This infill lift provides more capacity in the Strawberry area, previously only served by the Strawberry Express Gondola.Upper part of the lift line ending lower than the gondola.Tower 18.Lower part of the lift line.Tower 11.View down at tower 5.Looking up the line.Tower 3.This lift and the Strawberry gondola are the only way out of this part of the mountain.Lift line overview.Return station and tower 1.LPA station.Lift overview.Loading area and lift line.Another view up the long alignment.Tower 1.Combo assemblies on tower 9.T10.Riding up the middle part of the line.Tower 16.T20.Unloading area.This is the drive location.View from the summit.Tower 22 and the top station.T21.View down at tower 16.Tower 20.View up the line at tower 7.Lower lift line seen from tower 3.View riding out of Strawberry.LPA six place chair.Tower 12.
This was a very much overdue addition to this part of the resort, and it did a lot to improve the skiing experience in Strawberry Basin. The most obvious improvement is that one can now lap most of the basin without having take off skis/boards after each run. Lower Elk Ridge, and everything between Gordon’s Gully and Bear Springs, can be lapped via DeMoisy (for upper Elk Ridge, Gordon’s, the black trails on the south basin, and the upper fringes of DeMoisy Peak, you still take the gondola).
The second is that it means shorter lines at the gondola since there are now two lifts covering this terrain. I’ve seen some pre-DeMoisy videos of lines at Strawberry that look on par with the High Noon Express on a powder day.
The third is that egress from Strawberry Basin has been improved. The old way out was to take a traverse back over to Middle Bowl from Main Street right about where Main Street meets up with the DeMoisy lift line, which could be a hassle to get to since you had to first come down the steep and windy section of Elk Ridge from the summit; or take Main Street down to the Bear Springs cutoff and maneuver over to Penny Lane, taking you back to the base of Becker. Now getting out is simpler: ride up DeMoisy, then immediately turn right upon unloading and you can immediately find yourself on Dan’s Run, dropping you directly into Middle Bowl. Or you can ski down Philpot Ridge and eventually re-enter Becker’s pod.
And perhaps the most important improvement is that Strawberry Basin can be open far more than it used to be. It wasn’t uncommon for this area to be closed pre-emptively when bad weather was expected in the old days since if the gondola went on wind hold, ski patrol would have to evacuate guests via snowmobile. DeMoisy eliminates this hassle by ending in a wind-protected area and lower down, so even if the gondola is closed, most of the Strawberry Basin still has a lift to lap it.
You can still get to Upper Elk Ridge and Gordons from DeMoisey if you try hard enough. I would like to note that Snowbasin has not quite figured out how to flow the unloading from DeMoisey and the intersection of Strawberry Traverse and Main Street. From what you have noted about egress from Strawberry, you have clearly not skied Snowbasin recently. Dan’s is always a bottleneck whenever Strawberry is open and this has not gotten any better since the installation of DeMoisey.
I am not sure why Snowbasin opted for this, but the last part of Strawberry traverse has been roped off, forcing anyone trying to access the Strawberry side to ski uphill on the traverse that leads to Dans. This has made it especially difficult to reach Philpot since a little speed is necessary to cross the first hump. It has essentially made Diamond inaccessible for anyone coming from Needles. I would also like to note that Philpot Ridge isn’t really an egress to Becker. While it definitely doable, the run itself only makes sense for experts trying to ski terrain off of Becker rather than a reliever for Dans.
That being said, I agree that DeMoisey was a great move for Snowbasin. The Strawberry side went from one of the worst areas of Snowbasin for crowds to one of the best. While the lift ride can get cold at times, the alignment is nice and protected and it has already operated on days that Strawberry gondola has been shut down.
Plans for DeMoisy date back to I think around 2005. I think the earliest master plans for a lift in this alignment surfaced around that time. At the time I believe it was proposed as a high speed quad, and plans only changed to make it a six pack between when Wildcat was upgraded and Middle Bowl was upgraded.
I think that change was part motivated by the fact that six pack chairs are heavier and thus more wind resistant (important given the wind closures that often plague the gondola), but I think it also was partly due to the need to have a high capacity lift that can carry both its own traffic and the gondola’s if the gondola has to close (DeMoisy’s uphill capacity of 2,800 pph is larger than the 2,400 pph of the gondola).
While this lift may not be as much of a roller coaster as Middle Bowl is, I’d definitely say it counts as a ‘roller coaster’ type lift. There are seven combi towers (4, 7-8-9, 14-15, 19), and the most support towers there are consecutively on the line is four (towers 10-13 as the lift runs up skier’s right of lower Main Street).
Have you ridden it? I do miss how fun the old Middle Bowl was to ride, especially over the rocks and when they would do a stop when we would be over the rocks. Held on extra tight to the sides of the chair!
For those coming in off Bear Springs, it’s possible to ski directly into the DeMoisy maze without having to mingle with traffic coming off trails from Main Street on south. They added a cutoff from Bear Springs just uphill of where it crosses under the lift, which directly deposits you into a separate maze for the lift.
One thing I noticed is that the carriers on this lift don’t have the 6 individual seat cushions (unlike Middle Bowl), and instead have 4 seat cushions, 2 small ones (one on each end) and two big ones in the middle that hold 2 people each. I wonder why that is?
Looks to me like it has two cushions, and they’ve each got a cutout for the footrest handles. Could even be one full width pad with three cutouts; hard to tell from this angle.
Lift Blog 
This was a very much overdue addition to this part of the resort, and it did a lot to improve the skiing experience in Strawberry Basin. The most obvious improvement is that one can now lap most of the basin without having take off skis/boards after each run. Lower Elk Ridge, and everything between Gordon’s Gully and Bear Springs, can be lapped via DeMoisy (for upper Elk Ridge, Gordon’s, the black trails on the south basin, and the upper fringes of DeMoisy Peak, you still take the gondola).
The second is that it means shorter lines at the gondola since there are now two lifts covering this terrain. I’ve seen some pre-DeMoisy videos of lines at Strawberry that look on par with the High Noon Express on a powder day.
The third is that egress from Strawberry Basin has been improved. The old way out was to take a traverse back over to Middle Bowl from Main Street right about where Main Street meets up with the DeMoisy lift line, which could be a hassle to get to since you had to first come down the steep and windy section of Elk Ridge from the summit; or take Main Street down to the Bear Springs cutoff and maneuver over to Penny Lane, taking you back to the base of Becker. Now getting out is simpler: ride up DeMoisy, then immediately turn right upon unloading and you can immediately find yourself on Dan’s Run, dropping you directly into Middle Bowl. Or you can ski down Philpot Ridge and eventually re-enter Becker’s pod.
And perhaps the most important improvement is that Strawberry Basin can be open far more than it used to be. It wasn’t uncommon for this area to be closed pre-emptively when bad weather was expected in the old days since if the gondola went on wind hold, ski patrol would have to evacuate guests via snowmobile. DeMoisy eliminates this hassle by ending in a wind-protected area and lower down, so even if the gondola is closed, most of the Strawberry Basin still has a lift to lap it.
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You can still get to Upper Elk Ridge and Gordons from DeMoisey if you try hard enough. I would like to note that Snowbasin has not quite figured out how to flow the unloading from DeMoisey and the intersection of Strawberry Traverse and Main Street. From what you have noted about egress from Strawberry, you have clearly not skied Snowbasin recently. Dan’s is always a bottleneck whenever Strawberry is open and this has not gotten any better since the installation of DeMoisey.
I am not sure why Snowbasin opted for this, but the last part of Strawberry traverse has been roped off, forcing anyone trying to access the Strawberry side to ski uphill on the traverse that leads to Dans. This has made it especially difficult to reach Philpot since a little speed is necessary to cross the first hump. It has essentially made Diamond inaccessible for anyone coming from Needles. I would also like to note that Philpot Ridge isn’t really an egress to Becker. While it definitely doable, the run itself only makes sense for experts trying to ski terrain off of Becker rather than a reliever for Dans.
That being said, I agree that DeMoisey was a great move for Snowbasin. The Strawberry side went from one of the worst areas of Snowbasin for crowds to one of the best. While the lift ride can get cold at times, the alignment is nice and protected and it has already operated on days that Strawberry gondola has been shut down.
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Plans for DeMoisy date back to I think around 2005. I think the earliest master plans for a lift in this alignment surfaced around that time. At the time I believe it was proposed as a high speed quad, and plans only changed to make it a six pack between when Wildcat was upgraded and Middle Bowl was upgraded.
I think that change was part motivated by the fact that six pack chairs are heavier and thus more wind resistant (important given the wind closures that often plague the gondola), but I think it also was partly due to the need to have a high capacity lift that can carry both its own traffic and the gondola’s if the gondola has to close (DeMoisy’s uphill capacity of 2,800 pph is larger than the 2,400 pph of the gondola).
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I was wondering why the strawberry traverse trail was roped off too. Maybe there scared of skiers crashing into each other.
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While this lift may not be as much of a roller coaster as Middle Bowl is, I’d definitely say it counts as a ‘roller coaster’ type lift. There are seven combi towers (4, 7-8-9, 14-15, 19), and the most support towers there are consecutively on the line is four (towers 10-13 as the lift runs up skier’s right of lower Main Street).
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Have you ridden it? I do miss how fun the old Middle Bowl was to ride, especially over the rocks and when they would do a stop when we would be over the rocks. Held on extra tight to the sides of the chair!
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John paul is king when it comes to a roller coaster chairlift.
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Porcupine is also roller coaster in a way. In slow motion 😂
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For those coming in off Bear Springs, it’s possible to ski directly into the DeMoisy maze without having to mingle with traffic coming off trails from Main Street on south. They added a cutoff from Bear Springs just uphill of where it crosses under the lift, which directly deposits you into a separate maze for the lift.
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Another video of the lift.
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They definitely make sure to run the lift at full speed the majority of the time.
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One thing I noticed is that the carriers on this lift don’t have the 6 individual seat cushions (unlike Middle Bowl), and instead have 4 seat cushions, 2 small ones (one on each end) and two big ones in the middle that hold 2 people each. I wonder why that is?
Middle Bowl:
Demoisy:
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Looks to me like it has two cushions, and they’ve each got a cutout for the footrest handles. Could even be one full width pad with three cutouts; hard to tell from this angle.
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