This lift was the very first eight passenger chairlift built on the East Coast and the project included a large bottom terminal building.Doppelmayr Connect controls.Custom upholstered eight place chair.Lower terminal overview.Side view of the bottom station.Another view of the drive station.Loading conveyor.D-Line bullwheel.The top terminal features a standard D-Line skin rather than being enclosed by a building.Terminal underside.View down at tower 11.Conical towers brought over from Europe.The alignment is not that long with a ride time of just 4.5 minutes.View from above at the building.Hold down assemblies on towers 1 and 2.The parking area doubles as maze space during the day.Riding up the line.Tower 7.Tower 9.Upper station overview.Turnaround area.A chair with bubble down.Tower 12 and the top terminal.T11.Another view of the summit.A chair with the bubble open.Middle part of the lift line.Lower lift line.View uphill.The building entrance.Kanc 8 plaza.Backside of the building.Most of the lift line seen from the resort entrance.
Sort of, the sun shining directly on the tower tube can cause the tower to move (sunflower) due to uneven thermal expansion of the steel tube hence the sheetmental deflectors on the last tower. Tall towers or in this case a tower adjacent to the terminal terminal will need this movement controlled as the terminal doesn’t experience the same movement if any at all and in the case of a very tall towers the movement is just too great for the line to absorb. Often you will see lifts with random towers painted light colors to deal with this issue too.
This lift is a bit silly when you realize it’s 4000 feet long on a small intermediate pod. This would’ve been a much better lift for somewhere like Sugarloaf, with longer lifts that serve more terrain.
So far it seems to be moving people effectively out of what normally was a crowded lift. Yesterday was a big crowd at Loon, and the gondola had a huge line, but the Kanc never had a wait of more than a couple of minutes.
The heated seats and bubbles was mostly what I was referring to. The actual 8 person chairs are a novelty compared to 6 chairs. Kanc8 has a hourly capacity of 3500 pph, which I’ve heard is often effectively less due to misloads and bad organization of the line. 6 packs from 30 years ago are able to get 3600 pph.
That’s not true. No one is loading 6 packs at a capacity of 3600 per hour. If a lift has that as its theoretical capacity, they have either removed chairs, or are not running at full speed.
Collil Parsons, all the HS6s at Stratton, VT run 3600 PPH, and they load a perfect 5 or 6 to a chair, only 6 on peak days. While they don’t ALWAYS run at a top speed, the sun bowls run 900 on weekends and the snow bowls run close to 1000. So please explain why you think its impossible.
The loading of this lift is a joke. Poor line management drives maybe a 60% of capacity utilization. Lift lines are unreasonably long due to poor line management. It’s not a lack of staffing, it’s poor training of the employees who stand by as many chairs load with 2-4 riders. Sorry, but so far this is a marketing gimmick, with similar actual uphill capacity than the old high speed quad. Sure hope they get it together at the base….
Came on here to say the same- lift is gorgeous but in practice is an embarrassment. Old Kanc quad line was downright militant in its organization and ran perfectly, this one is a mess with not a single operator organizing the line. 8 people groups are far too large just to have them merge and hope for the best, everyone in line was remarking about how disorganized it was. It seems like they did not even leave enough room outside the scanner gates for the crowds they are seeing. Or they could just make sure chairs are all loaded and the line wouldnt be so long….
Clearly the line should be managed, as would be expected at any major lift. When I was there on Saturday I did notice that more chairs had 6-8 people in them than 2-4, so I have to think it’s moving more people than the quad did.
Chair storage. It’s also quite an impressive building as you drive into the parking lot, so it’s instantly noticeable and not another ho-hum drive terminal. With Mountain biking moving over here, and a new mountain coaster going in, and a planned expansion/refurb/replacement of the lodge there, I think this will become quite a hub of activity.
Also the glass walls on the lift maze side of the building can be raised to open the building to the patio on warmer days.
I visited loon Saturday and ironically Kanc8 had the shortest lines by far but the operation of it was a complete joke. There was not a single person managing the line so it was a free for all and chairs were being loaded with on average 5 or 6 people. The lift was also stopped constantly. Very cool lift regardless
They have been going with the free for all model at least every time I have visited. Yes, it seems kind of silly to have an eight-person chair and the result is that most chairs end up around 6. However, it is a more spacious ride, and even with the inefficiencies, the wait times are much lower than the former lift. If long lines actually start to form here, I am sure they would institute proper line management.
I’ll see your bad line management and raise you. On Saturday,3/30/24, everything was on wind hold except for two carpets, two beginner chairs, and the Kanc. But – they couldn’t get the overhead door on the front of the barn open. The line started at Kissin Cousins and went all the way across the front of the lodge. It was 8 to 10 people wide – no ropes or corals. At the patio, they had a series of rubber mats with snow on them that you walked across single file. You entered by the side door, where they had two people hand scanning. Chairs were regularly going up empty.
Oh, and they closed the lift at 2:30 for an ’80’s themed DJ party. Fortunately the other lifts were running by then.
I was there too, and I’m not sure what more Loon operations could have done that day — as you reference there was a severe windstorm that damaged the overhead door rendering it inoperable. Loon had an overhead door maintenance company from Concord NH on site by midmorning to fix the door. In the meantime, the Loon ops team improvised and loaded guests onto the lift via the patio as you say. The architecture of the patio and those doors on the side of the terminal building prevented them from creating a wider entry into the building. I’d say that they did as good a job as they could have done given the circumstances on what was a very crowded day given the 80s party, including firing up East Basin (which I believe was unplanned) to supplement North Peak which couldn’t run given the wind. However, I do agree that Loon could do a much better job loading the lift. Bring some of the gondola or Seven Brothers operators over to the Kanc8 to show ‘em how it’s done.
Still struggling to wrap my head around why they sprang for a D-Line 8 pack on a lift of less than 4,000 feet. Just throwing away money for a marketing gimmick. A 6 pack would have been fine, or they could have had a midstation at the current top and brought the lift all the way up to Tote Road.
At least this will put an end to my dad’s jokes about Loon being a Boyne cash cow.
“Big Sky is getting 2 new 6 packs this year, and at Loon, we’re putting new oil in the Camp III fryolator! Woo!”
The line management issue is likely due to staffing shortages. Loon was only able to hire 80% of the staff that they typically hire in a Winter season, so what you are seeing is simply a lack of staff. Loon is generally really good about managing their lines and filling lifts to capacity. I also think there was a lack of effort to fill the lift to capacity due to COVID. Last season and this season Loon hasn’t packed the gondola cabins or chairs to capacity to keep parties separate.
It should be the same (or very similar to) what’s on the other D-Lines (Swift Current 6/Ramcharger 8). It works very well. It’s a little strange to try and load your bike while the edge is going around the contour since the outside is moving so much faster than the inside, but they’re otherwise easy to use and hold modern bikes very securely.
The D-lines also have the option of stopping individual carriers at the top, so your bike is stopped on the carrier ahead of you. Then your carrier stops, you step up to your bike, grab it off the bike carrier, then after a few seconds the bike carrier moves out of the way, you can ride down the unload ramp, and the carrier you rode up on moves forward for the next ones behind it. Means it takes less staff to run because they don’t have to unload all of the bikes before the riders get there.
I rode Loon’s bike park this summer and have some thoughts on using the Kanc8 for bike operations.
Namely, it must have been very slow in previous years using 7bro! The whole park was reworked to start trails from the top of the Kanc, with some trails opening later due to construction of new/refurb 7bro (old Kanc). If you’ve never experienced detachable lift-served mountain biking, I’ll tell you now that it is second to none. The Kanc is running at around 3 m/s for biking operations with half chairs on the line. Rather than getting dedicated bike carriers, Loon opted to remove the bubbles and mount the clips on the back of the chairs, resulting in bikes being held vertically. The parked half of chairs retained the full winter configuration, while the summer chairs have removed the bubbles, individual seats, and back graphic to make space for bike clips. The two outside seats on the left and right have been blocked off, giving each chair a carrying capacity of 6 humans and 5 bikes (if the side hook is used for a smaller bike). Each chair sports a white Doppelmayr logo against a black background on the back of the seat, normally covered up by the graphics pictured above.
Bike clips: if you want a clearer idea of their use at Loon, check out the on-chair mounting option in this Dopp promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUwkzz3XBt0
Similar to the video, Loon has a (of course color coordinated) demo box with two clips (load & carry heights) around the passenger entrance to the building. I asked, it seems that older (or larger) fenders can cause grip issues with the clips. The clips work really well, and they hold the bike very securely even when crooked, which can happen if the bike twists as it rolls off the departure ramp and the chair attaches to the line.
I have to disagree about your loading issue however. Loon has made use of the extra room “behind” the loading area, and bikers load in-line with the departure side using marked sections on the floor to assist with lining up. Rather than loading over the carpet (like in winter configuration & thus mid-way through the turnaround), that area is covered and blocked off by the other half of the chairs parked. There is a ramp up to the extra space from the entry side, you slowly make a 180 degree turn in line to get to the load point, going in between the control room and the control pedestal near the carpet (basically exactly where photo 6 was taken. Imagine the entire left side being a wooden ramp for loading, with in-line loading happening at a 90 degree angle to the photo). I did see some people lifting their bike too early, before the carrier had completed the turn but both the clips and the terminal speed were forgiving enough that the lift didn’t have to stop to correct any issues. In fact, it was quite rare to see the lift stopped for bike operations.
Loon is indeed using the individual carrier stop option at the top terminal. Both the chair in front (carrying bikes) and the passenger chair stop independently to ease unloading, and there are two ways off the chairlift for bikes to ease congestion.
The Kanc8 Patio is also being used in the summer, there is a new outdoor bar and tent set up for live music events.
I think the first year of any new technology’s deployment (in general, not just lifts) is going to have hiccups and might not go as smoothly as marketing made it sound. The comments here contain some horror stories, but with a year of operating experience under their belt, and a sister lift being constructed at nearby-ish Boyne-owned Sunday River, I have to imagine operation is going to improve significantly from last winter.
Note the orange accents on the top of the standard-skinned return terminal! Very sleek, although it REALLY is a shame the lift is so short, you can actually see the top terminal’s underside from the parking lot in some spots
It is honestly quite strange the bubbles here aren’t orange given that Sunday River got red and Big Sky got blue. Loon goes all out in orange for marketing.
Lift Blog 
What is the reason behind the top tower having those white things around them? UV reflectors?
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Sort of, the sun shining directly on the tower tube can cause the tower to move (sunflower) due to uneven thermal expansion of the steel tube hence the sheetmental deflectors on the last tower. Tall towers or in this case a tower adjacent to the terminal terminal will need this movement controlled as the terminal doesn’t experience the same movement if any at all and in the case of a very tall towers the movement is just too great for the line to absorb. Often you will see lifts with random towers painted light colors to deal with this issue too.
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This lift is a bit silly when you realize it’s 4000 feet long on a small intermediate pod. This would’ve been a much better lift for somewhere like Sugarloaf, with longer lifts that serve more terrain.
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So far it seems to be moving people effectively out of what normally was a crowded lift. Yesterday was a big crowd at Loon, and the gondola had a huge line, but the Kanc never had a wait of more than a couple of minutes.
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I disagree. The Kanc Quad was more crowded than anything at Sugarloaf, and the lines at Kanc8 have been much shorter this year.
I will say that the heated seats and bubbles would definitely be more appreciated at Sugarloaf.
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The heated seats and bubbles was mostly what I was referring to. The actual 8 person chairs are a novelty compared to 6 chairs. Kanc8 has a hourly capacity of 3500 pph, which I’ve heard is often effectively less due to misloads and bad organization of the line. 6 packs from 30 years ago are able to get 3600 pph.
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That’s not true. No one is loading 6 packs at a capacity of 3600 per hour. If a lift has that as its theoretical capacity, they have either removed chairs, or are not running at full speed.
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Video of the lift.
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Collil Parsons, all the HS6s at Stratton, VT run 3600 PPH, and they load a perfect 5 or 6 to a chair, only 6 on peak days. While they don’t ALWAYS run at a top speed, the sun bowls run 900 on weekends and the snow bowls run close to 1000. So please explain why you think its impossible.
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The loading of this lift is a joke. Poor line management drives maybe a 60% of capacity utilization. Lift lines are unreasonably long due to poor line management. It’s not a lack of staffing, it’s poor training of the employees who stand by as many chairs load with 2-4 riders. Sorry, but so far this is a marketing gimmick, with similar actual uphill capacity than the old high speed quad. Sure hope they get it together at the base….
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Came on here to say the same- lift is gorgeous but in practice is an embarrassment. Old Kanc quad line was downright militant in its organization and ran perfectly, this one is a mess with not a single operator organizing the line. 8 people groups are far too large just to have them merge and hope for the best, everyone in line was remarking about how disorganized it was. It seems like they did not even leave enough room outside the scanner gates for the crowds they are seeing. Or they could just make sure chairs are all loaded and the line wouldnt be so long….
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Clearly the line should be managed, as would be expected at any major lift. When I was there on Saturday I did notice that more chairs had 6-8 people in them than 2-4, so I have to think it’s moving more people than the quad did.
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Why did Loon opt for a building as the bottom terminal?
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Chair storage. It’s also quite an impressive building as you drive into the parking lot, so it’s instantly noticeable and not another ho-hum drive terminal. With Mountain biking moving over here, and a new mountain coaster going in, and a planned expansion/refurb/replacement of the lodge there, I think this will become quite a hub of activity.
Also the glass walls on the lift maze side of the building can be raised to open the building to the patio on warmer days.
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I visited loon Saturday and ironically Kanc8 had the shortest lines by far but the operation of it was a complete joke. There was not a single person managing the line so it was a free for all and chairs were being loaded with on average 5 or 6 people. The lift was also stopped constantly. Very cool lift regardless
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They have been going with the free for all model at least every time I have visited. Yes, it seems kind of silly to have an eight-person chair and the result is that most chairs end up around 6. However, it is a more spacious ride, and even with the inefficiencies, the wait times are much lower than the former lift. If long lines actually start to form here, I am sure they would institute proper line management.
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I’ll see your bad line management and raise you. On Saturday,3/30/24, everything was on wind hold except for two carpets, two beginner chairs, and the Kanc. But – they couldn’t get the overhead door on the front of the barn open. The line started at Kissin Cousins and went all the way across the front of the lodge. It was 8 to 10 people wide – no ropes or corals. At the patio, they had a series of rubber mats with snow on them that you walked across single file. You entered by the side door, where they had two people hand scanning. Chairs were regularly going up empty.
Oh, and they closed the lift at 2:30 for an ’80’s themed DJ party. Fortunately the other lifts were running by then.
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I was there too, and I’m not sure what more Loon operations could have done that day — as you reference there was a severe windstorm that damaged the overhead door rendering it inoperable. Loon had an overhead door maintenance company from Concord NH on site by midmorning to fix the door. In the meantime, the Loon ops team improvised and loaded guests onto the lift via the patio as you say. The architecture of the patio and those doors on the side of the terminal building prevented them from creating a wider entry into the building. I’d say that they did as good a job as they could have done given the circumstances on what was a very crowded day given the 80s party, including firing up East Basin (which I believe was unplanned) to supplement North Peak which couldn’t run given the wind. However, I do agree that Loon could do a much better job loading the lift. Bring some of the gondola or Seven Brothers operators over to the Kanc8 to show ‘em how it’s done.
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Still struggling to wrap my head around why they sprang for a D-Line 8 pack on a lift of less than 4,000 feet. Just throwing away money for a marketing gimmick. A 6 pack would have been fine, or they could have had a midstation at the current top and brought the lift all the way up to Tote Road.
At least this will put an end to my dad’s jokes about Loon being a Boyne cash cow.
“Big Sky is getting 2 new 6 packs this year, and at Loon, we’re putting new oil in the Camp III fryolator! Woo!”
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The line management issue is likely due to staffing shortages. Loon was only able to hire 80% of the staff that they typically hire in a Winter season, so what you are seeing is simply a lack of staff. Loon is generally really good about managing their lines and filling lifts to capacity. I also think there was a lack of effort to fill the lift to capacity due to COVID. Last season and this season Loon hasn’t packed the gondola cabins or chairs to capacity to keep parties separate.
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Any assessment of the summer bike park DM “bike clip” product they use to load and transport bikes on the backs of the chairs?’
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It should be the same (or very similar to) what’s on the other D-Lines (Swift Current 6/Ramcharger 8). It works very well. It’s a little strange to try and load your bike while the edge is going around the contour since the outside is moving so much faster than the inside, but they’re otherwise easy to use and hold modern bikes very securely.
The D-lines also have the option of stopping individual carriers at the top, so your bike is stopped on the carrier ahead of you. Then your carrier stops, you step up to your bike, grab it off the bike carrier, then after a few seconds the bike carrier moves out of the way, you can ride down the unload ramp, and the carrier you rode up on moves forward for the next ones behind it. Means it takes less staff to run because they don’t have to unload all of the bikes before the riders get there.
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I rode Loon’s bike park this summer and have some thoughts on using the Kanc8 for bike operations.
Namely, it must have been very slow in previous years using 7bro! The whole park was reworked to start trails from the top of the Kanc, with some trails opening later due to construction of new/refurb 7bro (old Kanc). If you’ve never experienced detachable lift-served mountain biking, I’ll tell you now that it is second to none. The Kanc is running at around 3 m/s for biking operations with half chairs on the line. Rather than getting dedicated bike carriers, Loon opted to remove the bubbles and mount the clips on the back of the chairs, resulting in bikes being held vertically. The parked half of chairs retained the full winter configuration, while the summer chairs have removed the bubbles, individual seats, and back graphic to make space for bike clips. The two outside seats on the left and right have been blocked off, giving each chair a carrying capacity of 6 humans and 5 bikes (if the side hook is used for a smaller bike). Each chair sports a white Doppelmayr logo against a black background on the back of the seat, normally covered up by the graphics pictured above.
Bike clips: if you want a clearer idea of their use at Loon, check out the on-chair mounting option in this Dopp promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUwkzz3XBt0
Similar to the video, Loon has a (of course color coordinated) demo box with two clips (load & carry heights) around the passenger entrance to the building. I asked, it seems that older (or larger) fenders can cause grip issues with the clips. The clips work really well, and they hold the bike very securely even when crooked, which can happen if the bike twists as it rolls off the departure ramp and the chair attaches to the line.
I have to disagree about your loading issue however. Loon has made use of the extra room “behind” the loading area, and bikers load in-line with the departure side using marked sections on the floor to assist with lining up. Rather than loading over the carpet (like in winter configuration & thus mid-way through the turnaround), that area is covered and blocked off by the other half of the chairs parked. There is a ramp up to the extra space from the entry side, you slowly make a 180 degree turn in line to get to the load point, going in between the control room and the control pedestal near the carpet (basically exactly where photo 6 was taken. Imagine the entire left side being a wooden ramp for loading, with in-line loading happening at a 90 degree angle to the photo). I did see some people lifting their bike too early, before the carrier had completed the turn but both the clips and the terminal speed were forgiving enough that the lift didn’t have to stop to correct any issues. In fact, it was quite rare to see the lift stopped for bike operations.
Loon is indeed using the individual carrier stop option at the top terminal. Both the chair in front (carrying bikes) and the passenger chair stop independently to ease unloading, and there are two ways off the chairlift for bikes to ease congestion.
The Kanc8 Patio is also being used in the summer, there is a new outdoor bar and tent set up for live music events.
I think the first year of any new technology’s deployment (in general, not just lifts) is going to have hiccups and might not go as smoothly as marketing made it sound. The comments here contain some horror stories, but with a year of operating experience under their belt, and a sister lift being constructed at nearby-ish Boyne-owned Sunday River, I have to imagine operation is going to improve significantly from last winter.
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Note the orange accents on the top of the standard-skinned return terminal! Very sleek, although it REALLY is a shame the lift is so short, you can actually see the top terminal’s underside from the parking lot in some spots
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It is honestly quite strange the bubbles here aren’t orange given that Sunday River got red and Big Sky got blue. Loon goes all out in orange for marketing.
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Beautiful.
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I like the fact that all of the equipment in the drive terminal is visible. Lifts with terminal skins don’t show as much machinery.
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