Alterra Mountain Co., the new operator of eleven leading North American mountain resorts, today announced a transformational capital investment of $130 million to be followed by hundreds of millions more over the next five years. New lifts will debut at Winter Park Resort in Colorado, Mont Tremblant in Quebec and Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont in time for next winter. Competitor Vail Resorts revealed a similar $150 million plan for 2018-19 with six new lifts across its resorts last December.
Goodbye massive lines at Zephyr, hello gondola.
The largest single project for Alterra is a 10-passenger Zephyr Gondola at Winter Park replacing the current 1990 high-speed quad, the key people mover out of The Village at Winter Park. The new $16 million Leitner-Poma lift will be capable of moving 3,600 guests per hour to Sunspot, up from 2,600, and is the first new lift at the resort since 2007. It will feature Leitner-Poma’s DirectDrive technology, reducing energy consumption and the number of moving parts that can lead to down time. The new lift may also get a new name. “Zephyr is certainly on the table but nothing’s been decided yet,” said Steve Hurlbert, a spokesman for the resort.
Winter Park’s first true gondola will sport Sigma Diamond 10 cabins.
When was the last time someone spent $10 million to show you a good time?! We're making substantial investments this summer to provide you with the best guest experience possible. Head to our website for all of the exciting details: https://t.co/i35uxrH8RE#SkiBigWhitepic.twitter.com/rUrTOXzZiH
British Columbia’s third largest ski resort will retire its oldest lift this summer, a Mueller which dates back to 1979 called Powder. A new $3.1 million Leitner-Poma Canada Alpha quad chair will be capable of moving 1,900 skiers per hour versus the current 1,710. Big White calls the outgoing lift one of Canada’s oldest and most popular triple chairs with more than 15 million rides logged to date. “I’m proud to be leading the third generation of our family owned business, which was established in the summer of 1985,” said Peter Plimmer, president and CEO of Big White Ski Resort Ltd. in a press release announcing multiple summer projects worth $10 million CAD. “My grandfather, Desmond Schumann, would be proud of what we’re doing here at the resort.”
Big White’s Powder chair on a snowy Saturday last month.
Next season Big White will operate a fleet of a dozen Doppelmayr and Leitner-Poma lifts including a six-pack and gondola. The new Powder Chair is the second announced Leitner-Poma fixed-grip project for 2018 after Arapahoe Basin’s Beavers installation. Last year, most of the Leitner-Poma Group’s fixed-grip orders went to Skytrac, though that division has yet to build a lift in Canada. New lifts are also coming to Blackcomb, Whistler, SilverStar and likely Sun Peaks in BC next winter.
This afternoon couldn’t have been a more beautiful one for unveiling what will be America’s biggest lift. Over the next nine months, Big Sky Resort and Doppelmayr will create Ramcharger 8, a machine packed full of technology on Andesite Mountain. The current Ramcharger high-speed quad will move to Shedhorn and replace one of Big Sky’s most popular high-alpine lifts while a two-stage North Village gondola and more will eventually follow as part of Big Sky 2025. “The Biggest Skiing in America is getting bigger and better, again,” said Big Sky Resort General Manager and President Taylor Middleton before the bombshell announcement. Never before has America seen an 8-passenger chair of any kind, let alone one packed with every bell and whistle available.
We trail Slovakia in 8-Passenger chairlifts, Stephen Kircher noted to laughter in the gathered crowd. Not anymore.
I was lucky enough to be invited by Big Sky Resort and the Kircher family to be part of this momentous day in the Mountain Village, where Boyne Resorts’ Stephen Kircher detailed plans for being the North American ski industry’s D-Line launch customer. Kircher emphasized Big Sky’s lengthy path to this point and how the community has really come together in the past decade. “My family is proud of its 42-year commitment to southwest Montana and will continue the momentum that is underway at Big Sky Resort,” he said. “We are excited to bring the biggest chair in the world to Big Sky, and to work with the resort team and community to recognize the Resort’s full potential – rivaling the best of the Alps and our North American brethren.” With a huge snowpack, the Biggest Skiing in America is on track to have its best season ever with more than 500,000 skier days – a feat once only dreamed of here.
Lone Peak on an afternoon that turned into a historic one in Big Sky, Montana.
One of the world’s first chairlifts with heated seats but without bubbles will launch for the 2019-20 season at Sommet Saint-Sauveur, formerly known as Mont Saint Sauveur in Quebec. The new $4.7 million lift will be constructed by Doppelmayr, which is no surprise given that company’s significant manufacturing base just 15 minutes away in Saint-Jérôme. The six-pack will replace the Atomic Express, named for the famous ski brand and tied for the oldest operating detachable chairlift in North America at 33 years.
The Government of Quebec will provide approximately $2.3 million in funding for the new lift and other projects, an agreement which many American ski resort operators may envy. Sauveur is owned by MSSI, a holding company with five Laurentian resorts and is the previous owner of Jay Peak, Vermont.
Tahoe Donner’s 1971 SLI will go by the wayside this summer and be swapped for a new Skytrac triple chair.
It may not be the biggest lift project I write about this week but Tahoe Donner near Truckee, California has signed a contract to replace its Snowbird SLI double this summer. The Tahoe Donner Association is one of the country’s largest homeowner associations and therefore the process of assessing the old lift, designing a new one and funding it is all detailed on the neighborhood’s website. Tahoe Donner staff solicited quotes from multiple manufacturers and looked at the used marketplace but ultimately settled on a brand new Skytrac Monarch fixed-grip triple chair to improve safety and reliability.
The new $1.5 million lift will be bottom drive and bottom tension with an increased line speed of 400 feet per minute. Capacity will jump from 900 pph to 1500 with a comfortable 7.2 second chair interval. New terminals will be smaller than the old ones and located off to the side of the Snowbird ski run for better circulation. The lift will go from nine towers to six with a slope length of 1,600 feet.
Tahoe Donner is open to the public and popular with California families as an affordable option near Lake Tahoe. It’s great to see homeowners committing to the future of the mountain with this new lift. Thanks to Kirk and Max for letting me know about the project.
Just four days after its bombshell announcement of $16 million worth of new lifts for Killington, Powdr Co. today unveiled an even bigger project planned for Copper Mountain in 2018. The American Eagle high-speed quad will be replaced with a combination lift featuring six passenger chairs and eight passenger gondola cabins while the American Flyer is going to become a six-place bubble chair. The two Poma detachables being replaced were built in 1989 and 1986, respectively, and out-of-Village capacity will increase by 35 percent.
I will miss the Flyer’s old school charm but it has reached the end of its design life.
“Replacing our most popular mountain-access lifts will significantly improve how our guests experience some of the best skiing and riding on Copper Mountain,” said Gary Rodgers, president and general manager of Copper Mountain Resort in a press release. “More guests will be able to get up the mountain quicker to enjoy a variety of easy, intermediate and advanced terrain.” The Denver Post reports the new lifts will cost a staggering $20 million.
The outgoing American Eagle lift featured a Poma terminal design found on only a few lifts in North America.
Copper Mountain operates a mixed fleet of Doppelmayr and Poma lifts and no manufacturer was identified. Most recently, Doppelmayr built the Kokomo Express, two surface lifts in 2013 and the Union Creek Express in 2011. Pending Forest Service approval, the two monster new additions will open in time for the 2018-19 season.
Update: According to V3 in the comments, these lifts could be built by Leitner-Poma with the first DirectDrives in the United States. This would be great news if true amid a flurry of gearbox-related problems in North American ski country recently.
A gondola in Boston, Massachusetts could connect America’s sixth busiest train station with a growing waterfront neighborhood and convention center. Photo credit: Handel Architects
Two private development firms are moving forward with plans for a $100 million gondola in South Boston, which would feature three stations in its first phase. Millennium Partners and Cargo Ventures are building a 2.7 million square foot mixed-use development at the eastern edge of the Seaport District, a part of the city historically under served by public transit. The current Silver Line bus rapid transit lines here have been criticized since their inception as slow, overcrowded and inconvenient while a gondola would create a quick and efficient path to the new complex and beyond.
Photo credit: Handel Architects
Millennium is working with Handel Architects and Leitner-Poma on a design which it presented to the Boston Planning and Development Agency in January. The latest route avoids cabins flying past rooms at the new $550 million Omni Hotel, a source of criticism for an earlier route proposal, which is somewhat ironic considering Omni’s hopes to build its own gondola at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. The Boston gondola would travel over Summer Street for its entire 4,650′ alignment with stations adjacent to the South Station transit hub, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center and Marine Park.
The lift would travel down Summer street at varying heights to avoid getting too close to buildings. Photo credit: Handel Architects
The lift would feature 13 towers, 70 10-passenger cabins and a capacity of 4,000 passengers per hour, per direction (nine second spacing!) A ride between South Station and Marine Park would take just 7.3 minutes. A second phase could service the South Boston neighborhood with the Marine Park terminal becoming a sharp angle station. Cabin parking and maintenance would also be housed at Marine Park.
Photo credit: Handel Architects
This proposal is one of many urban gondolas envisioned for North American cities including Albany, Vancouver and Washington, DC. It will be interesting to see which one will be the first to actually break ground.
Crested Butte Mountain Resort’s vision to add three lifts and 500 acres of intermediate and advanced terrain moved forward last Friday with the release of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement by the Gunnison National Forest. Operated by Triple Peaks, LLC along with New England’s Okemo and Mt. Sunapee resorts, Crested Butte currently has a fleet of 12 lifts serving mostly beginner and expert terrain. The 58 year-old mountain seeks to provide guests more intermediate and advanced options and improve skier circulation. Triple Peaks owners Tim and Diane Mueller were previously blocked from building a five-lift, 2,000-acre expansion on neighboring Snodgrass Mountain in 2009.
Under the new plan, first proposed in 2015, one current lift would be replaced with two more added in an area called Teocalli 2 – far from Snodgrass and nearer current resort infrastructure. The North Face lift, a Leitner T-Bar installed in 2004, would be removed and replaced with a much longer chairlift. This fixed-grip quad would stretch around 5,000 feet with a capacity nearly twice that of the current surface lift. The new lift was orignally envisioned to start between the East River and Paradise lifts but is now slated to load directly adjacent to Paradise.
Current Crested Butte trail map; the expansion would be mostly behind the expert terrain in the upper left corner.
A second new lift with the working name Teo Park would similarly top out at the summit of the North Face but rise from the Teo 2 drainage behind. This fixed-grip triple would move 1,200 guests per hour with a slope length of 3,050′ and create a link between the proposed expansion area and the already-developed ski area front side.
The heart of the expansion lies lower in the west-facing Teo watershed, where a new high-speed or fixed-grip triple would span approximately 6,000 linear feet. Capacity would be limited to 1,200 skiers per hour and only a handful of new intermediate runs cut, totaling 89 acres. Most of the terrain – 434 acres – would be left as gladed skiing with select trees removed by helicopter. This expansive zone would supplement the popular and sometimes overcrowded intermediate runs serviced by Paradise and East River.
Public comments for this major project will be accepted here until May 10th and the Forest Supervisor is expected to make a decision around October. Implementation of approved elements could begin as early as 2019 and the Mueller family would likely sign with Leitner-Poma for any new lifts as they have for decades at Crested Butte, Okemo and Sunapee.
Known for its steep terrain, lack of crowds and plentiful powder, Castle Mountain is poised to expand significantly while staying true to its roots.
Something interesting happened in Western Canada over the past few decades. Just as many struggling small- and mid-sized American ski areas looked toward government ownership or nonprofit charity as solutions, private investors up north did the opposite, convincing communities to sell their publicly-owned ski areas for a brighter future. Residents in the town of Golden, British Columbia voted by a 97 percent margin in 2000 to give up control of a one-Riblet ski area called Whitetooth to a Dutch construction company. After debuting one of the world’s greatest gondolas and two new quad chairs, the renamed Kicking Horse Mountain Resort was sold to the Resorts of the Canadian Rockies conglomerate in 2011.
Golden, BC sits along the Trans-Canada Highway and saw significant development in the early 2000s with the creation of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort.
Seven years after Golden’s experiment, a Denver-based developer bought the Powder Springs ski area from the City of Revelstoke and announced a $22 million contract with Leitner-Poma Canada to create North America’s first resort with a vertical greater than 5,500 feet. One more lift out of a planned 30 was built in 2008 before a mountain of debt and the global financial crisis nearly forced Revelstoke Mountain Resort to close. Now controlled by giant hotelier Northland Properties of Vancouver, the jury is still out on Revelstoke’s viability as a billion dollar destination.
Meanwhile in Alberta
Another public to private transaction took place in 1996, when a group of 150 skiers purchased Castle Mountain from a nearby municipality to form Castle Mountain Resort, Inc. Castle was privately developed with two Mueller T-Bars in 1965 but became insolvent after a 1976 fire and was rescued by Pincher Creek taxpayers. Just across the continental divide from Fernie, BC, the mountain shares the same dramatic scenery as other Canadian Rockies destinations but without the fancy hotels and high-speed lifts. With a local population only around 35,000 and a three hour drive from Calgary, Castle currently averages only 90,000 skier visits despite its terrific snow and terrain. Some 3,200 acres are serviced by five main lifts and a nearly 3,000′ vertical drop exceeds those found at places like Squaw Valley and Alta. Averaging zero winter rain days at mid mountain (a perennial problem in much of British Columbia) and 350 inches of snow, there’s a lot to love for those willing to make the trek.
When the current investors took over, they inherited the two T-Bars, one of which is among the longest remaining in the world at 4,518 feet. Designed to be turned into a chairlift but never actually converted, the dinosaur was named T-Rex in 1996 and these days only rarely drags guests up its 1,670′ vertical. Castle Mountain has installed four new chairlifts since ’96, all of which came used from mountains like Sunshine Village and Beaver Creek. The ski area continues to generate all of its own power with diesel fuel.
The famed T-Rex, a beastly Mueller that cost only $67,000 to build in 1965.
In 2016, Castle Mountain Resort partnered with Whistler-based Brent Harley and Associates to develop a road map for the next decades of growth with input from the mountain’s shareholders, the local community and other stakeholders. The new master development plan was completed in May of last year and envisions the replacement of most of the current lifts, construction of up to nine new ones and expanded year-round recreational opportunities.
The Iron Mountain Tramway provides the only guest access to a popular adventure park called Glenwood Caverns along Interstate 70.
Colorado’s growing Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park will make a major lift upgrade in 2019, swapping its pulse gondola system for a detachable one. The Iron Mountain Tramway is a 2002 Poma Alpha model with 16 6-passenger Omega cabins that currently moves up to 300 guests per hour. From early 2019, a new Leitner-Poma detachable gondola is planned to more than triple capacity to 1,000 per hour with 44 six passenger cabins. Ride time will plunge from 12-15 minutes down to just seven. “This will help us enhance our guests’ experience by reducing wait times to board the tram and reducing the frequency of weather-related tram closures,” noted the park’s general manager, Nancy Heard in a press release. “It will be more stable in high-wind conditions, and will eliminate 80 percent of the shutdowns caused by wind and lightning.”
This terminal will be replaced with a new LPA one along with new cabins and a new haul rope.
Sixteen years after Steve and Jeanne Beckley opened the adventure park in Glenwood, it now averages 205,000 visitors annually and the tramway sometimes experiences 60 to 90 minute wait times. New tropical model Sigma Diamond cabins will feature additional ventilation and lightning arresters will be added to the towers in hopes of achieving more up time. Pending local approval, construction will begin November 1st and continue for four months, during which the park will be closed. Existing towers will be reused while the terminals will be completely replaced (the new drive system will shift to the top terminal.) The unique tower-mounted utility lines that have been in service since opening day will also be buried and a new two-story administration building constructed in time for the park’s 17th season.
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