The Snow Ghost double was replaced in 2019 with two lifts in new alignment. This is the lower of those two.The top breakover.Top return terminal.You can see the top of the Colburn triple in the background.View down at tower 14.This lift is further north than the Snow Ghost was.Upper part of the lift line.A four section splice tower.Tower 11.Upper part of the lift line with the Idyle Our T-Bar area in the background.Lower part of the line.Tower 6.Loading are maze areas.LPA drive terminal.This was the first lift ever built by the Poma group at Schweitzer.Drive terminal side view.Leaving the bottom terminal.Detachable grip.A chair manufactured by Leitner in Austria.View back down the line.Side view of a quad chair.Nearing the summit.Tower 12 with combination assemblies.Breakover towers.View down near the summit.Arriving at the return.Unloading area and Leitner-Poma operator house.Top terminal underskin.Upper station overview.Lower part of the line.This lift runs in a similar alignment to the original Timber Cruiser double decades before.Bottom terminal and tower 1.Side view.Upper station overview.The return station seen from the top of Sunnyside.Terminal with a view.The top terminal.Looking up the lift line.
The carriers are built in Europe (at one of several factories) and sent here, as far as I know. Since I didn’t see the bid process when we built ours (a year before this one) I don’t know the exact options you get here in North America, but I think the only ones built in GJ now are the fixed-grip carriers with the Omega/swoop design. Could be wrong on that.
I believe they now make carriers at GJ. They’ve also expanded a lot of the little things like sheaves, linings, bullwheels, and with the further integration of skytrac even more that’s fixed grip specific.
The only things left that aren’t USA made are gondola cabins and drive motors. (And ropes, but that’s third party for pretty much everyone)
Interesting. They hadn’t been making the Poma EEZII carriers, and definitely not the bubble chairs, just the older style. I did get to watch my then-new replacement bullwheel being built in 2007, that was pretty cool. Sheave liners are still imported from Semperit in Europe (they also make Doppelmayr).
Ah nice, I just saw bins of different sized liners next to all the mfg equipment and figured they made them. I did get to see work being done on a chair and sheaves, they have a lot of new fancy toys to make metal into new shapes. They were super glad to give me a tour, I’m sure they would for you! Plus GJ has the best mtb trails in the area, and Powderhorn has one of the better restored lifts you can find.
I actually got the tour in ’07- it was purely coincidence (although a good one) that my bullwheel was in the welding bay at the time. Much larger and better facility than the old converted vacuum-cleaner factory they used to operate out of.
I’d say no. I haven’t seen a new detach with the swoop carrier for ten years or so. Vail’s chair 5 had the first LPA grips in North america, and the first GJ-designed terminals to go with them, but they still had the Omega/swoop carrier. Not too many years later the newest Leitner carrier appeared and that’s what you get now, if you order a detach.
Two reasons. First, they wanted to separate the intermediate and advanced skiers. The old Snow Ghost had a midstation to access most of the intermediate terrain, as the summit has mostly black trails. By having the lower lift end at the midstation to serve the intermediate terrain and the upper lift serve the advanced/expert terrain from the summit, everyone can lap only the terrain of their choice. Yes, they could have installed a two-stage detachable or a single stage with a midstation, but that would have been expensive and continued to force all advanced/expert skiers to head all the way down Vagabond for laps. The second reason is wind. When it gets too windy at the summit, the lower lift can still operate.
This is what they did on the other side of the mountain when Lakeview & Basin Express replaced Chair 1. They liked the results there, so they did the same here.
Count me among the people who was really skeptical of this layout at first. But it works really well because it allows you to lap Lakeside Chutes––almost like the Face/A/B on the front side. Would almost be nice to have a companion lift on the other side of Kaniksu.
Their reasoning has been proven to be flawed. Expert skiers have now been pushed to other areas of the resort because consistently riding two lifts to return to the top is not enjoyable. There are never lines at colburn or cedar because less people ski that part of the north bowl at this point. The colburn triple is so slow. It takes 11 minutes and snow ghost used to be 13 minutes, but snow ghost served almost the entire north bowl while colburn only serves 35 percent of it. Cedar park express never stays open when there is wind. It is one of the first to close because of its location on the ridge and the trees that were cleared. They need to fix this problem and extend cedar to the top with a mid mountain unload at the current unload.
As the other person noted, separating the lifts was done so as to separate intermediate from advanced skiers. Intermediates get Cedar Park while experts and people leaving the Outback Bowl ride Colburn.
Also, they’ve proposed building another high speed quad that would run from the bottom of Cedar Park to the top of the Idyle Our T-Bar (and replace the T-Bar).
An extension of Cedar Park with a mid-unload (or, I suppose, upgrading Colburn to a HSQ) would be really nice, but I completely disagree that Colburn was a miss. Lapping Lakeside Chutes is almost a dream come true. I can now do in North Bowl what I’ve done for twenty years in the South Bowl –– lap the upper part of the mountain with relatively quick laps. I literally got five Lakeside laps in on Sunday morning before things started getting skied out, and that wouldn’t have been possible with a 20-minute ride on Chair 6.
It also separates skier groups, which was really the core objective. No, I’m not as able to lap Pucci’s Chute or Big Timber on the north side of Kaniksu, but those areas also don’t ski out as quickly, which I appreciate.
Puccis and Big Timber were already a bit of a pain to lap. It was much easier to either accidentally miss the return or deliberately finish a lap to Stella, meaning your fastest option at that point was to take Stella and cat track allll the way to the front to great escape. Now, a “long” lap still means you have a 2 lifts, but much shorter and more direct.
It’s hard to really describe but it really made the backside feel more capable. A T-bar lap is easier to get back from, a trip down to Stella’s trees doesn’t make you want to avoid a cold chair 6 ride… The sum is greater than the parts. You can easily do half upper or or lower back bowl laps now.
Cedar Park Express is a Leitner-Poma detachable quad chair that was installed along with the resort’s Sky-Trac Colburn Triple to replace the aging Snow Ghost lift this past summer. Thank you for taking the time to write a great post!
Pretty sure it’s another factor of cost. Winter Park’s gondola doesn’t have the catwalks but in the fall of 2021, they installed them on towers 1 and 2. However, in 2019 when Sunnyside was built, catwalks were added.
Last winter I was surprised by how quiet this lift’s motor / drive terminal were. Made me wonder if it had a DirectDrive. Does anyone know one way or another?
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Why were these manufactured in austria and not at LPA? Or are the chairs manufactured in Austria and sent here?
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The carriers are built in Europe (at one of several factories) and sent here, as far as I know. Since I didn’t see the bid process when we built ours (a year before this one) I don’t know the exact options you get here in North America, but I think the only ones built in GJ now are the fixed-grip carriers with the Omega/swoop design. Could be wrong on that.
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I believe they now make carriers at GJ. They’ve also expanded a lot of the little things like sheaves, linings, bullwheels, and with the further integration of skytrac even more that’s fixed grip specific.
The only things left that aren’t USA made are gondola cabins and drive motors. (And ropes, but that’s third party for pretty much everyone)
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Interesting. They hadn’t been making the Poma EEZII carriers, and definitely not the bubble chairs, just the older style. I did get to watch my then-new replacement bullwheel being built in 2007, that was pretty cool. Sheave liners are still imported from Semperit in Europe (they also make Doppelmayr).
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Ah nice, I just saw bins of different sized liners next to all the mfg equipment and figured they made them. I did get to see work being done on a chair and sheaves, they have a lot of new fancy toys to make metal into new shapes. They were super glad to give me a tour, I’m sure they would for you! Plus GJ has the best mtb trails in the area, and Powderhorn has one of the better restored lifts you can find.
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I actually got the tour in ’07- it was purely coincidence (although a good one) that my bullwheel was in the welding bay at the time. Much larger and better facility than the old converted vacuum-cleaner factory they used to operate out of.
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Telfs in Austria (only about an hour away from Leitner headquarters) is their “competence center” for chairlift carriers.
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Does Leitner-Poma still make detachable lifts with Omegas?
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I’d say no. I haven’t seen a new detach with the swoop carrier for ten years or so. Vail’s chair 5 had the first LPA grips in North america, and the first GJ-designed terminals to go with them, but they still had the Omega/swoop carrier. Not too many years later the newest Leitner carrier appeared and that’s what you get now, if you order a detach.
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The Northern Express at Hunter, built in 2018, has Omega chairs.
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I stand corrected.
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Does anyone know why they didn’t extend this to the summit? The triple is quite slow and cumbersome.
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probably wind, it does not look like there is much tree cover.
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Two reasons. First, they wanted to separate the intermediate and advanced skiers. The old Snow Ghost had a midstation to access most of the intermediate terrain, as the summit has mostly black trails. By having the lower lift end at the midstation to serve the intermediate terrain and the upper lift serve the advanced/expert terrain from the summit, everyone can lap only the terrain of their choice. Yes, they could have installed a two-stage detachable or a single stage with a midstation, but that would have been expensive and continued to force all advanced/expert skiers to head all the way down Vagabond for laps. The second reason is wind. When it gets too windy at the summit, the lower lift can still operate.
This is what they did on the other side of the mountain when Lakeview & Basin Express replaced Chair 1. They liked the results there, so they did the same here.
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Interesting.
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Count me among the people who was really skeptical of this layout at first. But it works really well because it allows you to lap Lakeside Chutes––almost like the Face/A/B on the front side. Would almost be nice to have a companion lift on the other side of Kaniksu.
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Their reasoning has been proven to be flawed. Expert skiers have now been pushed to other areas of the resort because consistently riding two lifts to return to the top is not enjoyable. There are never lines at colburn or cedar because less people ski that part of the north bowl at this point. The colburn triple is so slow. It takes 11 minutes and snow ghost used to be 13 minutes, but snow ghost served almost the entire north bowl while colburn only serves 35 percent of it. Cedar park express never stays open when there is wind. It is one of the first to close because of its location on the ridge and the trees that were cleared. They need to fix this problem and extend cedar to the top with a mid mountain unload at the current unload.
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As the other person noted, separating the lifts was done so as to separate intermediate from advanced skiers. Intermediates get Cedar Park while experts and people leaving the Outback Bowl ride Colburn.
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Also, they’ve proposed building another high speed quad that would run from the bottom of Cedar Park to the top of the Idyle Our T-Bar (and replace the T-Bar).
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An extension of Cedar Park with a mid-unload (or, I suppose, upgrading Colburn to a HSQ) would be really nice, but I completely disagree that Colburn was a miss. Lapping Lakeside Chutes is almost a dream come true. I can now do in North Bowl what I’ve done for twenty years in the South Bowl –– lap the upper part of the mountain with relatively quick laps. I literally got five Lakeside laps in on Sunday morning before things started getting skied out, and that wouldn’t have been possible with a 20-minute ride on Chair 6.
It also separates skier groups, which was really the core objective. No, I’m not as able to lap Pucci’s Chute or Big Timber on the north side of Kaniksu, but those areas also don’t ski out as quickly, which I appreciate.
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Puccis and Big Timber were already a bit of a pain to lap. It was much easier to either accidentally miss the return or deliberately finish a lap to Stella, meaning your fastest option at that point was to take Stella and cat track allll the way to the front to great escape. Now, a “long” lap still means you have a 2 lifts, but much shorter and more direct.
It’s hard to really describe but it really made the backside feel more capable. A T-bar lap is easier to get back from, a trip down to Stella’s trees doesn’t make you want to avoid a cold chair 6 ride… The sum is greater than the parts. You can easily do half upper or or lower back bowl laps now.
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Cedar Park Express is a Leitner-Poma detachable quad chair that was installed along with the resort’s Sky-Trac Colburn Triple to replace the aging Snow Ghost lift this past summer. Thank you for taking the time to write a great post!
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Anyone know why some of these newer LPA detachables don’t have catwalks? This one and some others don’t while others do
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Pretty sure it’s another factor of cost. Winter Park’s gondola doesn’t have the catwalks but in the fall of 2021, they installed them on towers 1 and 2. However, in 2019 when Sunnyside was built, catwalks were added.
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This lift has the standard ‘Poma Pass’ access hoops. The full walkways are an additional cost option.
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Last winter I was surprised by how quiet this lift’s motor / drive terminal were. Made me wonder if it had a DirectDrive. Does anyone know one way or another?
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It is not direct drive.
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