Top terminal, lift shack, maintenance rail with work chair.Another view of the top.Parking rail.Bottom terminal at Warm Springs.Lower lift line.Loading area.View up the very long lift line.Doppelmayr EJ chair and DT grip.Side view of the top terminal.Bottom terminal from above.Doppelmayr Worldbook entry.Tower 12.Challenger ascends more than 3,100′ in 9 minutes.Yan Y tower.
I assume that’s somewhere under Bald Mountain? I may be visiting Sun Valley at some point soon and I’d like see them just out of historical interest. Did you have to get permission to see them or are they just sitting there in a field?
They were retired to the boneyard. The ones in use today at Sun Valley and Mammoth Mountain were the last design produced by Lift Engineering. However, I’m not sure why Christmas and Broadway (Mammoth) received them after having the second generation carrier design. I wish I could remember the name of the new carrier design. LE did a full page ad in one of the old SAM Magazines showcasing them. Of course, the company was no longer 3 months later.
Why did Yan not build any new lifts in 1995 if they had a new carrier design? Any more info/pics of that yan advertisement or any other doppelmayr/yan/other chairlift manufacturer advertisements?
The carrier design wasn’t the problem. Personally I like Yan’s chairs. However, the girps were the problem, which put them out of business before the could design a new one.
I would love to see Yan come back but with modern technology and a fresh new face. Personally I love the design of the Yan HSQs and too bad they didn’t do metal grips.
I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon until Janek Kunczynski leaves Mexico and faces prosecution for his accident on one of his funiculars.
This lift appears to be the tallest (most vertical) chairlift in the world. 2nd place appears to go to Sun Peak’s Burfeild quad (although that one gets first place for the most painfully long ride at 20 minutes).
LMAO “With a great deal of skill and personal initiative.” It’s not like they had a choice, Dopppelmayr. Whichever marketing employee wrote that obviously didn’t speak English as a first language.
I’d rather see it become a bubble chair. From what I’ve heard this lift is a really fun lift to lap because of the crazy 3,000 vert and having to take skis off for a gondola would kinda ruin that. In addition, Sun Valley already has a gondola out of the main base.
Not that old. The lift definitely has few more years left, based on what I’ve seen on our (even older) Doppelmayr. I’m not familiar with the DT grips as we don’t have any, but I imagine the machine is as well-built as the DS series was. I can’t speak for the Yan drive equipment of course, but unlike the grips that was typically overengineered.
Idea: replace Greyhawk and Challenger with an High Speed 8-Pack with bubble chairs with the first part of the lift going from the bottom of Challenger to the top of Greyhawk, then a mid station to unload, then have the second part of the lift go from the top of Greyhawk to the top of Challenger.
Sun Valley likes gondolas more than bubble lifts. I think also an eight pack is a little overkill. I was thinking that 3000 pph gondola would make sense for replacing Challenger. They operate a total of three gondolas and one tram for their two resorts, which makes me think that if this lift is going to be replaced, it would be a gondola. I do think there are some higher priorities than this lift currently, including a Middle Bowl replacement at Snowbasin.
An eight-pack is overkill, but a gondola doesn’t seem practical either because of the amount of terrain you have to use Challenger to lap.
I think the more practical solution would be one of two things:
1. Replace Challenger with a chondola that combines high speed six pack chairs and eight passenger gondola cabins.
2. Replace Challenger with an eight passenger gondola, and build a high speed quad running from the bottom of Flying Squirrel to the top of Lookout. This option would be a bit more inconvenient for those with an aversion to gondolas, since they’d have to take two lifts (Greyhawk to Flying Squirrel 2.0) to get to the summit, but it would actually be an arrangement similar to how Vail uses the Born Free Express and Pride Express lifts to supplement the Eagle Bahn Gondola.
Would it be possible to put bubble chairs on a Chondola? That would give sun valley some extra bragging rights as only chondola in us to have bubble chairs.
I’m pretty sure that bubble chairs on chondolas are just promos used by Doppelmayr for showing off their lifts. Most customers want either a gondola, or a bubble 8 with heated seats. It does look pretty cool though.
Of the many chondolas only one does not have bubbles, and that one is a very low-budget lift (and probably the last UNI-G installed in Austria). I expect the NA market that doesn’t have a whole lot of bubble lifts is different, but it is everything but just a promo.
If Sun Valley thought that gondolas are a pain to lap, they wouldn’t have built two of them for lapping for lapping purposes at Snowbasin. Chondolas and bubble lifts existed then, but they instead went went with gondolas. I would think that Sun Valley would most likely go with option 2. They definitely have the money and the room for it, along with redundancy in case one of the lifts goes down.
I listed the second option as when Challenger goes down, the Warm Springs side of the hill is cut off because Greyhawk doesn’t go high enough to reach any other lifts (it used to reach Flying Squirrel before that lift burned down).
The approach of ‘build a high speed quad from the base of Flying Squirrel running up Limelight to the summit’ concurrent with a Challenger gondola would be a pragmatic move anyways, because in addition to ensuring a secondary way up if this gondola broke down, it would just make sense so gondola-phobes could get out of the Warm Springs area.
It’s become apparent in recent years that backup lifts aren’t really necessary. Most places aren’t going to keep an entire lift operational for the one, maybe two days a year where it would be needed.
I’ve been watching the live cameras at Sun Valley as they remove this lift and Greyhawk. They’re bulldozing them, not taking them apart, so I’m guessing there’s not much of a market for buying an old, heavily modified Doppel-Yan detachable.
Lift Blog 
What happened to the teardrop chairs?
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Hundreds and hundreds of them are in the Baldy boneyard.
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Where is that?
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I assume that’s somewhere under Bald Mountain? I may be visiting Sun Valley at some point soon and I’d like see them just out of historical interest. Did you have to get permission to see them or are they just sitting there in a field?
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The Cold Sorings mountain bike trail used to go right by the boneyard though it has been rerouted now.
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They were retired to the boneyard. The ones in use today at Sun Valley and Mammoth Mountain were the last design produced by Lift Engineering. However, I’m not sure why Christmas and Broadway (Mammoth) received them after having the second generation carrier design. I wish I could remember the name of the new carrier design. LE did a full page ad in one of the old SAM Magazines showcasing them. Of course, the company was no longer 3 months later.
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Why did Yan not build any new lifts in 1995 if they had a new carrier design? Any more info/pics of that yan advertisement or any other doppelmayr/yan/other chairlift manufacturer advertisements?
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The carrier design wasn’t the problem. Personally I like Yan’s chairs. However, the girps were the problem, which put them out of business before the could design a new one.
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I would love to see Yan come back but with modern technology and a fresh new face. Personally I love the design of the Yan HSQs and too bad they didn’t do metal grips.
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I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon until Janek Kunczynski leaves Mexico and faces prosecution for his accident on one of his funiculars.
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How long would he be prosecuted for? Probably a few years I’m guessing.
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Also he is 83 years old so that’s likely to not happen.
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This lift appears to be the tallest (most vertical) chairlift in the world. 2nd place appears to go to Sun Peak’s Burfeild quad (although that one gets first place for the most painfully long ride at 20 minutes).
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Those are the two North American chairlifts with the most vertical. I have no clue as to the rest of the world.
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LMAO “With a great deal of skill and personal initiative.” It’s not like they had a choice, Dopppelmayr. Whichever marketing employee wrote that obviously didn’t speak English as a first language.
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This lift is getting old for a detachable, even though it did have the retrofit in 1995. I think replacing it with a gondola would be a good idea.
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I’d rather see it become a bubble chair. From what I’ve heard this lift is a really fun lift to lap because of the crazy 3,000 vert and having to take skis off for a gondola would kinda ruin that. In addition, Sun Valley already has a gondola out of the main base.
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Not that old. The lift definitely has few more years left, based on what I’ve seen on our (even older) Doppelmayr. I’m not familiar with the DT grips as we don’t have any, but I imagine the machine is as well-built as the DS series was. I can’t speak for the Yan drive equipment of course, but unlike the grips that was typically overengineered.
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I think it could at least get additional chairs to boost the capacity up to 2,800 pph at minimum.
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Idea: replace Greyhawk and Challenger with an High Speed 8-Pack with bubble chairs with the first part of the lift going from the bottom of Challenger to the top of Greyhawk, then a mid station to unload, then have the second part of the lift go from the top of Greyhawk to the top of Challenger.
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Sun Valley likes gondolas more than bubble lifts. I think also an eight pack is a little overkill. I was thinking that 3000 pph gondola would make sense for replacing Challenger. They operate a total of three gondolas and one tram for their two resorts, which makes me think that if this lift is going to be replaced, it would be a gondola. I do think there are some higher priorities than this lift currently, including a Middle Bowl replacement at Snowbasin.
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An eight-pack is overkill, but a gondola doesn’t seem practical either because of the amount of terrain you have to use Challenger to lap.
I think the more practical solution would be one of two things:
1. Replace Challenger with a chondola that combines high speed six pack chairs and eight passenger gondola cabins.
2. Replace Challenger with an eight passenger gondola, and build a high speed quad running from the bottom of Flying Squirrel to the top of Lookout. This option would be a bit more inconvenient for those with an aversion to gondolas, since they’d have to take two lifts (Greyhawk to Flying Squirrel 2.0) to get to the summit, but it would actually be an arrangement similar to how Vail uses the Born Free Express and Pride Express lifts to supplement the Eagle Bahn Gondola.
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Would it be possible to put bubble chairs on a Chondola? That would give sun valley some extra bragging rights as only chondola in us to have bubble chairs.
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I’m pretty sure that bubble chairs on chondolas are just promos used by Doppelmayr for showing off their lifts. Most customers want either a gondola, or a bubble 8 with heated seats. It does look pretty cool though.
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Of the many chondolas only one does not have bubbles, and that one is a very low-budget lift (and probably the last UNI-G installed in Austria). I expect the NA market that doesn’t have a whole lot of bubble lifts is different, but it is everything but just a promo.
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If Sun Valley thought that gondolas are a pain to lap, they wouldn’t have built two of them for lapping for lapping purposes at Snowbasin. Chondolas and bubble lifts existed then, but they instead went went with gondolas. I would think that Sun Valley would most likely go with option 2. They definitely have the money and the room for it, along with redundancy in case one of the lifts goes down.
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I listed the second option as when Challenger goes down, the Warm Springs side of the hill is cut off because Greyhawk doesn’t go high enough to reach any other lifts (it used to reach Flying Squirrel before that lift burned down).
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The approach of ‘build a high speed quad from the base of Flying Squirrel running up Limelight to the summit’ concurrent with a Challenger gondola would be a pragmatic move anyways, because in addition to ensuring a secondary way up if this gondola broke down, it would just make sense so gondola-phobes could get out of the Warm Springs area.
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New Challenger HS6 with a midstation, removal of Greyhawk, addition of Flying Squirrel HSQ from Warm Springs base to top of Flying Squirrel.
https://boisedev.com/news/2022/12/16/sun-valley-warm-springs/
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more of this awful trend of removing backup lifts with no replacement
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It’s become apparent in recent years that backup lifts aren’t really necessary. Most places aren’t going to keep an entire lift operational for the one, maybe two days a year where it would be needed.
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The backup lift is Flying Squirrel, a different alignment but you can now actually get back to the rest of the resort.
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I’ve been watching the live cameras at Sun Valley as they remove this lift and Greyhawk. They’re bulldozing them, not taking them apart, so I’m guessing there’s not much of a market for buying an old, heavily modified Doppel-Yan detachable.
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Challenger 6:
Flying Squirrel:
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