Bottom terminal in Mineral Basin.View up the line.Looking back at the bottom half of the line.Upper lift line.Top drive station.Another view of the top.Bottom station seen from Baldy.The entire basin.Tower 1 adjacent to the bottom station.View up the line from tower 2.Early Stealth terminal.Loading area.View back down the lower part of the line.Nearing the summit.Towers 12 through 14.Arriving at Hidden Peak.Towers spaced for a cat road.View from the summit.Side view of the drive station in summer.Unloading area and operator house.
This lift needs replacement because of capacity. The lines are hidiously long, especially on a powder day as the lift is the only route out of Mineral Basin. The lift has 1,800 capacity versus Gadzoom which has 2,000 per hour. A 6 Pack would definitely be a relief. Or a cheaper option is adding more chairs to make it 2,400 per hour.
Rumor is that this lift is supposed to be extended downhill once the Mary Ellen Gulch expansion happens in a couple of years. When that occurs, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more chairs added to take it up to 2400.
donald reif you might be right, count the amount of windows on the top terminal vs the bottom. The top terminal is shorter in length. If snowbird replaces this lift with a six person chairlift, they are gonna have to build a longer terminal at top. Which means higher up breakover towers will be required which causes a wind related problem. A doppelmayr high speed six with slatted back rests would be best here. The six pack chairs are also more wind resistant.
Does anyone know why Mineral Basin’s drive terminal configuration is different than on other CTEC Stealth 2s? On every other one I’ve seen (and there are many in Utah) the drive bullwheel is behind the rear (tension) mast just inside the turnaround, but on Mineral it’s between the masts and the front mast is the tension one. Doesn’t seem like it would be a space issue or that Mineral would have an especially beefy drive. Gadzoom (another Stealth 2) has the standard configuration for both terminals. Nothing unusual about Mineral’s return terminal down at the bottom.
Sunnyside just across the way at Alta also has the same configuration. A few of the other 1999 CTEC Stealth IIs also have this configuration, but not all. I’m just speculating, but perhaps it’s a prototype for the Stealth III, which always has the bullwheel on the inside of the masts.
I don’t know. If you look carefully at the top station it has the return terminal style masts. On normal Stealth IIs, the drive station configuration has a larger mast next to the bullwheel. Does anyone know why? This seems quite random given the fact that normal masts would have worked fine. Also, Sunnyside at Alta is a high speed triple, so it has different configurations than an normal Stealth II.
It’s worth noting though that the drive bullwheel in Mineral’s top terminal is angled, rather than being flat like it is in most Stealth II terminals. It is a little bit hard to tell in the pictures here, but if you look closely compared to say, Gadzoom, you can tell. I have a picture of the bullwheel and underskin removed on this lift which shows the angled rail, but uploading pictures here is hard.
The original Garaventa-CTEC Stealth collaborations basically took a monopod CTEC drive terminal and added the detachable machinery downhill of the bullwheel, hence why the bullwheel is uphill of the upper mast (basically within the contour). Because it doesn’t matter where the bullwheel is in a detach, later versions most likely went to a more conventional design. Themav is probably correct in that the Stealth IIs with a centre-mounted bullwheel were prototypes or x-models. Alex, downloading isn’t affected by bullwheel placement on a detach.
Today we had 2 national guard blackhawk helicopters crash just below the lift. One blackhawk started slinging rotors and other parts all over mineral basin. Came very close to damaging a lift or someone on the mountain. Everyone made it out alive as far as I know.
You know what I wonder, if Little Cloud has a six pack line gauge then I can only imagine that this lift could be made into a six pack. Part of the reason I think this should go six is because it is the only way out of the basin
They really really need to replace this lift. It is the most crowded lift at snowbird! A six pack in the exact same alignment would work perfectly fine.
Yup, this would be at the top of my list of near-term replacement needs for Powdr, along with OBX and NWX at Mt. Bachelor, and Superstar at Killington.
Most people who ski at snowbird, especially in the mineral basin, are pretty experienced so i think they could get away with 2800-3000 PPH on a HSQ, I dont know if this one is capable of that though.
I really don’t think this lift should be upgraded in its current alignment. Mineral basin as the area itself can absolutely handle more skiers and this lift gets so crowded and hard to manage the line on on even average days. Issue is that the ridge this lift unloads on is already so tight and not everyone is going off the lift to lap. I think a better solution would be to slightly raise the unload so people don’t have to hike uphill a bit to get to the tram, causing major traffic jams. Then install a second lift for the basin which unloads possibly somewhere below the current unload or possibly to the skiers left of the top of little cloud. I don’t know where this could be possible with the limited ridge space, but it would be better than hammering the ridge line up there with giant groups of six all crashing into each other.
When Mineral gets replaced with a six, 90 degree unloading (to lookers right) should be warranted to provide more room on the peak and to make unloading of the lift way less intimidating than it is right now. I also want the replacement to be a D-Line since Mineral is the only way out of the basin to really get to anything and it should be as reliable as it can be, whether wind or avalanche activity threaten to impact operations
I genuinely don’t think the way it unloads is the issue, its more that EVERYONE goes to the same place, the majority of skiers in mineral go down the blue run and use the traverse, the top of that traverse also happens to be the top of Little Cloud. Unless they can find a way to make it so that everyone can go to that blue run without having to cross the traverse it would help a lot. Potentially make a new lift that terminates farther south down the ridge from little cloud or terminates somewhere near Sunday saddle with an added catwalk. Another issue I wonder is if they even could bump the capacity with a 6 person chair I imagine that any new lift would probably have a similar capacity as the limited space up top needs a smaller than usual terminal
The last thing Snowbird needs to do is to add lift capacity to their terrain. It gets skied off so quickly, I think it’s better to be in line rather than spilling even more skiers per minute onto the terrain. And I say this as an Alta-Bird season’s passholder with Alta and Snowbird.
I also note the Mineral Basin chair has been down since February, I believe with the same gearbox failure that the Riva Bahn Express experienced at Vail.
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This lift needs replacement because of capacity. The lines are hidiously long, especially on a powder day as the lift is the only route out of Mineral Basin. The lift has 1,800 capacity versus Gadzoom which has 2,000 per hour. A 6 Pack would definitely be a relief. Or a cheaper option is adding more chairs to make it 2,400 per hour.
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Rumor is that this lift is supposed to be extended downhill once the Mary Ellen Gulch expansion happens in a couple of years. When that occurs, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more chairs added to take it up to 2400.
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Besides this lift has 2200 PPH capacity. Little Cloud 2.0 (A long with probably Gad II) is the HSQ with 1800 PPH.
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I wonder if there are space constraints caused by the ridge at the top that prevent additional capacity from being added.
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Doubtful, Peruvian is a full 2400 PPH lift, and Snowbird basically cut out a shelf to unload that lift on to.
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donald reif you might be right, count the amount of windows on the top terminal vs the bottom. The top terminal is shorter in length. If snowbird replaces this lift with a six person chairlift, they are gonna have to build a longer terminal at top. Which means higher up breakover towers will be required which causes a wind related problem. A doppelmayr high speed six with slatted back rests would be best here. The six pack chairs are also more wind resistant.
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Does anyone know why Mineral Basin’s drive terminal configuration is different than on other CTEC Stealth 2s? On every other one I’ve seen (and there are many in Utah) the drive bullwheel is behind the rear (tension) mast just inside the turnaround, but on Mineral it’s between the masts and the front mast is the tension one. Doesn’t seem like it would be a space issue or that Mineral would have an especially beefy drive. Gadzoom (another Stealth 2) has the standard configuration for both terminals. Nothing unusual about Mineral’s return terminal down at the bottom.
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Sunnyside just across the way at Alta also has the same configuration. A few of the other 1999 CTEC Stealth IIs also have this configuration, but not all. I’m just speculating, but perhaps it’s a prototype for the Stealth III, which always has the bullwheel on the inside of the masts.
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I don’t know. If you look carefully at the top station it has the return terminal style masts. On normal Stealth IIs, the drive station configuration has a larger mast next to the bullwheel. Does anyone know why? This seems quite random given the fact that normal masts would have worked fine. Also, Sunnyside at Alta is a high speed triple, so it has different configurations than an normal Stealth II.
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It could have been due to space constraints in the unload area.
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It’s worth noting though that the drive bullwheel in Mineral’s top terminal is angled, rather than being flat like it is in most Stealth II terminals. It is a little bit hard to tell in the pictures here, but if you look closely compared to say, Gadzoom, you can tell. I have a picture of the bullwheel and underskin removed on this lift which shows the angled rail, but uploading pictures here is hard.
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I was just thinking, this lift has downloading for tour groups. You can see the controls in the 3rd to last picture. Could it be because of that?
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The original Garaventa-CTEC Stealth collaborations basically took a monopod CTEC drive terminal and added the detachable machinery downhill of the bullwheel, hence why the bullwheel is uphill of the upper mast (basically within the contour). Because it doesn’t matter where the bullwheel is in a detach, later versions most likely went to a more conventional design. Themav is probably correct in that the Stealth IIs with a centre-mounted bullwheel were prototypes or x-models. Alex, downloading isn’t affected by bullwheel placement on a detach.
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Today we had 2 national guard blackhawk helicopters crash just below the lift. One blackhawk started slinging rotors and other parts all over mineral basin. Came very close to damaging a lift or someone on the mountain. Everyone made it out alive as far as I know.
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correction: the helicopters were very low to the ground and didnt really sling parts all over the mountain but were very close to the bottom station.
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Here ya go.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50353784/no-injuries-after-2-blackhawk-helicopters-go-down-near-snowbird-
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What day were you skiing when it was so crowded. I went out on ski week and baldy had no line
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You know what I wonder, if Little Cloud has a six pack line gauge then I can only imagine that this lift could be made into a six pack. Part of the reason I think this should go six is because it is the only way out of the basin
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They really really need to replace this lift. It is the most crowded lift at snowbird! A six pack in the exact same alignment would work perfectly fine.
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Yup, this would be at the top of my list of near-term replacement needs for Powdr, along with OBX and NWX at Mt. Bachelor, and Superstar at Killington.
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Most people who ski at snowbird, especially in the mineral basin, are pretty experienced so i think they could get away with 2800-3000 PPH on a HSQ, I dont know if this one is capable of that though.
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I really don’t think this lift should be upgraded in its current alignment. Mineral basin as the area itself can absolutely handle more skiers and this lift gets so crowded and hard to manage the line on on even average days. Issue is that the ridge this lift unloads on is already so tight and not everyone is going off the lift to lap. I think a better solution would be to slightly raise the unload so people don’t have to hike uphill a bit to get to the tram, causing major traffic jams. Then install a second lift for the basin which unloads possibly somewhere below the current unload or possibly to the skiers left of the top of little cloud. I don’t know where this could be possible with the limited ridge space, but it would be better than hammering the ridge line up there with giant groups of six all crashing into each other.
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When Mineral gets replaced with a six, 90 degree unloading (to lookers right) should be warranted to provide more room on the peak and to make unloading of the lift way less intimidating than it is right now. I also want the replacement to be a D-Line since Mineral is the only way out of the basin to really get to anything and it should be as reliable as it can be, whether wind or avalanche activity threaten to impact operations
LikeLike
I genuinely don’t think the way it unloads is the issue, its more that EVERYONE goes to the same place, the majority of skiers in mineral go down the blue run and use the traverse, the top of that traverse also happens to be the top of Little Cloud. Unless they can find a way to make it so that everyone can go to that blue run without having to cross the traverse it would help a lot. Potentially make a new lift that terminates farther south down the ridge from little cloud or terminates somewhere near Sunday saddle with an added catwalk. Another issue I wonder is if they even could bump the capacity with a 6 person chair I imagine that any new lift would probably have a similar capacity as the limited space up top needs a smaller than usual terminal
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The last thing Snowbird needs to do is to add lift capacity to their terrain. It gets skied off so quickly, I think it’s better to be in line rather than spilling even more skiers per minute onto the terrain. And I say this as an Alta-Bird season’s passholder with Alta and Snowbird.
I also note the Mineral Basin chair has been down since February, I believe with the same gearbox failure that the Riva Bahn Express experienced at Vail.
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A mechanic at Alta told me this weekend that it is the Planetary Hub that is being replaced. A miserable job in these winter conditions.
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