Projects & Plans

Innovative Gondola Coming to Oakland Zoo’s California Trail

Peter Landsman7 Comments
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Berkeley-based Noll & Tam Architects designed California Trail’s striking hilltop visitor center integrated with the gondola’s top terminal.

This fall, the Oakland Zoo will open a unique new gondola serving a 56-acre expansion called California Trail, enabling the zoo’s 750,000 annual visitors to enjoy two distinct complexes less than four minutes apart.  It’s only logical that a ropeway system will serve exhibits on a summit featuring grizzly bears, mountain lions and gray wolves. By choosing to build a gondola, the zoo avoided the environmental impacts of roads, trails, and exhibits on steep slopes and won’t have to run higher-impact shuttle buses. Nik Dehejia, Oakland Zoo’s Chief Financial Officer notes, “the gondola system will be the first urban gondola of its size in Northern California and the second in the state. It will be an iconic feature for the Bay Area, drawing thousands from all over the region to Oakland.”

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Doppelmayr crews building the top terminal.

The detachable 8-passenger system is being built by Doppelmayr USA under general contractor Overra Construction.  The gondola will feature 16 CWA Omega IV cabins and 7 towers that are up to 68 feet tall.  Slope length of the lift is 1,780 feet with a vertical rise of 309 feet.  The system will move up to 1,000 guests per hour/per direction initially with the option of adding 8 cabins to reach 1,500 per hour.  Ride time will be a quick 3.95 minutes at an operating speed of 450 feet per minute.

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One Park City and What’s Next for America’s Largest Resort

Peter Landsman9 Comments

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Vail Resorts’ $50 million endeavor to connect Utah’s two largest resorts last summer was one of the biggest infrastructure investments at a U.S. resort since American Skiing Company created The Canyons in 1997.  That summer twenty years ago, ASC bought so many lifts for The Canyons (8!) they had to split the order between three lift manufacturers to get them all done in time for the 1997-98 season. It’s hard to even imagine that happening today. Still, Vail did manage to build a two-stage gondola, add a six-pack, move a detachable quad, construct a mid-mountain lodge and re-brand an entire company over the last eight months.  I got to check out the results this week.

Park City Mountain is now the undisputed largest ski resort in America with 37 lifts and 300+ trails spread across 7,300 acres (it’s worth noting that Big Sky Resort still owns, and seems to have no problem using, the Biggest Skiing in America® trademark.)  The first thing I noticed is Vail did its best to remove all references to Powdr’s old Park City logo and the Canyons name, replacing them with the red infinity branding.  Despite these efforts, everyone still seems to call the northern half of the complex Canyons, or perhaps worse, The Canyons. Thousands of signs were changed over the summer and every employee got a new uniform. Most of the lifts were painted red although a few remain in black and orange.

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The new Park City has 37 lifts moving 78,000 skiers per hour across 11 square miles.
The flagship of “One Park City” is the Quicksilver Gondola and neighboring Miners Camp lodge. Vail Resorts took the design they used for the Tamarack Lodge at Heavenly and Zephyr Lodge at Northstar and brought it east, demonstrating how the company excels at standardizing everything across its resorts. (Pepsi, never Coke, and safety bars on every chair at every mountain are other examples.)

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Mi Teleférico to Add 9th Gondola Line in La Paz

Peter Landsman5 Comments

The world’s largest gondola-based public transit network, Mi Teleférico “My Cable,” announced on social media this week it has ordered a 9th gondola from Doppelmayr for delivery in 2019.  The Linea Plateada (Silver Line) will connect the existing Yellow/Red and under construction Purple/Blue lines in Bolivia’s capitol city of La Paz.  When complete, it will connect nine separate lines and 42 miles of cable together for the first time.

 

The brainchild of President Evo Morales, Bolivia went all-in on gondolas in 2012, ordering three lines (with 4 haul ropes, 11 stations and 450 cabins) for phase one.  The experiment proved wildly successful, offering safe, clean and reliable transport to the masses in La Paz and neighboring El Alto.  Less than two months after the first gondola opened, President Morales announced construction of five additional lines on July 1, 2015.

Not many public transit systems are as revered as this one, which has more than 160,000 likes on Facebook  (the largest subway system in the world, New York’s MTA, has just 50,000.)  Mi Teleférico’s slogan is Uniting Our Lives and it serves more than 100,000 passengers every weekday.  For 40 cents a trip, riders even get free wi-fi.

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World’s Largest Aerial Tramway Under Construction in Vietnam

Peter Landsman1 Comment
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The Ha Long Queen will have the world’s largest tram cars capable of handling 230 passengers each.  All photos from Skyscrapercity.com

Vietnam doesn’t have skiing.  That fact makes it an unlikely candidate for the title of world ropeway capital.  With multiple record-breaking gondolas operating and more under construction, that may soon change.  In 2007, Poma built a spectacular installation over two miles of ocean called the Vinpearl Cable Car.  The Hanoi-based Sun Group is behind many of Vietnam’s lift projects and is perhaps the Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group’s best customer.  Sun Group operates the second longest mono-cable gondola, just commissioned the world’s longest 3S gondola and is currently building another 3S that’s a mile longer than the first one.  Now they are building a huge aerial tramway and at least two more gondola lifts.

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A big tramway for a big wheel.

Vietnam’s first reversible aerial tramway under construction in Ha Long Bay will break two world records.  The Mystic Mountain Skyway Ha Long Queen Cable Car will link a new amusement park called Ha Long Ocean Park with one of the world’s largest observation wheels on a neighboring mountain across the bay.  The $282 million project is a perfect site for an aerial tramway with two points needing to be connected but with natural obstacles in between.  At the same time, the alignment is relatively short with moderate capacity needs.

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Jackson Hole to Build Another Gondola

Peter Landsman15 Comments

The sign went up this week at Jackson Hole, which will become the 12th mountain in the United States with the distinction of having two gondolas.  The new Sweetwater Gondola will replace the Eagle’s Rest and Sweetwater chairs in two stages.  Built by Doppelmayr, it will boost out-of-base capacity by 25% and provide direct access to beginner and intermediate terrain at mid-mountain.  In the future, a dedicated learning facility with dining, lessons and rentals will open at the mid-station just north of Sweetwater’s existing bottom station. Though expensive, gondolas have proven to be extremely efficient and less intimidating than chairlifts for people learning to ski and snowboard.

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It looks like Doppelmayr will modify its Uni-G terminal skin in an effort to match the Poma terminals next door at Teewinot and Bridger.

This section of Rendezvous Mountain has an interesting lift history.  A Riblet double chair named Crystal Springs served a similar alignment but with no mid-station from 1978 until 1997, when it was removed to make way for the Bridger Center and Bridger Gondola.  If you ride Eagle’s Rest today, there is still one Riblet tower where the old Crystal Springs crossed under on its way up.  Eagle’s Rest is one of three original lifts opened at Jackson Hole in 1965, even before the first tram.  When Eagle’s Rest is retired this spring there will be just six Murray-Latta lifts remaining in service worldwide.  The new gondola also replaces Sweetwater, a triple chair that found its way to Jackson in 2005 by way of Winter Park. It was the Zephyr triple from 1983 to 1990 and Eskimo from 1990 to 1999 before sitting in storage for six years. Built by Lift Engineering, it was upgraded over time with Poma chairs/line gear and Doppelmayr CTEC controls.  Assuming it gets re-installed somewhere, the equipment will be in its fourth home!

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Sweetwater’s two sections will have around 8 towers each.

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Squaw-Alpine Applies to Build Base-to-Base Gondola(s)

Peter Landsman4 Comments
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8-Passenger Sigma Diamond demo cabin in Squaw Valley’s shop.  Source

Earlier this fall, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings submitted its formal application to the Placer County Planning Department to build the three-stage gondola connecting Squaw Valley with Alpine Meadows that was first announced last spring.  Leitner-Poma will design the system on the heels of completing Squaw’s Big Blue and Siberia six-packs.  LPOA has lots of experience building detachable lifts with angle stations including similar three-section gondolas at Breckenridge and Sunshine Village.

The Squaw-Alpine gondola will be around 13,000 feet long with 37 towers and two ridge-top angle stations.  The unique system will have three haul ropes but only two drives located at the end stations (Breck and Sunshine’s gondolas have just one rope & drive each.)  In this sense, the base-to-base gondola is really two gondolas similar to Whistler Village and Revelstoke. What’s different at Squaw is the center section will operate with the Alpine drive by sharing a common bullwheel where the sections meet.  As such, the Squaw section could be run independently but the other two spans must operate together.  Regardless, cabins will normally make the entire trip from Squaw to Alpine.  The gondola’s hourly capacity will be 1,400 passengers per direction with 8-passenger cabins and a line speed of 1,000 fpm.  Squaw also plans full-speed operations during a power outage with generators at each drive station.

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Updated map with some changes from the original alignment.

The north mid-station on the Squaw side will be sited on private lands near the summit of the KT-22 detachable quad while the south mid-station will be in the Tahoe National Forest within Alpine’s existing permit boundary.  Skiers will be able to access some pretty awesome terrain from both mid-stations when conditions allow.  The Squaw Village terminal will sit between KT-22 and the Squaw One Express while the Alpine terminal will be between the Roundhouse Express and Hot Wheels. The gondola will actually fly over Alpine’s base lodge and under Squaw’s Funitel.  One interesting point from the application is that the Alpine mid-station at just over 7,700 feet in elevation will have no permanent road access or power line to it, which is part of why the central section has no drive motor of its own.  The terminal control systems, lights, etc. will run off a line generator and diesel genset.

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Twenty Years of New Lifts at Crystal Mountain

Peter Landsman9 Comments

There aren’t many ski areas in this country with as modern a lift system as Crystal Mountain in the Washington Cascades.  When I learned to ski at Crystal in the early ’90s, it was owned by a co-operative and featured a bunch of double chairs dating back to the ’60s and ’70s.  In 1997, the co-op sold itself to Boyne Resorts in hopes of bringing desperately-needed capital improvements to Washington’s largest ski area.

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Modernize Boyne did.  In the first two years of ownership, the Kircher family brought Crystal the northwest’s first two six-packs.  Two years later the Green Valley double was replaced by a Doppelmayr high speed quad, the mountain’s fourth detachable.  In 2007, the Northway lift opened up 1,000 acres of new off-piste terrain.  Perhaps the biggest project of all was the addition of the 8-passenger, top-to-bottom Mt. Rainier Gondola in 2010.  Last summer, Crystal replaced its final remaining Riblet and Hall doubles with new fixed-grip lifts (one had been destroyed by an avalanche, leaving the mountain with no choice but to replace the only way to the summit.)  Now almost 20 years since Boyne arrived on scene, the average lift here is less than 15 years old.  It’s a far cry from many of Crystal’s northwest neighbors. Snoqualmie, for example, still operates 11 Riblet double chairs dating as far back as 1967.

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Today, Crystal Mountain operates a gondola, two six-pack detachables, two high speed quads and five fixed-grip chairs.
By now Crystal has implemented much of its 2004 master plan but a handful of lift projects remain on the horizon.  Two aging lifts still need to be replaced.  Rainier Express was Crystal’s first detachable, opened in 1988, and is nearing the end of its useful life. The plan is to replace it eventually, possibly with a six-pack.  The Discovery beginner lift is also slated to be replaced with a more learning-friendly and extended high speed quad.

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Sun Peaks Plans to Double in Size Again

Peter Landsman3 Comments

Sun Peaks is Canada’s second largest mountain resort with 4,270 acres and 360-degrees of ski terrain spread over three mountains.  The biggest of those is Tod Mountain, which was also the original name of the ski area in 1961.  Nippon Cable of Japan purchased the resort in 1992 and doubled its size, adding eight new lifts in nine years and expanding onto Sundance and Morrisey mountains.  Nippon Cable should be a familiar name; the company licenses and sells Doppelmayr technology throughout Japan. Thus Sun Peaks is North America’s largest 100% Doppelmayr mountain.

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Today Sun Peaks operates 9 lifts, all but one of which were built since 1993.

Ecosign Mountain Resort Planners updated the master plan for Sun Peaks Resort in 2013 that aims to expand lift service into new areas and make significant changes to the current lift system.  Many of the proposed changes center around the Top of the World, the ski area’s 6,824-foot summit.  The two lifts that currently end here will be shortened or removed and three new ones added.  The Burfield quad (the world’s longest fixed-grip lift) will be shortened to just above its current mid-station. Primary access to Top of the World will become the Crystal Express, a six-pack replacement of the Crystal triple chair in a new and extended alignment.  A 30-passenger aerial tram is proposed from the top of the Sunburst Express to Top of the World for sightseeing.  A new high speed quad called Sunnyside Express would come from the west and top out near the two other summit lifts.

The West Bowl T-Bar would be replaced with a new, longer version while two of Sun Peaks’ three detachable quads – Sunburst and Sundance – would be replaced with six packs.  The missing link between the village and Mt. Morrisey would finally be added with a new West Morrisey quad chair.

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Whistler Blackcomb’s Next 20 Years

Peter Landsman5 Comments

Whistler Blackcomb is the greatest resort success story on our continent – from humble beginnings in 1966 to a resort municipality with 53,000 beds, Olympic host and the first to draw two million skiers in a season.  While Whistler and Blackcomb mountains were developed independently, they are now linked by one of the most iconic ropeways ever built.  Today, the mountains have a fleet of thirty lifts including seven gondolas and 14 detachable chairs over 8,200 sprawling acres.  Despite being the largest ski resort in the US or Canada, W-B still gets crowded and has opportunities for continued improvement and expansion.  The resort’s master plan prescribes replacing nine lifts and adding eleven more, primarily on Whistler Mountain. Many of the lifts add new out-of-base capacity with the goal of “staging” both mountains with 32,000 skiers in 2.5 hours or less.

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On the Whistler side, the plan includes a major expansion to the south, creatively dubbed Whistler South.  It would include an 8-passenger gondola from a new “Cheakamus” parking area and another base facility part way up.  At just 2,000 feet above sea level, The lower base would have no trails to it, just the gondola to the upper base area.  A second gondola would connect to here from Whistler Creekside.  Trail pods above would include a beginner area and three detachable chairlifts including one in Bagel Bowl.

Whistler's Master Plan includes removing 5 lifts and adding 14.
Whistler’s Master Plan includes removing 5 lifts and adding 14.

The Creekside base would also get a fourth gondola direct to Whistler’s Chic Pea, bypassing the Creekside Gondola/Big Red choke point.  Higher up, Franz’s chair and Whistler’s two original T-bars would be replaced by a single detachable quad from the bottom of the former to the top of the latter.  At the heart of Whistler Mountain, Emerald Express is slated to be swapped with a six-pack.  The quad would move to a parallel alignment ending slightly higher.  Talk about an increase in capacity!

If you’ve ever been in Symphony Bowl, you know the high speed quad built in 2006 serves an area larger than most ski resorts.  As such, Whistler Blackcomb plans two more lifts starting at the Symphony base fanning out in opposite directions.  One called Robertson’s goes towards Harmony while the other serves either Flute Peak or Flute Shoulder with a detachable four or six-passenger chair.  Access to the alpine from Whistler Village stays exactly the same; the only change on this side of the mountain is replacement of Magic (a Yan triple) with a 6/8 chondola.

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