For the 2024-25 season, Leitner-Poma constructed a detachable quad to replace a Partek triple at the North Creek Ski Bowl.The new lift features full parking at the bottom terminal.Side view of the bottom station.View up the lift line.Loading area.Initially this lift was slated to follow a new alignment and be built a year earlier, but it ended up going the same place as the prior lift.Tower 5.View back down to the Ski Bowl base with a new lodge under construction.Middle section of the line.Tower 13.Top return station.Unloading area.View from the summit.Side view of the top terminal.Tower 14 and the upper station.View downhill at tower 12.Looking down the steepest part of the line.Tower 7.Looking up the line at tower 6.The first two towers.Partially complete parking rail during the inaugural season.Tower 2.Omega model chair.LPA grip.Combo assemblies.Tower 12.Return terminal overview.Looing down at the bottom station.
The whole Ski Bowl project is a costly boondoggle.
Ski Bowl is poorly connected the the rest of the mountain. It requires always long traverses and uphill skating even when Echo is open, and it’s worse when Echo is almost always closed for racing when Ski Bowl is open. Returning from Ski Bowl puts you on a narrow trail that is intimidating for lots of skiers.
Ski Bowl is too hard to open. The bottom is only 1000 feet, the top is only 1900. Most of it is below the main base, and below the base of Burnt Ridge. The last pitch of Sagamore is usually crusty when the rest of the mountain is good. Will SKi Bowl be better? Gore hasn’t made sufficient snow to open Ski Bowl before February, and even that came at the expense of leaving Sagamore, Uncas, and Topridge trails dry. Without those trials, terrain on the Topridge pod is limited to one blue trail, as is the Burnt Ridge pod when Echo is closed for racing, which it almost always is on weekends.
Ski Bowl is way too costly. It’s up to $40 million for an area that will be open 6 weekends a year! They never should have done the village chair, shouldn’t have built the original Hudson fixed grip, and should have cancelled the deachable when they couldn’t extend it to the new terminal as originally planned. Except they couldn’t cancel it because the towers had already been fabricated and the cable spliced.
The whole Ski Bowl project is a monumental ORDA screw up. But we’re gonna get a zippy coaster, so we got that going for us.
impossiblegoatee52ab705e53February 18, 2025 / 9:22 am
And just in case anyone thinks my rant about the cost of the new chair not being justified was over the top, I counted exactly 30 skiers/lift riders in the 29 pictures above. IT’s always gonna be the least used lift at Gore, even when it’s open, and it’s scheduled to be open only after MLK weekend, and even then only 4 days a week. And opening it delays opening some of the most important trails on the rest of the mountain.
Sounds more like a snowmaking issue. Gore should upgrade their pumping and air compressor capacity accordingly, or maybe build a booster station and compressors at Ski Bowl so it doesn’t rely on the system in place at the main mountain. I was there in early January and it seemed their capacity was already very limited due to how few trails were open in comparison to similar ski areas.
Gore actually has a really good physical plant. The Ski Bowl system is already separate from the rest off the mountain. The problems at the beginning of the season were totally about mismanagement after the operations manager retired last summer. They didn’t have enough workers and the mangers didn’t know how to make quality snow. They opened too few trails with thin cover, which they promptly tilled to bring gravel to the surface. It wasn’t corrected until ORDA sent crews from Whiteface and Belleayre to fix it.
Even if they could keep Ski Bowl open every day it would still be an unnecessary boondoggle.
Many of your concerns are valid. Although I am always happy to see my NYS tax dollars at work improving my ski experience. The Hudson chair has been open almost daily this season and the snow at the bowl has been great! This new lift makes the bowl infinitely lapable and great for morning laps.
This is an upgrade for the locals who actually use the bowl. My hope is that one day they put lights in across the whole bowl!
impossiblegoatee52ab705e53February 18, 2025 / 9:26 am
I heard it was a property dispute. There had to be a land swap between NYS and someone else (Town of Johnsburg? Barton Mines?) to get the upper terminal out from under the restrictions of the Adirondack Park
Does anyone know why neither of the terminals have the Leitner-Poma logos on them and the top terminal doesn’t have anything on it? Is it going to stay like this or are they going to put them on?
They went with Omega chairs to match their other detachable quads, Adirondack Express II, and Burnt Ridge. I feel that a six-pack is unlikely for gore, but if they do ever build one, they would most likely use Omega chairs as well.
Price was part of it too. I forgot to mention that. The other reasons are in my comment above. I do think that LPA still offers Omega 6 chairs though, as they have appeared on some of their recent 6-packs.
This upgrade was long overdue and should’ve been built as a high-speed quad when the Ski Bowl got connected to the rest of Gore in 2010. Definitely a big improvement over the old triple.
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I love this lift. Very good replacement for the old Hudson Chair. Makes it so much easier to lap the ski bowl.
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Best improvement at jore since burnt ridge
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only downside here is this may accelerate their plans to convert glades like Ski Bowl and the Cirque to open trails.
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Anyone have any idea why the chairs have tubular hangars? I haven’t seen a LPA detach with tubular hangars in a long time…
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all LPA lifts with Omega chairs are ment like that. Maybe in the future, they will receive the newer ones (like the northern express at hunter)
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The whole Ski Bowl project is a costly boondoggle.
Ski Bowl is poorly connected the the rest of the mountain. It requires always long traverses and uphill skating even when Echo is open, and it’s worse when Echo is almost always closed for racing when Ski Bowl is open. Returning from Ski Bowl puts you on a narrow trail that is intimidating for lots of skiers.
Ski Bowl is too hard to open. The bottom is only 1000 feet, the top is only 1900. Most of it is below the main base, and below the base of Burnt Ridge. The last pitch of Sagamore is usually crusty when the rest of the mountain is good. Will SKi Bowl be better? Gore hasn’t made sufficient snow to open Ski Bowl before February, and even that came at the expense of leaving Sagamore, Uncas, and Topridge trails dry. Without those trials, terrain on the Topridge pod is limited to one blue trail, as is the Burnt Ridge pod when Echo is closed for racing, which it almost always is on weekends.
Ski Bowl is way too costly. It’s up to $40 million for an area that will be open 6 weekends a year! They never should have done the village chair, shouldn’t have built the original Hudson fixed grip, and should have cancelled the deachable when they couldn’t extend it to the new terminal as originally planned. Except they couldn’t cancel it because the towers had already been fabricated and the cable spliced.
The whole Ski Bowl project is a monumental ORDA screw up. But we’re gonna get a zippy coaster, so we got that going for us.
LikeLike
And just in case anyone thinks my rant about the cost of the new chair not being justified was over the top, I counted exactly 30 skiers/lift riders in the 29 pictures above. IT’s always gonna be the least used lift at Gore, even when it’s open, and it’s scheduled to be open only after MLK weekend, and even then only 4 days a week. And opening it delays opening some of the most important trails on the rest of the mountain.
LikeLike
Sounds more like a snowmaking issue. Gore should upgrade their pumping and air compressor capacity accordingly, or maybe build a booster station and compressors at Ski Bowl so it doesn’t rely on the system in place at the main mountain. I was there in early January and it seemed their capacity was already very limited due to how few trails were open in comparison to similar ski areas.
LikeLike
Gore actually has a really good physical plant. The Ski Bowl system is already separate from the rest off the mountain. The problems at the beginning of the season were totally about mismanagement after the operations manager retired last summer. They didn’t have enough workers and the mangers didn’t know how to make quality snow. They opened too few trails with thin cover, which they promptly tilled to bring gravel to the surface. It wasn’t corrected until ORDA sent crews from Whiteface and Belleayre to fix it.
Even if they could keep Ski Bowl open every day it would still be an unnecessary boondoggle.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Many of your concerns are valid. Although I am always happy to see my NYS tax dollars at work improving my ski experience. The Hudson chair has been open almost daily this season and the snow at the bowl has been great! This new lift makes the bowl infinitely lapable and great for morning laps.
This is an upgrade for the locals who actually use the bowl. My hope is that one day they put lights in across the whole bowl!
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Does anyone know the reason why it wasn’t extended as originally planned
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I heard it was a property dispute. There had to be a land swap between NYS and someone else (Town of Johnsburg? Barton Mines?) to get the upper terminal out from under the restrictions of the Adirondack Park
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Aslo why did my name change form Hans to Impossiblegoatee? Have i been digitally kidnapped?
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Does anyone know why neither of the terminals have the Leitner-Poma logos on them and the top terminal doesn’t have anything on it? Is it going to stay like this or are they going to put them on?
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You can order them without the logo. Many resorts do that.
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Is there a reason why Gore went with the Omega chairs instead of the LPA chairs? And if they build a 6 pack will they use LPA chairs?
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They went with Omega chairs to match their other detachable quads, Adirondack Express II, and Burnt Ridge. I feel that a six-pack is unlikely for gore, but if they do ever build one, they would most likely use Omega chairs as well.
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Is there a reason why Gore went with the Omega chairs instead of the LPA chairs? And if they build a 6 pack will they use LPA chairs?
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Probably price. I’m not sure if LPA offers Omega 6 chairs anymore.
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Price was part of it too. I forgot to mention that. The other reasons are in my comment above. I do think that LPA still offers Omega 6 chairs though, as they have appeared on some of their recent 6-packs.
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I’m actually kind of unsure if they do or not. The last one was Northern Express at Hunter, built in 2018. I bet they do if you request them though.
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This upgrade was long overdue and should’ve been built as a high-speed quad when the Ski Bowl got connected to the rest of Gore in 2010. Definitely a big improvement over the old triple.
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