A transformer failed yesterday afternoon at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, knocking two lifts out of service. Crews restarted the Catamount quad on auxiliary but the Golden Eagle Express Gondola sustained damage to its safety systems such that it could not operate. With nightfall approaching, some of the gondola’s 75 passengers were plucked out of cabins by helicopter at sunset, making for some pretty spectacular GoPro footage. The rest were roped down by ground teams over about five hours. The 8-passenger, 11,188′ Golden Eagle Express was built by Poma in 2000 and rises more than 3,500 vertical feet. The gondola remained closed today but the mountain hopes to have it back in business tomorrow.
Gondola is on stand by due to technical difficulties. Skiing from Catamount & Pioneer Chair is available. More info: https://t.co/KBd5XOosRt
— Kicking Horse Mountain Resort (@KickingHorseMtn) January 4, 2016
Kicking Horse posted the following statement on Facebook this morning:
“Further to an electrical issue, the Golden Eagle Express Gondola was manually evacuated yesterday evening. With everyone safe, warm and fed, we apologize to each of you involved for the inconvenience. We are thankful that everyone is safe and credit to the talented team of professionals; Kicking Horse Mountain Resort teams, Golden and District Search and Rescue & Canadian Ski Patrol. We are hopeful that the Gondola will be spinning later today, though currently is still on standby. We are offering skiing and snowboarding via the Catamount Chair & Pioneer Chair. Stay tuned for further updates.”
Here we go! Our Gondola is up and running, boasting 4'000 vertical feet of wonder and guess what: it's snowing at the Horse! #thishorserules
— Kicking Horse Mountain Resort (@KickingHorseMtn) January 5, 2016
According to published reports, an unoccupied chair fell from the light side of Heavenly’s North Bowl triple just before 11:00 am today. As a result, approximately 65 people were evacuated from the lift in about two hours. The incident is under investigation. North Bowl is a 1984 Riblet triple with insert clips. The video below shows a skier being lowered by rope and North Bowl will remain closed until further notice.
Construction at Laurel Mountain is 30% complete and ahead of schedule. The state-owned mountain will open next winter for the first time since 2005 with a brand new SkyTrac quad.
Magic Mountain only managed to open one lift last winter and may not spin any this season. The Vermont area had five aerial lifts in its heyday.
CNL Lifestyle Properties, the real estate investment trust that was slated to wind down by Dec. 31st, only sold one of its 16 mountain resorts by that date. Okemo, Northstar, Big Sky and a dozen others will remain for sale into 2016.
Girl uninjured after mis-loading, dangling by her helmet and falling 20 feet from a chair in Saskatchewan.
Thanks to some much-needed snow, Vermont now has a third six-pack with bubble chairs and heated seats. This one’s not open to the public, unfortunately.
Sunshine’s Goat’s Eye Express, a detachable quad built by Poma in 1995, had to be evacuated Sunday afternoon due to a gearbox-related failure. Patrol lowered 110 skiers and riders in about two hours. While these types of evacuations happen at ski areas many times each winter (and earlier this week at Buttermilk and Montana Snowbowl) this one happened to get a lot of social media and press attention. The good news is no one was injured and repairs are underway.
Attention Skiers: Goat's Eye Express is currently down for maintenance. Our team is working to get the lift back… https://t.co/kKI0SdqNPH
Lift maintenance worker falls 25 feet at Black Mountain, NH.
Leitner Ropeways wins a $9.2 million contract to build an 8-passenger pulse gondola in the northern Mexican city of Torreon. Doppelmayr was the only other bidder. Another Leitner project in Ecatepec, Mexico is more than 90% finished.
If you aren’t yet tired of seeing Park City’s new gondola, check out this incredible interactive video from Ski Utah. You can pan 360-degrees using your smartphone or tablet with the YouTube app while taking a virtual ride. It also works on a desktop but you have to pan manually using your mouse.
Teams from Mt. Hood Meadows have repaired and re-opened the Shooting Star Express that was damaged by falling trees over Thanksgiving. Now the storm recovery turns to the Mt. Hood Express, which received ten feet of snow in one week.
White Pass has more snow than it did at anytime last winter but no one can get there. Crews have been working around the clock to repair washouts that cut off the resort from both sides of the Cascades Dec. 9th. The ski area will re-open Wednesday.
The Berry family says it’s close to a deal to sell Saddleback to a new owner that hopes to open by late January. Passholders can get a refund or gift card now.
Aspen’s 1971 SLI double on Shadow Mountain will be replaced with a detachable quad or gondola in 2016 or ’17. The top terminal will move 200 feet to the southwest resulting in a slope length of 3,600′ with 1,390′ vertical and a capacity of 1,200 skiers per hour.
Park City and Canyons are now one thanks to the Quicksilver Gondola but judging by snow conditions it’s going to be awhile before you can ski between the two.
Sugarloaf and Doppelmayr load test King Pine on Dec. 19, 2015.
James Coleman opens new quad chairs at Purgatory (Leitner-Poma) and Arizona Snowbowl (SkyTrac) with more new lifts on the way.
More pictures and details are filtering out from Hochgurgl, Austria where the Kirchenkarbahn opened Dec. 10th. This 10-passenger gondola wouldn’t be particularly notable but for the fact that it’s Doppelmayr’s first production model of the next-generation detachable lift called D-Line.
First a little history. Doppelmayr introduced the Uni-G terminal in 2000, replacing the “Spacejet” model of the 1990s. After the merger of Doppelmayr and Garaventa in 2002, the company continued to offer Stealth III and Uni-G detachable lifts in the US. In 2003, Doppelmayr CTEC added a North American-design called the Uni-GS and built 88 of them before discontinuing the model in 2009. With the Stealth gone since 2004, the Uni-G became the only Doppelmayr detachable product worldwide until now.
Doppelmayr graphic shows terminals getting shorter over the years despite faster line speeds.
German architect Werner Sobek designed the D-Line terminal and he’s apparently well known-enough to have an English Wikipedia page. His enclosure is almost entirely composed of windows with a modern, boxy look that I’m not sold on. Setting appearance aside, Doppelmayr says D-Line can support line speeds of up to 7 m/s or 1,378 feet a minute. This is a big deal; the fastest circulating ropeway I know of today maxes out at 1,212 FPM. The Kirchenkarbahn uses a gearbox from Eisenbeiss and controls from Frey Austria.
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