- The Boston Globe profiles a man who bought 62 lifts at 11 mountain resorts in his career and now wants to build a resort with 25 lifts at The Balsams.
- While states like West Virginia have no government oversight agency, a New Hampshire newspaper asks whether that state’s tramway board goes far enough. Part II of the investigation deals with lift inspections and Part III the recent grip-slip incident at Granite Gorge.
- The writing was on the wall but it’s now official; there will be no season at Saddleback.
- Nippon Cable will build Japan’s first chondola this summer at Niseko along with a pulse gondola.
- A San Diego County Supervisor thinks his city will have a gondola before the Chargers build a new stadium. The San Diego Bay to Balboa Park Skyway would cover two miles in 12 minutes and carry 2,400 people per hour.
- The federal government is in a dispute with the concessionaire that, up until yesterday, operated Badger Pass Ski Area in Yosemite National Park. Deleware North Corporation wants $51.2 million for trademarks including the Badger Pass® name so the National Park Service has re-named the mountain Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area. Its four chairlifts are safe from the litigation and now operated by Aramark Corporation as part of a $2 billion contract.
News
News Roundup: Making Repairs
- Timberline, WV re-opens the Thunderstruck triple today after getting tower 12’s crossarm back on and reinforcing the lift’s 16 other towers. Meanwhile, the lawyers are circling.
- We might not see many lifts built in the Northeastern U.S. this summer with continued dismal weather hurting business. With plentiful snow across the west, keep track of new lifts to be built this summer here.
- Privately-funded urban gondola proposed for the Don Valley in Toronto by Bullwheel International Cable Car Corp., whose CEO is a man you may recognize from the Gondola Project.
- Cannon Mountain’s Aerial Tramway also re-opens today after being down two weeks following its Valentine’s Day evacuation. The tram’s 500 HP electric motor was shipped to Maine for repair and returned to Cannon on Wednesday for installation and testing.
- Curbed looks into why no one seems to want to buy 14 ski resorts operated by industry titans like Boyne, Vail and Triple Peaks.
Bromont’s Lift 5 Re-Opens Tomorrow Following Fire
The Versant du Lac detachable quad at Bromont, Quebec will carry skiers tomorrow morning for the first time since Feb 3rd. That’s when a fast-moving fire started in the bottom operator house and spread to the return terminal before being put out by firefighters with help from Bromont’s snowmakers. The operator building housed a snowmaking compressor and lighting equipment, which may have led to the fire. For the past three weeks, the resort has been working with Doppelmayr to get the lift back in service as quickly as possible despite the lack of snow in Quebec. If there’s a silver lining, that bad weather was the reason no guests were riding Lift 5 the night of the fire.
Doppelmayr fabricated and painted a new operator house in Salt Lake City which arrived in Quebec on Feb. 19th, just two weeks after the fire. The lift was load tested on Thursday and while terminal damage is still visible, some burned out windows at the return won’t prevent operation for the final month of the season. Presumably, Doppelmayr will return this summer and replace the remaining fire-damaged components. The exact cause of the blaze is still under investigation but in the meantime, congratulations to Bromont crews for getting this key lift back up and running in 24 days.
https://twitter.com/Ski_Bromont/status/703372670310727680
Fallout from Timberline
Timberline Four Seasons Resort plans to have the Thunderstruck lift re-opened Saturday after last weekend’s incident with help from Partek, Aerial NDT and Ropeway Construction. A new crossarm will be installed to replace the one that fell from tower 12 and the lift will be load tested before it re-opens. “We have assembled a world-class team of manufacturers, engineers, and safety inspectors who have been working diligently since the event took place to assess and repair the lift, with multiple levels of oversight at every step in the process,” the resort said in a statement posted to Facebook.
Sugarloaf temporarily closed its Snubber lift (a 1985 Borvig triple) for inspections Monday after news of the incident at Timberline. Sugarloaf notes it completed Borvig’s recommended reinforcement of towers on affected lifts in the late 1980s, as did Sunday River.
The State of Vermont ordered the closure of the 2,000 foot double chair at Suicide Six after cracks were found on two of its towers. This lift was manufactured by Borvig in 1975 and has a different tower design than the ones at Timberline with no lifting frame. Because this particular lift provides the only access to the majority of the mountain’s terrain, the resort is closed until the towers can be repaired.
By my count there are 176 Borvig lifts remaining in operation in 26 states and 3 Canadian provinces. The company built 260 lifts from 1962 to 1991.
Added 2/25/2016: Sugarloaf announced today they performed non-destructive testing on the Skidway double’s towers this week in addition to inspecting Snubber. Skidway is a 1988 Borvig double. While the NDT found no problems, Sugarloaf will voluntarily install U-bolts connecting Skidway’s tower tubes and crossarms this week out of an abundance of caution.
Falling Crossarm Injures Nine at Timberline, WV
Nine people were injured and 100+ others evacuated when a crossarm fell completely off a tower at Timberline Four Seasons Resort around 9:15 this morning, causing skiers to contact the snow. Thankfully, only two of those people required hospitalization despite the fact that numerous chairs fell 10-20 feet during public operation. The lift in question is called Thunderstruck and was built by Borvig in 1986. It has Leitner chairs and is just over 4,100 feet long with 17 towers. Tower 12 is the one that failed. The pictures are harrowing and this incident could have been much worse. Sugarloaf’s two recent high-profile accidents involved Borvig lifts – a de-ropement with chairs contacting the ground in 2010 and rollback in 2015.
News Roundup: Italy Goes Premium
- Leitner Ropeways will build Italy’s first 8-passenger chairlift this summer featuring the Leitner Premium Chair.
- A 16-year old rides up outside of a gondola cabin hanging upside down from the doors. Yikes.
- Sugarloaf’s Lift Safety blog keeps guests informed of hiccups with the mountain’s lifts, most recently the SuperQuad, Sawduster and Double Runner East.
- Snowbird will replace the four track ropes on its Garaventa Aerial Tram starting April 18th. The tram will re-open sometime in June.
- 11-year old boy falls from the Peak Chair at Whistler, is caught by a group of staff and guests to the cheers of onlookers.
Big Sky Resort Replacing Challenger and Lone Peak Chairs
It’s official; in the wake of the incident two weeks ago, Big Sky Resort will remove and replace the Challenger double chair this summer rather than repair it. General Manager Taylor Middleton announced, “After exhaustive efforts to make Challenger operational for the rest of the season, we have determined that the best course of action is to replace it with a completely new lift. Skiers will continue to access the Challenger terrain via the Headwaters Lift for the rest of this season.” The new lift will be built by Doppelmayr but there’s no word yet on model and capacity.
In addition, a letter to passholders announced the Lone Peak triple chair – a 1973 Heron-Poma – will also be replaced this summer in some form. Big Sky has struggled for years with aging lifts needing replacement. The mountain’s gondola had a multi-tower de-ropement in February 2008 and never ran again. Big Sky has been looking to build a new, longer gondola from the base of the mountain to the Lone Peak Tram that would span more than two miles. With a mid-station, such a gondola could replace the original Gondola One, Lone Peak triple and Explorer beginner double in one alignment. Elsewhere on the mountain, the Shedhorn double needs more capacity and Big Sky has floated an idea of a lift up Liberty Bowl.
If you include Moonlight Basin and Spanish Peaks, what is now Big Sky Resort built an amazing 13 new lifts in six years between 2002 and 2007 (with 7 more going in at the Yellowstone Club.) The 2008 recession literally stopped the construction boom in its tracks, with the Stagecoach lift at Moonlight left half-finished and abandoned when owner Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. I’ve heard SkyTrac will be finishing that lift this summer. It’s going to be a busy one on Lone Peak.
Cannon Mountain Tram Evacuated
The Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway was evacuated on Sunday for the first time in its history. The tram’s two cars stopped around 1:50 pm, only about 75 feet out of the stations due to a yet-to-be-specified mechanical problem a bearing issue with the electric motor. After an hour and half, tram operators began lowering passengers by rope with the temperature hovering around zero. It took another hour and a half for all 48-passengers to make it safely off the red and yellow tram cars. Great work by the two operators who performed under pressure with minimal outside help.
Each tram cabin normally carries up to 70 passengers just over a mile between stations. Aguido (now merged with Leitner) built the Cannon Mountain Tramway back in 1979, replacing one built in 1938. The State of New Hampshire owns and operates Cannon Mountain as part of Franconia Notch State Park. Mountain management hopes to have the tram back open tomorrow morning. These things always seem to happen on a holiday weekend! (not far away at Sunday River the workhorse Chondola has also been down all weekend.)
Update 2/15: The tram will remain closed at least through the first part of this week.
News Roundup: Windy in Switzerland
- Owner of Echo Mountain files for bankruptcy but will keep operating the closest ski area to Denver.
- Saddleback, Maine won’t be open in time for February vacation week.
- Big Tupper, NY pulls the plug on this season entirely.
- Aspen Highlands looks to expand into Loge Bowl, with the possibility of eventually adding a lift.
- A quick-thinking 7 year-old hangs onto a dangling classmate for two minutes, long enough for resort staff to make a successful catch from a chair in Ontario. Canada requires nets to be out and ready whenever a lift is in operation for just this reason.
- Aspen Highlands chair pusher finally arrested and identified as a 31-year old local man with a history of mental illness. He’s charged with felony assault and misdemeanor reckless endangerment but will go to a treatment facility instead of jail. The investigation also reveals a 19-year old lift operator saw the 25-foot fall and hit an e-stop but didn’t report it.
- Gizmodo tackles urban gondolas, revealing La Paz carries 100,000 commuters a day on its 3 aerial lines.
News Roundup: Rope Evac at Big Sky
- I’ve ridden lifts thousands of times and last Friday at Big Sky was the first time I never made it to the top of one. A part in the gearbox on Challenger failed around noon with myself among 120 or so riders on line. Big Sky Ski Patrol did an awesome job getting everybody down safely in about an hour. Challenger is a reconditioned Riblet double built for Big Sky by Superior Tramway in 1988. Three days after this incident, it’s still down. This particular lift saw significant downtime last season due to a broken bearing.
- The Forest Service seeks comments on Arapahoe Basin’s latest master plan. It includes a fixed-grip triple or quad chair serving the Beavers expansion, a Zuma access surface lift, replacements for Pallavicini/Molly Hogan and removal of Norway.
- The Gondola Project asserts that cities now account for one in five gondolas and tramways built worldwide.
- The first new lift for the 2018 Winter Olympics, an 8-passenger gondola, opens in South Korea after months of delays. Two more detachable quads will be added this summer at the Jeongseon Alpine Center, which is hosting the Downhill and Super-G.
- The New York Times confirms North Korea’s Masik Pass ski resort got a Doppelmayr 4-passenger gondola this summer. It’s not new; according to Doppelmayr it came from Ischgl, Austria via a broker called Pro-Alpin who sold it to the Chinese. The gondola is in addition to the four counterfeit Doppelmayr lifts that appeared to be brand new in 2014.
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