It is two separate lifts with separate haul ropes and drive systems. The two sections can be split and run independently. Most gondolas with mid-stations are one lift these days but not this one.
Utah finally got a big storm last week, so this weekend was the first time that pretty much all of the expansion terrain was skiable. Some first impressions:
Absolutely amazing how much they have done and how big everything is in the expansion area. Spectacular views from angles the public hasn’t seen before, especially from the Redemption ridgeline, Big Dutch, and the Park Peak Lodge, which will be the centerpiece of the whole mountain and already has a rendering of the second gondola.
DV and Alterra are running circles around Vail Resorts with the effort they put into opening snowmaking terrain in a bad snow year and nailing the details. Park City next door still has tons of peeling paint left over from before their rebrand 11 years ago, a bare-minimum effort on snowmaking or grooming on the same snow conditions as DV, and no effort or energy in the crumbling PC base area. Vail is barely trying over there and the contrast is growing every year. The only bright spot is the Canyons village itself, which is looking better than it ever has, 25 years later than scheduled. New parking garage will be a big help, but they haven’t touched anything in a decade over there other than the homeowner-funded Sunrise gondola.
Expansion terrain is still very raw. I’m sure they will get around to this as DV always does, but there were a lot of places that could use some more signage to navigate all the new stuff. They have a lot of signs for lift riders to identify runs in the old section and could use a lot of those in the new area. Credit to them for having a bunch of trail map boards staffed with mountain hosts. From the bottom of Vulcan you are at least half an hour from a bathroom. A few outhouses around the expansion area are needed (bottom of Vulcan, top of Big Dutch, Keetley Point)
Snowmaking effort was fantastic. Every important run in the expansion was open and in very good shape.
Traffic patterns around the mountain are completely different. Empire and Lady Morgan were empty and the gondola was crowded on the Sunday after presidents week. The bottleneck now is Ontario, which is packed with little kids all the time and is the only way from Park Peak into the original terrain. The lift on the master plan that gets you back to the top of Bald Mountain will be a good one.
Easy to imagine some other rethinks on the existing terrain – for example, what if Sultan and Wasatch were one six-pack starting farther down McHenry between the two? Quincy and Red Cloud could be one lift with a midstation and some grading. Eventual Mayflower replacement could start at the bottom of Big Dutch and go all the way to the top of Bald.
The decision to split up Vulcan and Revelator was the right call. That would have been a ridiculously long single lift with a giant runout. Can’t wait to see it on a real powder day. The north facing runs from Redemption are really nice. In an average snow year most of the bowl will be great too. Vulcan is almost entirely snowmaking and always will be. Mostly for egress from the eventual South Peak expansion. The one spot that could use snowmaking and doesn’t have it is the 100 yards of runout above the bottom of Revelator (the cleverly named Catch All)
Doesn’t sound like Pioche and Neptune will open this season. Not enough snow down there to bother and none of the houses down there that they serve have been finished yet. Will be years until those draw any traffic. Surprised they built those in the first phase instead of Hail Peak to get out of the parking lot.
They have twice as much terrain and nowhere near twice as many people yet. With the current crowd level, a lot of the expansion feels like overkill and will for a few years. Everything but Pinyon has way more capacity than needed today. Lunch seating is (and has always been) the limiting factor, which the Park Peak lodge will help a ton.
Galena is nice to have. It looks like they might not run it on non-holiday weekdays (Hoodoo should be the same). It has a fun little pod and isn’t entirely necessary, but it’s a very long runout and an extra lift ride back to Keetley via Aurora. It will be nice to have the Big Dutch lift eventually for the same reason. That terrain is probably the best in the whole expansion and is a very long runout to lap via the EVG. Currently the Big Dutch runs are being used for the “Corduroy Lunch Club” and opening at noon, which is a fun idea.
Roof of Keetley chair storage building would be a great place for a warming hut and outdoor deck. I wonder if that’s the plan.
EVG is very luxurious and fast and twice as long as I was expecting. Heated seats were cranking. Right now limited space down there but that will be fixed when construction is done. The Doppelmayr website should be a picture of the top breakover with Mt. Timp in the background.
With 25 detachable lifts and only 2 real fixed-grip chairs left (other than access and bunny lifts), it’s time to retire the word “Express” from every lift name. East Village Gondola is the right name. Jordanelle Gondola shouldn’t have the Express title.
Trail map is the wrong perspective to show the new terrain. The perspective should be from someone standing above the bottom of the Jordanelle gondola, not the bottom of Carpenter, a quarter-turn to the right from the angle it is now.
“With 25 detachable lifts and only 2 real fixed-grip chairs left (other than access and bunny lifts), it’s time to retire the word “Express” from every lift name. East Village Gondola is the right name. Jordanelle Gondola shouldn’t have the Express title.”
You could say the same thing for resorts like Vail, Beaver Creek, and Snowbasin. 😂😂
After skiing DV on Valentines Day, it’s expansion has created two separate dimensions with its expanded terrain more dramatic, more eye-catching, more expansive views and a lot more diverse. The runs have a lot more different character nearby especially the intermediate trails off Big Dutch and Galena. Pinyon has some of the best low-ability treeless skiing I’ve ever found with the lower half being the sparse, tan aspen trees. Revelator has some of the best fall-lines given its steepness. A lot of the trails follow a Ridgeline topography like Persistence, Redemption and even Carbenite. The lifts in the expansion are more in terms of infrastructure with Europe with fancy HSQs with UNI-D stations, two D-Line Bubble sixers and a monster D-Line Gondola. The Legacy Footprint on the other hand may have higher-elevation and more reliable terrain but it feels more vanilla overall except for areas like Bald Mtn and Empire, with older lifts (the newest built in 2022)
I still have hopes DV gets to opening Pioche Point at some point in March or so, but given the cursed snow year we’ve had and how far we are from closing day, will be open only a few weeks. I’m a bit skeptical why DV didn’t prioritize snowmaking over there to begin with, when they could’ve split them up between there, Big Dutch and Redemption Ridge. Some time ago, I saw snow guns on the Uno trail but DV never fired them up. Pioche is low elevation and has a mainly eastern exposure, but also has a lack of trees in comparison to Keetley and Galena nearby which have some flavor of them. I still think once Pioche opens up at some point, that the trails have a lakeside-like vibe given its closest actual proximity to Jordanelle Reservoir. Hopefully once the homes in Pioche Village get built, that they provide some protection from the sun and make this area a little more reliable. Park City managed to open Condor up just barely along with Mayflower at DV last week, indicating that hope is still on the horizon especially when more snow rolls in the coming weeks once March rolls around. At the same time however, I feel like DV is getting schooled in some ways from PC nearby now that all lifts there are open, since Condor is similar in some ways to the Pioche Pod but higher elevation and vertical even. I wouldn’t want Deer Valley to make Pioche rely fully on natural snow or else its not gonna have as much online time in the winter as with the other areas.
For now there are no RFID gates in Revelator, Pinyon and Vulcan although I know it might change next year, given the same situation happened with Aurora last year. The foundations for the future Hail Peak lift are already underway, but if its just Hail Peak getting built, there isn’t going to be really a purpose since you’ll have to still go to the main village for the Gondola, Keetley and Pioche to funnel to other areas, unless Hailstone (Lift 9) gets added from between Tug-O-War/Good Luck to Joker.
The future Big Dutch lift would not only change the way the terrain is skied but can also provide access to Vulcan without going out of the way to ride the gondola, or engaging with Keetley/Sultan. I can see many opportunities with this lift, like being open at noon, (DV does that as part of an afternoon fresh corduroy program) and early season access combined with the downloading capabilities of the gondola.
The future Crown Point lift has been designed for access from Keetley Point via Little Giant, and adding this in few years time would make it so that it doesn’t take a huge chunk of vertical to ski to the legacy footprint from the Gondola or the Keetley/Sultan combo. As a trade off it might also increase pressure on Homestake since it works quietly in tandem with to shuffle crowds to lower areas of Snow Park/Jordanelle.
I’m a bit surprised why Deer Valley didn’t decide to add the two intermediate trails from Crown Point to the base of Galena, the other advanced run adjacent to Seldom Seen off Bald Mtn and the upper 80% of Crown Prince as they are within the phased boundaries of the expansion.
After extensively researching South Peak, not only is there gonna be some interesting terrain alongside a green run connecting the Crown Prince, but there’s gonna be over 2,000 feet of vertical from the main lift servicing it alone, and its a good call to add a second, smaller egress lift to just between the Fallon and aforementioned Crown Prince run.
On a side note, there are 118 chairs on Vulcan (you can also check Max Stosich’s Instagram since there are pictures displaying chair #118 and chair #1)
For now, there are no RFID gates in Revelator, Pinyon and Vulcan although I know it might change next year, given the same situation happened with Aurora last year.
When Aurora was installed last year, it initially didn’t come with RFID Gates, while Keetley and Hoodoo had them the first season. Now a year later, Aurora has RFID.
Lift Blog 
Is East Village Express Gondola listed as 2 separate lifts because of the midway station?
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It is two separate lifts with separate haul ropes and drive systems. The two sections can be split and run independently. Most gondolas with mid-stations are one lift these days but not this one.
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Sounds like a behemoth lift like the Wild Blue Gondola, can’t wait to see you take pictures of the expansion lifts!
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Utah finally got a big storm last week, so this weekend was the first time that pretty much all of the expansion terrain was skiable. Some first impressions:
What have others thought of it so far?
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“With 25 detachable lifts and only 2 real fixed-grip chairs left (other than access and bunny lifts), it’s time to retire the word “Express” from every lift name. East Village Gondola is the right name. Jordanelle Gondola shouldn’t have the Express title.”
You could say the same thing for resorts like Vail, Beaver Creek, and Snowbasin. 😂😂
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I love what Boyne does with their names with the number at the end Ramcharger 8/ Barker 6 is really nice
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After skiing DV on Valentines Day, it’s expansion has created two separate dimensions with its expanded terrain more dramatic, more eye-catching, more expansive views and a lot more diverse. The runs have a lot more different character nearby especially the intermediate trails off Big Dutch and Galena. Pinyon has some of the best low-ability treeless skiing I’ve ever found with the lower half being the sparse, tan aspen trees. Revelator has some of the best fall-lines given its steepness. A lot of the trails follow a Ridgeline topography like Persistence, Redemption and even Carbenite. The lifts in the expansion are more in terms of infrastructure with Europe with fancy HSQs with UNI-D stations, two D-Line Bubble sixers and a monster D-Line Gondola. The Legacy Footprint on the other hand may have higher-elevation and more reliable terrain but it feels more vanilla overall except for areas like Bald Mtn and Empire, with older lifts (the newest built in 2022)
I still have hopes DV gets to opening Pioche Point at some point in March or so, but given the cursed snow year we’ve had and how far we are from closing day, will be open only a few weeks. I’m a bit skeptical why DV didn’t prioritize snowmaking over there to begin with, when they could’ve split them up between there, Big Dutch and Redemption Ridge. Some time ago, I saw snow guns on the Uno trail but DV never fired them up. Pioche is low elevation and has a mainly eastern exposure, but also has a lack of trees in comparison to Keetley and Galena nearby which have some flavor of them. I still think once Pioche opens up at some point, that the trails have a lakeside-like vibe given its closest actual proximity to Jordanelle Reservoir. Hopefully once the homes in Pioche Village get built, that they provide some protection from the sun and make this area a little more reliable. Park City managed to open Condor up just barely along with Mayflower at DV last week, indicating that hope is still on the horizon especially when more snow rolls in the coming weeks once March rolls around. At the same time however, I feel like DV is getting schooled in some ways from PC nearby now that all lifts there are open, since Condor is similar in some ways to the Pioche Pod but higher elevation and vertical even. I wouldn’t want Deer Valley to make Pioche rely fully on natural snow or else its not gonna have as much online time in the winter as with the other areas.
For now there are no RFID gates in Revelator, Pinyon and Vulcan although I know it might change next year, given the same situation happened with Aurora last year. The foundations for the future Hail Peak lift are already underway, but if its just Hail Peak getting built, there isn’t going to be really a purpose since you’ll have to still go to the main village for the Gondola, Keetley and Pioche to funnel to other areas, unless Hailstone (Lift 9) gets added from between Tug-O-War/Good Luck to Joker.
The future Big Dutch lift would not only change the way the terrain is skied but can also provide access to Vulcan without going out of the way to ride the gondola, or engaging with Keetley/Sultan. I can see many opportunities with this lift, like being open at noon, (DV does that as part of an afternoon fresh corduroy program) and early season access combined with the downloading capabilities of the gondola.
The future Crown Point lift has been designed for access from Keetley Point via Little Giant, and adding this in few years time would make it so that it doesn’t take a huge chunk of vertical to ski to the legacy footprint from the Gondola or the Keetley/Sultan combo. As a trade off it might also increase pressure on Homestake since it works quietly in tandem with to shuffle crowds to lower areas of Snow Park/Jordanelle.
I’m a bit surprised why Deer Valley didn’t decide to add the two intermediate trails from Crown Point to the base of Galena, the other advanced run adjacent to Seldom Seen off Bald Mtn and the upper 80% of Crown Prince as they are within the phased boundaries of the expansion.
After extensively researching South Peak, not only is there gonna be some interesting terrain alongside a green run connecting the Crown Prince, but there’s gonna be over 2,000 feet of vertical from the main lift servicing it alone, and its a good call to add a second, smaller egress lift to just between the Fallon and aforementioned Crown Prince run.
On a side note, there are 118 chairs on Vulcan (you can also check Max Stosich’s Instagram since there are pictures displaying chair #118 and chair #1)
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what do you mean by this?
For now, there are no RFID gates in Revelator, Pinyon and Vulcan although I know it might change next year, given the same situation happened with Aurora last year.
What happened with Aurora?
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When Aurora was installed last year, it initially didn’t come with RFID Gates, while Keetley and Hoodoo had them the first season. Now a year later, Aurora has RFID.
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Got it! Thanks so much!
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I believe the top 80% of Crown Prince will come online in the next few years, it is planned and has been cut already.
The two trails from Bald Eagle/Crown Point will probably come soon, too.
Seldom Seen hasn’t been open yet due to the extremely low snowfall and many rain events; it’s a massive glade from bald Mt. to Age of Reason.
I can’t wait for South Peak and the infill Big Dutch! Lapping Big Dutch with a lift will be insane!
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How many and where are the funicular on this mountain? I know one is for a hotel.
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