- Gunther Jochl, the Austrian-born owner of Sugar Mountain, got the CEOs of both Doppelmayr and CWA to come christen his new six-pack Saturday along with the governor of North Carolina. Apparently the lift may get gondola cabins in the future.
- A lawsuit from a homeowner could force the closure of Pennsylvania’s second largest ski resort. Seven Springs Mountain Resort operates two six-packs and eight fixed-grip lifts on 300 acres. Unfortunately, four of those lifts and 75 percent of the mountain’s ski runs cross a public road that the homeowner wants opened in winter. There are plenty of other ski resorts that have major highways passing through that close seasonally, including Deer Valley, Bridger Bowl and Mt. Baker.
- Cherry Peak, the new ski area in Utah, won’t be able to complete their Summit lift in time for this season. When I was there a few months ago, towers were laying on the ground along the line which will either have to be set or moved elsewhere. Two other triple chairs and a carpet are set to go.
- Arizona Snowbowl’s first new lift in 30 years is almost finished.
- An 8.5 mile gondola system coming to Missouri’s Las Vegas?
- Bartholet’s aerial tramway across the city of Puebla in Mexico will be finished December 15th, about a year behind schedule. Speaking of BMF, they have a new website.
- The Balsams clears some more hurdles but has still yet to break ground.
- Staying on the mega-resort topic, Hemlock Resort near Chilliwack, BC receives approval to spend $1.5 billion on 23 new lifts and 20,000 lodging beds among other improvements over the next 60 years. Hemlock currently has a 1977-vintage Doppelmayr triple and two even older Mueller doubles. Buried in the linked article is the fact that the ski area never opened last year due to lack of snow.
Hemlock Master Plan rendering from Brent Harley & Associates.
News
Leitner Introduces Premium Chair
When Sigma decided to develop a new 3S gondola cabin, they turned to a designer of Ferraris and Maseratis to create Symphony. Now Leitner is giving its chairs the same treatment with automotive-style upholstered seating. The new ‘Premium Chair’ combines real leather with heated seats and bubbles for the ultimate in rider comfort. The chair also has automatic locking footrests for safety. One of Audi’s design firms created the chair and it is manufactured at Leitner’s plant in Telfs, Austria. In a press release announcing the new option, Martin Leitner remarked, “The Leitner Premium chair delivers optimum comfort, ergonomics, and elegant design in one luxurious package. ‘Business Class for ski resorts’ sums it up perfectly.”
Kitzbühel is the launch customer for the new chair, debuting 62 of the 8-passenger version on their new Brunn chairlift this winter. Brunn is the resort’s eighth Leitner installation and will serve a pod of three new runs. The lift will also feature a 980-horsepower DirectDrive that Leitner claims will reduce noise and electric consumption by 20 percent versus a standard drive with a gearbox. Brunn will haul an impressive 3,300 skiers per hour at up to 6.0 m/s. The lift is 4,790 feet long and rises 1,417 feet with 17 towers. Kitzbühel’s total investment in the Brunn lift and trails is $22.1 million.
News Roundup: Panoramabahn
- I passed a Doppelmayr drive terminal on I-80 last week. Now I know where it was going: Sugarloaf.
- More pictures from Lutsen Mountains of their new gondola. The old Hall Skycruiser is still standing parallel to her replacement.
- Haul rope and commline go up at Okemo.
- North Korea’s Masik Pass ski resort looks to have gotten a base-to-summit gondola this summer based on recent satellite imagery. Perhaps another counterfeit Doppelmayr?
- In British Columbia, first Crystal Mountain and now Mt. Baldy will not open this season. Baldy has a T-Bar, Mueller double, and 2007 Leitner-Poma quad that last operated in 2013.
- SkyTrac load tests at Pomerelle. One more to go at Arizona Snowbowl.
News Roundup: New Owners
- See how Sigma Composite builds gondola cabins in the French Alps. The company also just delivered the first of two trains for Leitner-Poma’s automated people mover at Miami International Airport.
- Aspen Skiing Co. submits a formal proposal with the Forest Service to replace Lift 1A on Aspen Mountain with a high speed quad, gondola or combination lift as early as next summer. Meanwhile, this summer’s lift upgrade at Snowmass nears completion.
- Another Doppelmayr Eco-drive quad going up.
- Scott Shanaman, who founded Aerial NDT, becomes the proud new owner of Lost Valley near Lewiston, Maine. The resort (if you can call it that) has two classic Hall double chairs and a T-Bar that hasn’t run in quite some time. Congratulations, Scott and family!
- Powdr Corp.’s Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort changes its name (back) to Lee Canyon.
- Pacific Group Resorts, Inc. buys Mt. Washington Alpine Resort on Vancouver Island, becoming the company’s fourth (and largest) mountain resort. The Utah-based group bought Ragged Mountain in 2007, Wisp Resort in 2012, and Wintergreen earlier this year. How’s that for some geographic diversity?
- Some pics of a sharp-looking bubble six-pack being built by Leitner Ropeways in the Czech Republic.
News Roundup: Pulling Rope
- Pomerelle’s new SkyTrac triple gets a name: E-Z Rider. Unfortunately 15 lifts already have the exact same name! Where’s the creativity?
- Speaking of questionable lift names, Summit Express towers are in at Solitude as are Sunshine Quad towers at Okemo.
- Lutsen’s new gondola is a beauty.
- The Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest approves replacements of two Riblet doubles at Stevens Pass. Kehr’s chair will be a replaced by a fixed-grip triple and Brooks by a shorter fixed-grip quad. Stevens saved the old Jupiter quad (a 1993 CTEC removed in 2013) presumably for one of these locations. The Forest Service also approved construction of a new rope tow!
- “On paper it works, in reality we’ll see,” says FIS race director Markus Waldner of the rush to finish the South Korean ski resort that will host FIS races this February and the 2018 Olympic Downhill. Doppelmayr has reportedly sent extra workers in hopes of completing the lift system by January 10th.
- Take a ride on the hottest chair in Canada.
- You can buy a complete Borvig double chair right now with your credit card for only $65,000. (For anyone curious it’s from Hidden Valley, NJ which is re-opening this winter with two new Partek lifts.)
- Whistler-Blackcomb is not a fan of the proposed Garibaldi at Squamish resort along the Sea to Sky Highway and 30 minutes closer to Vancouver than Whistler. Some background: the same developer invested $200 million to bail out Revelstoke Mountain Resort in 2008 and owns an NHL team. The master plan for Garibaldi has 18 lifts including a gondola, two six packs and four high speed quads. I put this proposal in the same category as Jumbo Glacier and Saddle Mountain.
- Ski Cooper near Leadville, CO wants to build a new T-bar with a pod of 5 trails but not for 3-4 years.
News Roundup: London’s Gondola
- The non-profit organization that bought Soldier Mountain in Idaho from Bruce Willis wants out after three years. Now the entire ski area is for sale for just $149,000 (that’s the amount the organization owes its bank.) Included are two Stadeli double chairs built in 1970 and 1974. I’ve also heard Soldier has at least one lift from nearby Sun Valley in storage for expansion. The ski area’s master plan includes four new lifts that we may never see.
- Doppelmayr and Skidata think they have perfected gondola loading with the “easy boarding gate.” The system uses multiple ‘pods’ with turnstiles to enter. Flat screen monitors display how many spaces remain in each pod and guests self-select where to go. As gondola cabins enter the loading area, full pods are assigned to cabins with LED lights directing riders. I’m sure it works but why would a ski area want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to do what a $9 an hour lift operator can do?
- 22 towers fly at the Hermitage Club, soon to be home to the only 6-person Doppelmayr bubble lift in North America. Ironically the same helicopter flew towers from the Hermitage Club’s old triple the very next day at West Mountain in New York.
- Lots of new pictures of Sipapu’s new quad chair and an update on their blog.
- Drone footage of Crystal Mountain, Michigan’s “Backyard” expansion with eight new runs served by a used CTEC triple chair.
- Leitner-Poma takes the Facebook plunge. Their counterparts in Europe also have a pretty cool page!
- Peak Resorts, the fourth largest operator of lifts in North America, secures a $15 million line of credit for “resort development and acquisitions.” Might we see a new lift at one of their 13 resorts next summer?
News Roundup: Finishing Up
- Take a photo tour of Doppelmayr’s new six pack and new-used double chair at Sugar Mountain, North Carolina. Looks like it will have 90-degree loading and unloading.
- Views from the air of Snowmass’ new High Alpine detachable quad and Arizona Snowbowl’s new SkyTrac.
- The Gondola Project has a new interactive map showing the world’s urban ropeway systems.
- Speaking of urban gondolas, Poma won a $70 million contract for a 10-passenger gondola in Santo Domingo, the capitol of the Dominican Republic. Looks like this one will be built in Europe even though it’s not that far from Miami (where coincidentally Leitner-Poma is currently building an airport people mover.)
- The last rides on Lutsen Mountains’ Hall Skycruiser gondola will be this Sunday, October 18th. The gondola is coming down this fall along with the Bull and Eagle double chairs.
News Roundup: Hauling to 12,000 Feet
- The US Forest Service denies much of Eldora’s proposed expansion in a surprise decision. Approved: six-person detachable replacements for Corona and Challenge/Cannonball. Rejected: new Jolly Jug and Placer lifts.
- Crystal Mountain, BC (not to be confused with resorts of the same name in Washington/Michigan) will stay closed for another season. The BC Safety Authority revoked the ski area’s operating permit on March 1st, 2014 when a Mueller double chair de-roped and sent four people to the hospital.
- Doppelmayr’s September 2015 customer magazine Wir is now available online with a huge focus on urban ropeways.
- The President of Austria visits La Paz, the city in Bolivia that bought 34 Uni-G terminals and 1,350 CWA cabins from Doppelmayr.
- Leitner-Poma assembling chairs for Powderhorn’s first detachable lift, the Flat Top Flyer.
- Doppelmayr begins 15 months of construction on a new $16 million gondola to Arthur’s Seat near Melbourne, Australia. As usual, not everyone is happy about a gondola in a public park.
- I hesitate to even post this silliness:
News Roundup: Tower Time
- The East’s next big resort at The Balsams still hopes to break ground before the snow flies and open in late 2016. Still no word on who will supply the lifts.
- Leitner-Poma flies towers at Loveland, Snowmass and Sipapu. Brian from Timberline Helicopters has flown every tower in the west so far this summer with his K-Max. At Sipapu it reportedly only took him 37 minutes!
- Meanwhile, Doppelmayr puts up some big terminals.
- SkyTrans Manufacturing helps crews from Sugarloaf take down the Bucksaw double. Probably means it’s coming soon to a zoo near you.
Two Big Gondolas Opening South of the Border
Park City and Lutsen Mountains in Minnesota won’t have the only new gondolas in this part of the world come December. Leitner Ropeways is in the final stages of building a $72 million gondola system in Ecatepec near Mexico City. Two connected gondola lines will include seven stations and 184 10-passenger cabins. They will feature the first Leitner DirectDrives in North America. DirectDrive technology eliminates the need for a gearbox and associated points of failure.
The longer of the two lines will have a slope length of 9,577 feet while rising 180 feet in 10.5 minutes. It will have 20 towers and 108 Sigma Diamond 10-passenger cabins. The second line will be 5,922 feet long with a slightly larger vertical of 203 feet and ride time of 7.5 minutes. This one will have 76 cabins and 16 towers. Both lines will travel at a max speed of 1,181 feet a minute and transport 3,000 riders an hour each way. With five mid-stations, it would be difficult for cabins to be shared between the two haul ropes. A fault or stop at any of the seven terminals would halt the entire system which is just one of the reasons it is being split up with cabins turning around in the middle.
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