Leitner-Poma will build three new lifts in Ontario this summer including a six-pack at Horseshoe Resort.
Telluride’s Mountain Village Gondola turns 20 this year with celebrations planned. The gondola has over 100,000 hours and provides 2.5 million rides each year!
Into the air at Caberfae Peaks, Michigan. Thanks to Lawrence W. for the photo.
Soelden, Austria unveiled its record-breaking gondola today called Giggijochbahn, to open next winter with the ability to carry 4,500 passengers per hour. The ropeway will feature Doppelmayr’s next-generation D-Line components and two modern terminal buildings, one featuring panoramic images of the Alps and the other showing off ropeway technology behind real glass. The top terminal will have parking for most of the lift’s 134 CWA Omega IV-10-D cabins. Innsbruck architect Johann Obermoser designed the stations in collaboration with Soelden and Doppelmayr.
This will be an impressive system by any measure with 3,022 feet of vertical rise and an 8,688-foot slope length. Travelling at the record-breaking speed of 6.5 m/s (1,280 fpm) the ride will take just 8.87 minutes. The fastest monocable gondolas in the world currently top out at 1,212 fpm. The Giggijochbahn will have 26 towers and a 62 mm haul rope driven by a ~2,180 HP electric motor. The biggest innovation will be the capacity – reaching 4,500 passengers per hour, per direction. I believe 3,600 is the current capacity record for a monocable gondola, a record shared between many lifts including the 10-passenger Gondola One at Vail and the 15-passenger Village Gondola at Mammoth.
The State of Vermont Passenger Tramway Division sent a letter Tuesday to Jay Peak Resort, ordering its aerial tramway shut down until significant upgrades are completed. Jay Peak agreed last fall to make critical repairs to the tram with more upgrades to be completed this spring by Doppelmayr/Garaventa. The State says Jay Peak has not completed these upgrades in advance of the summer season, hence the formal Order for Corrective Action sent this week. The Jay Peak Aerial Tramway was built by VonRoll in 1966 and received new 60-passenger cabins in 2000.
On April 14, the Securities and Exchange Commission seized control of the resort from its owners, alleging a $200 million fraud scheme. Florida attorney Michael Goldberg was placed in charge by a federal court and tasked with sorting out Jay Peak’s finances so the resort can be sold. Jay reportedly lost $6.2 million last winter and Mr. Goldberg is looking for cost savings. When asked about the upgrades needed to the tram a few weeks ago, Goldberg told the Burlington Free Press, “It kind of sucks that has to happen now.” He also questioned Doppelmayr’s assessment of the tram, stating at a press conference, “we’re not even sure we have to fix the tram. The company that tells us we have to fix it is also the one that will get the contract.”
Doppelmayr’s latest Wir Magazine has lots on D-Line.
Vail Resorts looks far and wide for its next acquisition with eyes towards Canada and Japan.
Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows enters strategic alliance with Genting Secret Garden, one of China’s newest ski resorts with a 6/8 chondola and two bubble high speed quads.
The Vermont Passenger Tramway Board won’t allow the Jay Peak Tram to operate until its carriages are overhauled and controls upgraded, which Doppelmayr says will cost $4.9 million. Not to worry, the court-appointed receiver says although “it kind of sucks that it has to happen now,” the work is scheduled and summer tram rides will happen.
The replacement for the La Bufa Cable Car in Zacatecas faces delays over concerns about visual impacts. Poma delivered parts for the pulse gondola lift last winter.
Mexico’s National Action Party criticizes the bidding process for Torreón’s new 8-passenger gondola but construction continues.
The Kottke survey is out and U.S. ski areas hosted 53.9 million skier visits last season, up slightly from 2014-15. The Pacific Northwest saw its best season ever, up 142 percent, while the Rockies were +8 percent, Pacific Southwest +53 percent and the three Eastern regions declined.
North America is up to 36 new lifts for 2016, up slightly from 2015. For comparison, resorts in Austria, France and Switzerland have ordered 94 lifts for an area roughly the size of Colorado Austria alone is getting 20 new gondolas! Last year the same three countries built 75 new lifts.
The Hermitage Club at Haystack Mountain is up to 875 members and $114 million in assets. American Skiing Company sold the property in 2005 for a mere $5 million.
Wynn Resorts’ $4.1 billion casino in Macau will have a Doppelmayr gondola that runs in a rectangle.
Cascade Mountain will get two new Leitner-Poma quad chairs this summer with more new lifts on the way, the resort announced today. This summer’s $9 million slate of improvements includes a high speed quad replacement for the Cindy Pop chair, a new quad serving seven new trails, an expanded base lodge and snowmaking improvements.
Cascade Mountain became the first ski area in Wisconsin with a high-speed lift back in 1998 and has eight lifts including three quad chairs. The new Cindy Pop Express will be nearly twice as long as the 1991 Borvig quad chair it replaces and will move 2,400 skiers per hour. The new “Lift C” will be a fixed-grip quad east of the current ski area serving new terrain. Cascade owners Rob and Vicki Walz are excited to move forward with the expansion that’s been years in the making. “My dad always envisioned using the far east side of Cascade for an expansion and he started cutting trails many years ago. The time has come to reach the next level for Cascade. Our customers will appreciate the new intermediate trails which are longer than what we have on the west side,” commented Rob Walz in the announcement on the resort’s website.
The Cindy Pop Borvig comes down to make way for a Leitner-Poma detachable quad. Photo credit: Cascade MountainWork has already begun in preparation for the new lifts. Cascade has plans for two additional chairlifts to be added in upcoming years which would bring the ski area up to 11 lifts and 55 trails. Congratulations to everyone at Cascade Mountain and Leitner-Poma on this exciting news!
The owner of Gletscherjet 3+4 built last summer in Austria say it has already carried 3 million passengers, believed to be a record for a winter lift. The system is an 8/10 combination lift interlining with a 10-passenger gondola.
Poma’s 2015 Reference Book is now online highlighting last year’s projects from around the world.
Doppelmayr and its contractors take responsibility for a construction accident at one of the terminals under construction in La Paz that injured ten people on Saturday.
Last week on my way home from the Rocky Mountain Lift Association conference, I stopped by Skytrac headquarters to sit down with Carl Skylling, General Manager of the company that’s shaken up the lift-building industry in North America over the past eight years. If you hadn’t heard, Leitner-Poma bought Skytrac two weeks ago in a move that surprised many. Carl is an industry veteran who worked his way up through Garaventa CTEC, Doppelmayr CTEC and Skytrac in construction, operations and management positions. In addition to kindly agreeing to be interviewed, Carl introduced me to some of the hard-working men and women who design and build Skytrac lifts in Salt Lake City.
Peter: How did you get started with SkyTrac?
Carl: I started out with Garaventa CTEC and then got pulled into the merger with Garaventa and Doppelmayr, becoming Doppelmayr CTEC. Jan Leonard had stepped down in 2008 and by 2010 I was Vice President of Operations but getting restless to do something different.
I approached these guys with a concept I had to continue this whole idea of doing service work and modification work because I saw that there was a big niche in the market that was missing there. So I approached Dave Metivier and Alan Hepner, and about the same time Jan Leonard was also getting interested in finding a way to take care of his former customer base by supporting them with service and parts. So there was this huge potential market to make all those parts.
One thing kind of led to another between [Jan] and I approaching our partners, Dave and Alan, who were running Hilltrac and Skytrac at the time. We ended up taking this Skytrac concept to the point where, with the four of us, we realized why stop with parts? Why not do a design of our own. SkyTrac started in 2008 doing some engineering/modification work with Dave and Alan but we really, in 2010, took it to the next level.
This lift bound for a fairgrounds in Sacramento won’t have Skytrac’s typical Monarch terminal but rather a simpler metal enclosure. Skytrac prides itself on meeting the needs of its customers in the legacy of Jan Leonard.
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