages.
- Le Massif, Quebec signs on to the Ikon Pass.
- New details emerge from the antitrust case against the owner of Song Mountain and Labrador Mountain, New York; he plans to appeal.
- Whaleback, New Hampshire looks toward a new chairlift.
- Sun Valley seeks to be removed from a lawsuit filed by a homeowner regarding the placement of the new Flying Squirrel quad.
- Stratton’s American Express closes early and will reopen for summer later than normal for a major systems modernization.
- The Forest Service approves Steamboat to replace Sunshine Express with a six pack.
- The world’s second largest gondola network is proposed in India with 15 stations and 660 cabins.
- If Bluewood, Washington can’t complete its planned relocation of a used high speed quad from Austria next season, it will keep its Borvig lift and credit passholders $100.
- The US government implements a blanket 20% tariff on goods from the European Union and 31% on products from Switzerland, both major source regions for lift components.
- Skeetawk, Alaska works to repair its only chairlift but snow may run out first.
- Arctic Valley, Alaska’s T-Bar will be inoperable the rest of the season due to an incident damaging the haul rope.
- Holiday Mountain, New York looks to reopen long lost terrain with a third chairlift.
- Alta to realign Supreme this summer, re-doing every foundation and re-using towers and terminals.
- Castle Mountain’s expansion lift to be called Stagecoach Express.
- The owner of Berkshire East and Catamount would operate Burke Mountain under a proposed sale to local investors. The group also plans to refurbish the J-Bar and relocate Willoughby if the sale goes through.
News Roundup: USFS
- The Forest Service approves three lift projects at Taos, including a base to base gondola.
- Red Lodge Mountain reopens all lifts except the Triple Chair involved in last month’s fatal incident.
- The widow of the man killed at Red Lodge hires a law firm and engineer to look into the circumstances.
- Telluride Ski Resort declines to help fund a new Mountain Village gondola so the town looks to pass a lift ticket tax.
- Powder Mountain to construct a new lift in Wolf Canyon/DMI.
- A child falls from a lift at Park City.
- An urban gondola is floated in Denver.
- Cataloochee, North Carolina lists parts from the Omigosh double for sale.
- New York’s state-owned ski areas report visitation up over 3 percent this season with revenue up more than 8 percent.
- Black Mountain, New Hampshire delays going to a co-op model, will continue to be run by Indy Pass for now.
- Whaleback, NH passes $100,000 toward its goal of $250,000 to continue operations.
- The Caribou-Targhee National Forest weighs whether to change its forest plan to accommodate Grand Targhee’s proposed South Bowl and/or Mono Trees expansions.
- The Arapaho National Forest releases the Draft Environmental Assessment for Winter Park’s proposed Gemini Gondola, Copper Creek South chairlift, Looking Glass replacement, Endeavour replacement and Discovery replacement.
- Park City shutters Sunrise to resume construction of the Sunrise Gondola.
News Roundup: Riverbanks
- 19 deluxe cabins arrive stateside for South Carolina’s only gondola.
- Ragged Mountain goes on the market.
- Leitner-Poma posts an ad hiring lift installers for a project at Crystal Mountain, Washington.
- A widow sues Breckenridge following her husband’s fatal fall from the Zendo chair, alleging “an unreasonable amount of snow and ice accumulation.”
- Purgatory acknowleges belt tightening on the mountain as it renegotiates long term debt.
- The Forest Service shows two Mission Ridge expansion proposals as canceled.
- The Forest Service releases a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Grand Targhee’s proposed expansion including three pared down alternatives.
- Big Sky raises $150,000 for charity selling Explorer chairs.
- An idea to connect two Seattle neighborhoods by gondola resurfaces.
- Leitner teases a “New Era of Ropeways” coming at Interalpin.
- Relations sour between the Town of Mountain Village and Telluride Ski Resort owner Chuck Horning with the Town Manager giving a lengthy speech about problems at the resort.
- Skeetawk, Alaska’s only chairlift shuts down for a multi-week repair.
- Stowe’s FourRunner quad has been out of service all week.
- Vail reopens Riva Bahn after a two week gearbox rebuild.
- Kicking Horse’s gondola remains closed indefinitely; the resort will transport gear up to Stairway to Heaven free of charge but guests still have to walk there.
- Vail Resorts presents its strategic vision to investors.
Lift Blog 
