The State of New York built Catskill Thunder in part to match the level of service at its two other publicly-owned mountains, Gore and Whiteface, which both feature prominent gondolas.The lift is quite long but with modest vertical rise.View up at tower 13.The top station.The upper terminal houses the tensioning system.Narrow Uni-G M terminal.Breakover towers.Top station unloading area and operator house.The top terminal and tower 16.View up at the return terminal.Looking up the upper half of the line.The flat lower half.Another look up the line.View down above tower 5.Base area overview.Almost the entire line is visible here.Depression towers 1 and 2.Lift overview.The loading area.Looking up line from the drive station.Another shot of the base station.A CWA Omega IV cabin with DT-108 grip.View riding up the line.New maintenance rail at the summit during the 2023-24 season.Cabins passing near the summit.
This is, in my opinion, the absolute stupidest lift purchase ever made in the Northeast (and likely in North America).The way the lift is built, the only 2 ways down are Deer Run (which includes the bridge over the road), or skate/walk around the base lodge, and these 2 routes combined are not suitable for 2000 people per hour. 1/2 and Tomahawk being replaced with HSQs and 7 being replaced with a FGQ would have been much better for improving skier flow and guest experience (and the gondola probably cost as much as at least 2 of these combined). I hate this lift.
Also, who buys a gondola without cabin storage? I thought that was pretty standard.
Gondola storage should be standard but many places (us included) don’t factor it into the cost of the lift and it takes a few years. We at least built storage for our bubbles :)
Lift Blog 
Looks like that area could have used a little more snow when these were taken haha
LikeLike
This is, in my opinion, the absolute stupidest lift purchase ever made in the Northeast (and likely in North America).The way the lift is built, the only 2 ways down are Deer Run (which includes the bridge over the road), or skate/walk around the base lodge, and these 2 routes combined are not suitable for 2000 people per hour. 1/2 and Tomahawk being replaced with HSQs and 7 being replaced with a FGQ would have been much better for improving skier flow and guest experience (and the gondola probably cost as much as at least 2 of these combined). I hate this lift.
Also, who buys a gondola without cabin storage? I thought that was pretty standard.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gondola storage should be standard but many places (us included) don’t factor it into the cost of the lift and it takes a few years. We at least built storage for our bubbles :)
LikeLike
I don’t get all the comments saying that this lift is an overbuild. I think it was perfectly reasonable to build a gondola here.
LikeLike