Crest 6 replaced the Crest Express quad in summer 2023.Arriving at the D-Line top terminal.D26 station with grip work bay.Drive equipment inside the top terminal.D-Line grip with green springs.Grips in the turnaround area.Two ring direct drive.Diesel evacuation engine.Controls inside the top operator house.Tower 14.Towers along a flat section of the line.The return station and tower 1.Hold down T1.Outdoor operator controls.Breakover towers 15 and 16.Side view of a loaded chair.Another view of a chair.View down the lift line.Conical tower imported from Austria.Tall tower to enable the lift to pass over a cabin.Backside of a six seat chair.Tower 3.Base area overview.Bottom terminal and RFID gates.Lower station with LED screen.Lift overview.Loading area with 90 degree loading and conveyor.The entire lift line.Side view of the bottom station.A chair passing tower 1.View riding up at tower 2.Middle section of the lift line.Steep upper part of the line.Nearing the summit.Upper station on the Wasatch Crest.Unloading area.Side view of the top terminal.View from the summit.A full chair.Middle section of the line.Combination tower.A chair passing a tower head.View up at a chair with green elements.Lower part of the line.Empty chair.Towers 15 and 16.View from the top station.A support tower.Chairs passing a tower with combination assemblies on both sides.Another view of the bottom station.
What is the advantage to installing a lift without footrests? I’m shocked this lift doesn’t have them, especially for Boyne. I doubt it’s a cost reason since in the grand scheme of building a new lift that would be extremely minimal.
Keep in mind for the extra cost of a D-line vs LPA or standard DPM you could build a fixed grip chairlift of the same size in addition to a standard 6-pack for a cost of one D-line.
Yes D-Line lifts are expensive, but Boyne is building these for the long haul. They might be more expensive initially but they will also likely get a much longer useful life. I’ve heard Steven Kircher mention how buying a new uni-g lift is like buying a brand new lift with 90’s tech, while the D-Line lifts are the way of the future. All new detachable lifts Boyne has built in their network in the last 6 years have been D-Lines so they are committed to this tech.
Also, as a side note, a lot of people on Brighton’s social media have been complaining that this lift has a lower capacity than that of the old lift.
I just checked on here, and yup, that is correct. Seems strange to me that they’d build a new lift with a lower capacity as this is probably the busiest lift on the mountain.
Also, I’m new to the lift world but could someone explain to me why this would have a lower capacity? Is it simply because the line speed is slower than the old one? 6 is greater than 4.
A lifts on paper capacity can be misleading, the old Crest was rated at 2800 pph, which on a quad, requires a chair to be loaded every 5 seconds. Generally the shortest interval that can actually be used is 6 seconds, but even this is generally not realistic. The old Crest did not operate at full speed due to this, and would be lucky to be running at 2400 pph. The new Crest has longer chair spacing, giving a loading interval of 8 seconds between chairs when running at full speed. This means the lift can efficiently operate at full speed and provide higher actual capacity, despite it being lower on paper.
As a side note quads which were built with a design capacity higher than 2400 pph were usually built with the idea that they wont run at full speed during normal operation. If they know they will likely run it slow, they can add extra chairs in order to achieve a 6-7 second interval at that lower speed. This was a popular strategy with second and third gen detachables but is not as common in new lifts. See Barker at Sunday River for another example of a very similar situation as Crest.
Apologies for the wordy response, capacity is complicated!
Great response, Everett. Is the 6 second interval mandated, or just a practical timeframe to load chairs? Any idea how the load time interval changes with lift size (ie, double time, triple time, quad time, etc)?
It is a practical limit not a regulatory one, I don’t know of a lower limit legally speaking but if it exists it wouldn’t be possible to meet it efficiently.
As for Intervals as they relate to chair size, a general rule of thumb in my experience is a quad can just scratch by with 6, and you cant really go lower than that even with smaller chairs. For bigger seats add about a second per extra seat in the chair. so sixers will be happy at 8 seconds, and 8s want 9 to 10 seconds.
These are not hard rules by any means and many lifts are built that don’t conform to this and can make it work. We are working all the time to adjust the parameters we use to find the best balance between capacity and efficiency.
Anyone know why most new lift towers are not being painted? 30 years ago it seems every tower got painted but now they leave them as metal color most of the time. Personally I preferred when they were painted green.
Towers used to be raw steel and painting was the most economical way to protect them, nowadays towers are hot dipped galvanized which creates a near permanent protective coating and the dull gray color is ok with the forest service so most resorts don’t bother painting towers.
I rode this lift for the first time this past weekend and rode the old Crest plenty of times last year and had some thoughts/comparisons
As far as the lift itself, the experience is great. This is the first D-line lift I’ve ridden, and the reduction in noise is really substantial. The suspension on the carriers made the ride extremely smooth over towers and the carriers have a mechanism to automatically raise the safety bar. The acceleration from the station to line speed was honestly exhilarating and really surprised me how fast it felt. It made the other high speeds on the mountain feel like a fixed grip in comparison. I’m not sure what line speed those other chairs typically operate at, but it’s definitely less than the 1000 they’re rated to.
In the past, Crest always had the longest line on the mountain, with long wait times throughout the day into night skiing. I was hopeful that the upgrade to Crest 6 would change this, but it seems to have had little impact on the lines. I guess part of that is due to a fairly low increase in actual capacity (if old Crest was usually running at 800 fpm that would mean its’ capacity is around 2200 pph, only about 500 less than Crest 6). One of the other skiers I rode the lift about complained how the chair spacing was too long and that’s why he thought the lines hadn’t gotten any shorter. In addition, I think people/resorts are generally worse at loading a 6 person chair to capacity than a quad, and it seems that 6 person chairs often go up with empty seats even on crowded days.
Crest has always had poor queue management when I’ve visited Brighton and it seems that the lift upgrade has not changed that at all. In fact, I think the queuing experience is worse than on the old chair. In the past, the chair had a split queue that joined in the middle, and lack of organization caused lots of traffic and inefficiency in loading the chair. The new queue is still split but only on the looker’s left side of the chair and faces sharply downhill. As a result many chairs were going up half loaded because people were not correctly sorting into groups of 6. This caused lines of 5-10 minutes when every other high speed chair at the mountain had no line. In addition, skiing over from the Milly side of the mountain now requires skating uphill because there is no longer queuing on the right side of the station.
I’m disappointed that Boyne spent so much on this new chair but allowed Brighton to still fumbled the implementation of the chair. By doing some off-season terrain grading around the queue and utilizing a “front row” style queue management like they have nearby at Alta, I think Brighton could improve the chair loading experience a lot and significantly improve the actual throughput of the chair. I’m curious how others think the queuing could be improved.
Anders – I’m not actually sure what the technical term is (if there is one). But the way the queue works at the lifts at Alta is that there are 4-6 parallel queues at a right angle to the direction of the lift. Each of these all empty out to an open space in front of the lift. An operator yells “front row” and everyone from the front row of each of these parallel queues comes out and lines up in front of the lift. Any empty spaces get filled by singles as the riders go through the pass scanner.
It’s really effective at Alta and on a crowded day it’s really rare to see a chair going up with less than full capacity – even at Sunnyside which is another 6 person chair. Maybe part of the reason it works so well is because people are afraid of getting heckled if they mess up. I envision implementing something like that on Crest might be pretty effective for better organizing riders onto the chair.
Maze configuration and crowd organization/management is a real science. I haven’t seen your “front row” style maze since I was a kid. There’s a real value in having a human ensuring there’s a butt in every seat, however humans cost more money than a maze that passively organizes a crowd, as you mentioned at the cost of inefficiency. Passive mazes do become more efficient when they become very busy, something changes in a crowds psyche when they get larger.
You mentioned a great point, about Alta (tho I’m sure they also have bad days). Their rider base sees the value in maximizing up hill capacity by the way of more runs by the end of the day…so they fill every seat. Unfortunately it’s not a mentality that’s shared by the majority of mountain users.
Hans- for what it’s worth, the topic of discussion in my ropeways class last week included maze/queue design and setup. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a technical term for it either, but I also called it the ‘front row’ design for my students. I agree that it’s very effective for filling every seat. A Mauch- we use it at almost all of our main lifts, Woodward excepted (probably for lack of space at the bottom).
People can say what they want about the general Alta attitude of heckling various behaviors, but I’m sorry, it works. If your chair is not full, or you try to game the singles line to ride up with your party, the line will go ape on your ___……. and you will never do that again.
What largely dictates the maze design is space. The Beaver Run SuperChair has the “front row” style because the maze comes from the south and the bus loop is on the north. The Colorado SuperChair has a “front row” maze because the Rocky Mountain SuperChair starts next to it. Keystone’s high speed lifts save for the Summit Express and Ruby Express have split mazes. DeMoisy has two merging mazes, although the one from the Lower Bear Springs cutoff doesn’t see as much use as the one facing Strawberry Patio.
@ USDMH You just described why Alta is the worst skiing experience I have had. Anywhere. I just hit my 50th location (including touring spots) last week. Seriously. Alta is so snobby and cliquish. You can have it. I will never, ever return. I’d rather watch empty chairs on a 20-minute-line day to ski 2 inches of mediocre on ice at Shasta or Pomerelle than listen to a$$hats who think they’re better than me yell at some hapless guy from Davis County who thought he’d take advantage of his proximity to LCC for one day and didn’t know “how we do it here”, when all he asked was “are you guys two, as well?”. In two winters living in Weber County, the only time I felt that angry was at the bottom of Collins. Also, the aid room isn’t run by the mountain and they charge extra beyond your lift ticket? What the heck is that? User name checks out, but not for the reasons you think.
I have been at the “front end” of front row queue management, not a bad job as long as people dont complain about being made to you know actually queue. Or they dont claim you are intentionally ignoring them with no evidence to show that
The area around the Crest bottom terminal is tight so I’m sure Brighton was challenged with what to do about the lift maze. With that said, the current set up with the maze entrance only on one side of the lift and the steep downhill as you go into the maze is really bad. Maybe they can do some additional grading next summer to improve things?
It would cost a lot of money. But I’d say they should raise the terminal up vertically by 20ft. And then build a deck around it just like the old Mary and Majestic doubles.
As Brighton’s signature lift, I am still surprised Boyne opted not to go with an eight-seater. The capacity is needed here more than Jordan, Six Shooter/Madison, or Disciples.
There’s no space down at the bottom terminal area. Even now with the 6 pack, the maze setup is easily the worst in Utah. There’s basically no flat area to line up at, there’s almost always people in line up on the slope.
Lift Blog 
Fun Fact, This is the first D-Line in the world without footrests
2nd one will be Canyon Express at Mammoth Mountain
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Then I would assume the 3rd one will be the Broadway Express being built at Mammoth next summer.
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What is the advantage to installing a lift without footrests? I’m shocked this lift doesn’t have them, especially for Boyne. I doubt it’s a cost reason since in the grand scheme of building a new lift that would be extremely minimal.
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I don’t get it, especially considering that the old Crest 4 had footrests.
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Snowboarders don’t like them. They’re very awkward with a snowboard.
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Doppelmayr once again showing why they are the premier lift manufacturer in NA both a mechanically and aesthetically
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I don’t know much about the mechanics side of things, but I completely prefer the aesthetic of Doppelmayr over LPA.
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Keep in mind for the extra cost of a D-line vs LPA or standard DPM you could build a fixed grip chairlift of the same size in addition to a standard 6-pack for a cost of one D-line.
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Yes D-Line lifts are expensive, but Boyne is building these for the long haul. They might be more expensive initially but they will also likely get a much longer useful life. I’ve heard Steven Kircher mention how buying a new uni-g lift is like buying a brand new lift with 90’s tech, while the D-Line lifts are the way of the future. All new detachable lifts Boyne has built in their network in the last 6 years have been D-Lines so they are committed to this tech.
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Now this is a gorgeous lift!
Also, as a side note, a lot of people on Brighton’s social media have been complaining that this lift has a lower capacity than that of the old lift.
I just checked on here, and yup, that is correct. Seems strange to me that they’d build a new lift with a lower capacity as this is probably the busiest lift on the mountain.
Also, I’m new to the lift world but could someone explain to me why this would have a lower capacity? Is it simply because the line speed is slower than the old one? 6 is greater than 4.
Also, hats off to Brighton for investing here.
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A lifts on paper capacity can be misleading, the old Crest was rated at 2800 pph, which on a quad, requires a chair to be loaded every 5 seconds. Generally the shortest interval that can actually be used is 6 seconds, but even this is generally not realistic. The old Crest did not operate at full speed due to this, and would be lucky to be running at 2400 pph. The new Crest has longer chair spacing, giving a loading interval of 8 seconds between chairs when running at full speed. This means the lift can efficiently operate at full speed and provide higher actual capacity, despite it being lower on paper.
As a side note quads which were built with a design capacity higher than 2400 pph were usually built with the idea that they wont run at full speed during normal operation. If they know they will likely run it slow, they can add extra chairs in order to achieve a 6-7 second interval at that lower speed. This was a popular strategy with second and third gen detachables but is not as common in new lifts. See Barker at Sunday River for another example of a very similar situation as Crest.
Apologies for the wordy response, capacity is complicated!
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Thanks for the response Everett! Excited to see the lift in person! And hats off with everything you guys are doing at Brighton.
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Great response, Everett. Is the 6 second interval mandated, or just a practical timeframe to load chairs? Any idea how the load time interval changes with lift size (ie, double time, triple time, quad time, etc)?
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It is a practical limit not a regulatory one, I don’t know of a lower limit legally speaking but if it exists it wouldn’t be possible to meet it efficiently.
As for Intervals as they relate to chair size, a general rule of thumb in my experience is a quad can just scratch by with 6, and you cant really go lower than that even with smaller chairs. For bigger seats add about a second per extra seat in the chair. so sixers will be happy at 8 seconds, and 8s want 9 to 10 seconds.
These are not hard rules by any means and many lifts are built that don’t conform to this and can make it work. We are working all the time to adjust the parameters we use to find the best balance between capacity and efficiency.
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Canyon express opens December 15th!
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This is the first of the three new six packs in Utah to open. Eagle 6 and DeMoisy shouldn’t be too far behind this.
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Anyone know why most new lift towers are not being painted? 30 years ago it seems every tower got painted but now they leave them as metal color most of the time. Personally I preferred when they were painted green.
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Towers used to be raw steel and painting was the most economical way to protect them, nowadays towers are hot dipped galvanized which creates a near permanent protective coating and the dull gray color is ok with the forest service so most resorts don’t bother painting towers.
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Thanks for letting me know.
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Some ski resorts, such as Deer Valley, still paint their towers
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Also Powder Mountain.
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This is the second direct drive lift in Utah following the Sunnyside six built at Alta last year
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I rode this lift for the first time this past weekend and rode the old Crest plenty of times last year and had some thoughts/comparisons
As far as the lift itself, the experience is great. This is the first D-line lift I’ve ridden, and the reduction in noise is really substantial. The suspension on the carriers made the ride extremely smooth over towers and the carriers have a mechanism to automatically raise the safety bar. The acceleration from the station to line speed was honestly exhilarating and really surprised me how fast it felt. It made the other high speeds on the mountain feel like a fixed grip in comparison. I’m not sure what line speed those other chairs typically operate at, but it’s definitely less than the 1000 they’re rated to.
In the past, Crest always had the longest line on the mountain, with long wait times throughout the day into night skiing. I was hopeful that the upgrade to Crest 6 would change this, but it seems to have had little impact on the lines. I guess part of that is due to a fairly low increase in actual capacity (if old Crest was usually running at 800 fpm that would mean its’ capacity is around 2200 pph, only about 500 less than Crest 6). One of the other skiers I rode the lift about complained how the chair spacing was too long and that’s why he thought the lines hadn’t gotten any shorter. In addition, I think people/resorts are generally worse at loading a 6 person chair to capacity than a quad, and it seems that 6 person chairs often go up with empty seats even on crowded days.
Crest has always had poor queue management when I’ve visited Brighton and it seems that the lift upgrade has not changed that at all. In fact, I think the queuing experience is worse than on the old chair. In the past, the chair had a split queue that joined in the middle, and lack of organization caused lots of traffic and inefficiency in loading the chair. The new queue is still split but only on the looker’s left side of the chair and faces sharply downhill. As a result many chairs were going up half loaded because people were not correctly sorting into groups of 6. This caused lines of 5-10 minutes when every other high speed chair at the mountain had no line. In addition, skiing over from the Milly side of the mountain now requires skating uphill because there is no longer queuing on the right side of the station.
I’m disappointed that Boyne spent so much on this new chair but allowed Brighton to still fumbled the implementation of the chair. By doing some off-season terrain grading around the queue and utilizing a “front row” style queue management like they have nearby at Alta, I think Brighton could improve the chair loading experience a lot and significantly improve the actual throughput of the chair. I’m curious how others think the queuing could be improved.
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Sorry, but what is “front row” queue management? I’ve never heard of anything like it before and I’m really curious. Thanks in advance!
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Anders – I’m not actually sure what the technical term is (if there is one). But the way the queue works at the lifts at Alta is that there are 4-6 parallel queues at a right angle to the direction of the lift. Each of these all empty out to an open space in front of the lift. An operator yells “front row” and everyone from the front row of each of these parallel queues comes out and lines up in front of the lift. Any empty spaces get filled by singles as the riders go through the pass scanner.
It’s really effective at Alta and on a crowded day it’s really rare to see a chair going up with less than full capacity – even at Sunnyside which is another 6 person chair. Maybe part of the reason it works so well is because people are afraid of getting heckled if they mess up. I envision implementing something like that on Crest might be pretty effective for better organizing riders onto the chair.
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Maze configuration and crowd organization/management is a real science. I haven’t seen your “front row” style maze since I was a kid. There’s a real value in having a human ensuring there’s a butt in every seat, however humans cost more money than a maze that passively organizes a crowd, as you mentioned at the cost of inefficiency. Passive mazes do become more efficient when they become very busy, something changes in a crowds psyche when they get larger.
You mentioned a great point, about Alta (tho I’m sure they also have bad days). Their rider base sees the value in maximizing up hill capacity by the way of more runs by the end of the day…so they fill every seat. Unfortunately it’s not a mentality that’s shared by the majority of mountain users.
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Hans- for what it’s worth, the topic of discussion in my ropeways class last week included maze/queue design and setup. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a technical term for it either, but I also called it the ‘front row’ design for my students. I agree that it’s very effective for filling every seat. A Mauch- we use it at almost all of our main lifts, Woodward excepted (probably for lack of space at the bottom).
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People can say what they want about the general Alta attitude of heckling various behaviors, but I’m sorry, it works. If your chair is not full, or you try to game the singles line to ride up with your party, the line will go ape on your ___……. and you will never do that again.
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What largely dictates the maze design is space. The Beaver Run SuperChair has the “front row” style because the maze comes from the south and the bus loop is on the north. The Colorado SuperChair has a “front row” maze because the Rocky Mountain SuperChair starts next to it. Keystone’s high speed lifts save for the Summit Express and Ruby Express have split mazes. DeMoisy has two merging mazes, although the one from the Lower Bear Springs cutoff doesn’t see as much use as the one facing Strawberry Patio.
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@ USDMH You just described why Alta is the worst skiing experience I have had. Anywhere. I just hit my 50th location (including touring spots) last week. Seriously. Alta is so snobby and cliquish. You can have it. I will never, ever return. I’d rather watch empty chairs on a 20-minute-line day to ski 2 inches of mediocre on ice at Shasta or Pomerelle than listen to a$$hats who think they’re better than me yell at some hapless guy from Davis County who thought he’d take advantage of his proximity to LCC for one day and didn’t know “how we do it here”, when all he asked was “are you guys two, as well?”. In two winters living in Weber County, the only time I felt that angry was at the bottom of Collins. Also, the aid room isn’t run by the mountain and they charge extra beyond your lift ticket? What the heck is that? User name checks out, but not for the reasons you think.
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Cannon uses that style of queuing for Peabody Express (“the detach”), it works well there, too.
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I have been at the “front end” of front row queue management, not a bad job as long as people dont complain about being made to you know actually queue. Or they dont claim you are intentionally ignoring them with no evidence to show that
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The area around the Crest bottom terminal is tight so I’m sure Brighton was challenged with what to do about the lift maze. With that said, the current set up with the maze entrance only on one side of the lift and the steep downhill as you go into the maze is really bad. Maybe they can do some additional grading next summer to improve things?
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It would cost a lot of money. But I’d say they should raise the terminal up vertically by 20ft. And then build a deck around it just like the old Mary and Majestic doubles.
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Here’s the first full-length video!
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If I am seeing correctly, no one lowered the safety bars!
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There’s a different culture in the western US vs. the east.
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its also Brighton, this probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but its like the most “local” of all the resorts.
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As Brighton’s signature lift, I am still surprised Boyne opted not to go with an eight-seater. The capacity is needed here more than Jordan, Six Shooter/Madison, or Disciples.
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There’s no space down at the bottom terminal area. Even now with the 6 pack, the maze setup is easily the worst in Utah. There’s basically no flat area to line up at, there’s almost always people in line up on the slope.
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