This lift was built as part of a two lift chain to provide redundancy to the Whistler Village Gondola.Lift overview.Loading area and maintenance rail.View riding up the line.Lower lift line.Middle part of the line.Upper lift line.Most of this lift is quite steep.View back down to mid-mountain.Breakover towers.Upper terminal.This is the drive station.Doppelmayr Worldbook entry.
People seem to forget that theres been an 8 person lift feeding a 4 person lift for almost 30yrs on Blackcomb with Excal in to Excel, with Excal consistently seeing higher demand than Fitz does. Sure the pph capacities are a bit different but thats assuming you’re running the lifts at full design speed and fully filling every carrier every time- which is a very rare (and very impressive) occurrence at any mountain. You can barely run a HSQ at 5m/s or 1000fpm and fill the chairs, let alone a 6 or even an 8 person chair. Busy days will be busy, but nothing the WB team cant handle.
In addition, I imagine that not everyone on Fitzsimmons is transferring to Garbanzo to continue uphill. I’d guess that some of Fitzsimmons’ traffic is beginners heading to the Olympic Chair’s learning zone who’d rather use this than the Whistler Village Gondola.
Not an expert here but you may be right but I am still unsure / skeptical. Alot of people do use the learning areas but a lot of people also want to get up the mountain. If there were to direct all beginners and learners to the new Fitz and organize things properly it might work pretty well. We will have to see.
110% pure speculation but I have a feeling that the plan is in the next few years to upgrade Garbanzo to a HSS and move the current chair to install the Franz’s upgrade. But AussieRob would know better.
Everything is speculation until it’s formally announced. This plan has been discussed, but no timeline has been put on it. JC is getting replaced next year, after that who knows what the priorities will be. I’d love to see us continue upgrading lifts, but I think it will be other resorts turn for new lifts in the near future. We we have had four in three years.
I have a feeling that because of the new Fitzsimmons 8 Express there’s a possibility in the near future that Garbanzo will be upgraded to a high speed six (Maybe the summer after Jersey Cream), so then it would be part of a 3 lift redundancy to the Whistler Village Gondola (Fitzsimmons –> Garbanzo –> Emerald), not to mention that in addition to a lot of traffic coming from the new Fitzsimmons, a lot of traffic could be coming from those who don’t want to take the Big Red 6 Express after getting off the Creekside Gondola or the upper part of the Whistler side.
Garbanzo is great, it serves some really nice terrain but there were never any lines, at least when I was there. Not sure if the Fitzsimmons upgrade to an 8-pack has changed that.
Lift Blog 
Was this lift also designed for bubbles like Fitzimmons?
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Looking at videos of the lift, I’d say no:
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I cannot imagine this lift will be able to handle the demand following opening of Fitzsimmons 8.
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People seem to forget that theres been an 8 person lift feeding a 4 person lift for almost 30yrs on Blackcomb with Excal in to Excel, with Excal consistently seeing higher demand than Fitz does. Sure the pph capacities are a bit different but thats assuming you’re running the lifts at full design speed and fully filling every carrier every time- which is a very rare (and very impressive) occurrence at any mountain. You can barely run a HSQ at 5m/s or 1000fpm and fill the chairs, let alone a 6 or even an 8 person chair. Busy days will be busy, but nothing the WB team cant handle.
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In addition, I imagine that not everyone on Fitzsimmons is transferring to Garbanzo to continue uphill. I’d guess that some of Fitzsimmons’ traffic is beginners heading to the Olympic Chair’s learning zone who’d rather use this than the Whistler Village Gondola.
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it is hard to get to the learning zone from the Fitz much easier from the WVG.
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Not an expert here but you may be right but I am still unsure / skeptical. Alot of people do use the learning areas but a lot of people also want to get up the mountain. If there were to direct all beginners and learners to the new Fitz and organize things properly it might work pretty well. We will have to see.
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110% pure speculation but I have a feeling that the plan is in the next few years to upgrade Garbanzo to a HSS and move the current chair to install the Franz’s upgrade. But AussieRob would know better.
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Is this just speculation?
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Everything is speculation until it’s formally announced. This plan has been discussed, but no timeline has been put on it. JC is getting replaced next year, after that who knows what the priorities will be. I’d love to see us continue upgrading lifts, but I think it will be other resorts turn for new lifts in the near future. We we have had four in three years.
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I have a feeling that because of the new Fitzsimmons 8 Express there’s a possibility in the near future that Garbanzo will be upgraded to a high speed six (Maybe the summer after Jersey Cream), so then it would be part of a 3 lift redundancy to the Whistler Village Gondola (Fitzsimmons –> Garbanzo –> Emerald), not to mention that in addition to a lot of traffic coming from the new Fitzsimmons, a lot of traffic could be coming from those who don’t want to take the Big Red 6 Express after getting off the Creekside Gondola or the upper part of the Whistler side.
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Why did they replace Fitz and not this, they are the same age? Bike park?
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They replaced Fitzsimmons for mostly the bike park.
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Garbanzo is great, it serves some really nice terrain but there were never any lines, at least when I was there. Not sure if the Fitzsimmons upgrade to an 8-pack has changed that.
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