- Apparently Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire will get the first LST Ropeways lift in North America. Manufactured in Germany, it will be a T-Bar for the Mittersill racing area which has an existing Doppelmayr CTEC double chair. SkyTrac will be doing the installation. LST Ropeways is owned by the MND Group which also owns Gazex (avalanche release systems) and Sufag (snowmaking systems) with a North American facility in Eagle, CO.
- Leitner-Poma will re-engineer and modify towers on the Grey Mountain lift at Red Mountain, BC this fall. The quad chair was built in 1992 at Alyeska and moved to Red in 2013. The re-installation was done by Summit Lift Co. of Fernie, BC and the lift has 18 towers in its current configuration. No word on the exact reason for the re-design.
- The Camelot chair at Boyne Highlands is losing its vault drive terminal that is literally part of the ski area’s base lodge. In its place will be a used CTEC drive terminal. Does anyone know where it came from?
- The Aspen Daily News reports on the all new High Alpine detachable quad at Snowmass.
- Snow King debuted Doppelmayr’s new ‘Alpinstar’ terminal this summer and now Caberfae Peaks, MI will debut the ‘Ministar’ in 2016. The new triple chair will replace the Clubhouse double which is a 1967 Hall.
- Developers are still trying to figure out how to get a new Lift 1A back into downtown Aspen like the original single chair.
News
News Roundup: Tragedy in Oklahoma
- OSHA is investigating the death of one of two mechanics who fell while doing line work on the Skyride at the Tulsa State Fair. A work chair on the 1965 VonRoll gondola appears to have failed below the hanger, dangling both men from their harnesses. Steve Shelton, 43, died of trauma as a result. His family set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for funeral expenses.
- Poma is setting steel for Europe’s new highest lift in Russia. The three-stage, two-passenger gondola on Mt. Elbrus will reach 3,847 m/12,621 feet (Breckenridge’s Imperial Express SuperChair goes 350 feet higher.)
- Sugarloaf begins removing its oldest lift as part of a ‘lift safety’ initiative. I guess a lift that doesn’t exist is safer than one that does.
- Hidden Valley, New Jersey’s three Borvig lifts are out and two new Partek lifts are going in. The ski area which closed in 2013 also has a new name – the National Winter Activity Center. Follow the progress live here.
- The city of Cali in Colombia will open MIO Cable, a 10-passenger Poma gondola, on Friday. The 6,800′ system has four stations and 60 Sigma cabins that move 2,000 passengers per hour each way.
- Deer Valley Resort, SkyTrac and the NSAA will host an evening program honoring Jan Leonard on October 14th at Snow Park Lodge.
- Doppelmayr crews fly 11 towers for a new gondola at Lutsen Mountains, Minnesota. The $7 million system is going up alongside the resort’s Hall gondola, which will run through October 18th.
- It’s looking like Saddleback, Maine will have a ski season without a new lift.
News Roundup: Closings and Openings
- When is a ski resort expansion not really an expansion? When the terrain used to be served by a detachable quad that was re-possessed by Bank of America. Kidding aside, Tamarack seems to be getting back on track.
- Another eastern ski area bites the dust; Tuxedo Ridge, NY and its four double chairs will not operate this winter.
- Saddleback has reportedly canceled this summer’s NDT and let go of its lift mechanics.
- Hong Kong’s Ngong Ping 360 (Leitner bi-cable gondola) may get a third section.
- The Indonesian city of Bandung is still studying a $357 million, 26-mile gondola network.
- Dodge Ridge, Soda Springs, Boreal, Sugarloaf, Cannon Mountain, Pat’s Peak and Wildcat are all looking for lift maintenance managers ten weeks from ski season.
- Leitner Ropeways has a brand new website. It even has a station configurator tool to match Doppelmayr’s.
Three New 3S Gondolas Coming Soon
The 3S Gondola is today’s finest lift technology with large, comfortable cabins quickly moving thousands of people per hour over virtually any terrain. Doppelmayr and VonRoll pioneered the technology with Poma and Leitner developing their own versions in recent years. Thirteen of these systems operate worldwide with at least three more in development in settings as diverse as the Swiss Alps and islands of Vietnam. Here is a summary:
3S Bahn – Zermatt Bergbahnen AG
The world’s highest elevation 3S will open on the Matterhorn in Zermatt for 2018. It will feature Leitner’s DirectDrive technology and new Sigma Symphony cabins designed by the famous Italian firm Pininfarina. Its 25 28-passenger cabins will move 2,000 skiers per hour at 7.5 meters per second. The lift will cover almost 13,000 feet laterally and 3,000 feet vertically in nine minutes. Zermatt will be the first non-urban 3S gondola for Leitner or Poma. Construction begins next summer.
News Roundup: The Future in Ankara
- Sugarloaf Mountain Resort announces a new director of lifts to oversee maintenance and operations after two high-profile lift accidents. He’s not exactly a Boyne Resorts outsider.
- Finally some news from Saddleback; the owners are in negotiations with four potential buyers and this season may or may not happen. Talk about bad press.
- Group hoping to reopen the Antelope Butte ski area near Sheridan, Wyoming will make a down payment to the Forest Service within two weeks. The area has two Riblet double chairs that last operated in 2004.
- Switzerland sets the maximum blood-alcohol content for a person operating a cable car at 0.05% (the same limit as for drunk driving there.)
- A national park in South Korea may be getting a $39 million 10-passenger gondola, the country’s 155th ropeway. South Korea will also be hosting the next Winter Olympics.
- Parts for the new Ptarmigan lift are on site at Loveland, CO.
- Mont Cascades in Quebec makes solid progress on replacing their TC double chair with a Doppelmayr quad.
A Chondola for Gatlinburg, Tennessee?
Gatlinburg, Tennessee is the surprising home to a half dozen aerial lifts including the Gatlinburg Sky Lift and Ober Gatlinburg ski resort with a 120-passenger VonRoll aerial tramway. This town of less than 4,000 may now be adding a Leitner-Poma chondola to the mix. A new mixed-use development called Anakeesta includes the AerialQuest Adventure Park and a new hotel with a chondola connecting the two. The project’s website is unclear on exactly what type of system is coming, but apparently it will take 12 minutes each way and have between four and eight passenger cabins (the photoshopped cabins on the website are Gangloff, not Sigma.) The site calls it a chondola and Telemix although its not clear the person who wrote the copy actually knows what those terms mean. Websites are cheap, gondolas are not so we will see if this one really opens in the Spring of 2017.
News Roundup: Pardatschgratbahn
- Its been six weeks since the Berry family, owners of Saddleback, Maine, said they would close the resort if they could not find financing to order a new lift by August 1st. Regardless of the outcome, this has been a PR disaster with a desperate announcement and then silence. Not a good sign when the general manager refuses to talk to the state’s largest newspaper. My take: despite the bluff they will find a way to open.
- Ligonier Construction awarded $4.6 million contract to re-build the State of Pennsylvania’s Laurel Mountain Ski Area. The project includes a new quad chairlift but I could not find a lift manufacturer identified in the bid documents. Nearby Seven Springs Mountain Resort will operate the ski area on behalf of the state.
- Snow Summit proves again that snowmaking systems can save lifts and buildings from wildfires.
- What if Aspen had a gondola from Ajax to Buttermilk and Snowmass?
- Not one but four 15-passenger gondolas proposed to link a cruise terminal with George Town in the Caribbean’s Cayman Islands. I’m thinking even that won’t be enough when Royal Caribbean’s newest ship shows up with 6,000 passengers tired of being on a ship with 6,000 passengers.
- “No one has contributed more to the task of transporting skiers and snowboarders up the ski mountains of the United States than Jan Leonard,” said the President of the NSAA in the Salt Lake Tribune’s obituary. Services will be held tomorrow.
Jan Leonard, 1946-2015
Jan Leonard, founder of CTEC and a 40-year veteran of the lift-building business, died unexpectedly this morning at the age of 69. Most recently, he was Director of Sales for SkyTrac Lifts in Salt Lake City and previously was President of Doppelmayr USA.
After graduating from Penn State in 1968, Jan went to work for American Bridge in Pittsburgh before meeting the manager of Killington on a ski trip and getting into the lift business. He went to work for Vic Hall in Watertown, New York in 1971 before moving to Logan, Utah in 1973 to join Thiokol Ski Lifts. When Thiokol wanted out of the business a few years later, Leonard and Mark Ballantyne bought the company’s designs and started CTEC (Cable Transportation Engineering Corporation) in 1977. CTEC built its first complete lift in 1981 and by 1992 was the largest lift manufacturer in North America with 450 employees. CTEC built 144 lifts as a privately owned American company.
Leonard and Ballantyne sold CTEC to Garaventa of Switzerland in 1993. Doppelmayr merged with Garaventa in 2002 to form today’s Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group, which ironically included Hall, where Jan Leonard started his career decades earlier. Leonard stayed on as the President of Doppelmayr USA until 2007, when he left to be an independent ropeway consultant. He was was off a lift company’s payroll for less than three years before joining SkyTrac in 2010 as director of sales. “I don’t like losing. The thrill of getting the sale is phenomenal,” he told SAM earlier this year.
News Roundup: Eco-Friendly
- Leitner-Poma flies concrete for Loveland’s new Ptarmigan lift, a triple which will replace two lifts in a new alignment.
- Aerospace Engineer Michael Bouchard is determined to reopen Tenney Mountain after five seasons being closed.
- Season pass sales have been suspended at the troubled Magic Mountain in Londonderry, Vermont. The classic New England ski resort is down to two working chair lifts (in 1990 it had five.)
- Poma has a new brochure about its urban lift projects.
- Mt. Rose is relocating the Ponderosa quad (1993 Garaventa CTEC) to become the Wizard beginner lift. It also looks like their James Niehues trail map is out and a Gary Milliken VistaMap is in.
- One of Garaventa’s retired engineers has written an 834-page book called Ropeway Technology. It can be yours for only 125 Swiss Francs (plus $32 for shipping to the USA.)
- Sugarloaf pours foundations for their new terminal on an old lift.
Is This Doppelmayr’s New Detachable Terminal?
Back in November, Seilbahntechnik.net posted some interesting pictures of a prototype lift being built at Doppelmayr’s headquarters in Wolfurt, Austria. The lift is detachable with at least one six-pack bubble chair and 8-passenger gondola cabin on the line. More interesting are the terminals, which are different from any production model I have ever seen. They look similar to the Uni-G (the current standard terminal used worldwide) but are definitely different. Doppelmayr has been rumored to be working on a more economical detachable lift and this could be it.
Remember Doppelmayr CTEC tried using a less-expensive detachable terminal in North America called the Uni-GS from 2003-2010. It was discontinued it in favor of the Wolfurt-designed Uni-G, which made its North American debut in 2000. The terminal model used before that, what I call the “Spacejet,” lasted from 1995-2001, so the Uni-G may be due for a refresh.
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