- Bridger Bowl is sending Virginia City up to Teton Pass.
- Oakland Zoo’s California Trail gondola
opened Mondaywill open soon. - China Peak will replace Chair 2 with a Yan quad from Steamboat this summer.
- The Subway in the Sky celebrates three years.
- Alyeska is removing its oldest, longest and tallest lift with no replacement immediately planned.
- Eldora’s new six-place has a name: Eldo Express.
- Cranmore is moving the bottom terminal of the South Quad to make room for a real estate project.
- Intrawest shareholder sues to stop Aspen Skiing Co. and KSL purchase.
- Vail-Stowe deal closes.
- Vail Resorts says in its third quarter results that Epic Pass sales are up 10 percent over last year. The company typically announces new capital projects just after Epic Pass sales conclude in late November.
- The Indiana State Fair is getting a chairlift.
- Beartooth Basin’s two platters open for summer turns for the first time since 2014.
- Urban gondolas are changing the world.
- Leitner Ropeways finishes its newest urban gondola in Mexico.
Instagram Tuesday: New & Old
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUdZEc2DYNi/?taken-by=bartzbenjamin
News Roundup: Pulse
- New owners of Alpine Mountain, PA say they can only afford to keep one chairlift and plan to sell two others.
- Mi Teleférico’s upcoming Purple and Orange UNI-G stations look super cool.
- Dismantled skyride at Western Fair in London, Ontario may go to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
- Ski Blandford is insolvent and may close.
- Doppelmayr USA is hiring construction laborers for Beaver Creek, Copper and Snowbasin projects; Leitner-Poma of America needs help at Breck, Keystone and Vail.
- A mile-long gondola will connect Jerusalem’s New and Old cities beginning in 2021. The Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy site attracts 130,000 visitors every week.
- Poma lands $100 million design-build-operate-maintain contract for phase one of urban gondola system in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
- Sunday River’s stricken Spruce triple went to Lost Valley.
- Stoneham’s Chinook T-Bar is going to Troll, BC.
- A new double chair will replace Pallavicini soon at Arapahoe Basin.
- Facing another six-figure landslide repair, Howelsen Hill looks toward new chairlift.
Instagram Tuesday: Drone
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
The Biggest Gondola You’ve Never Heard of is in Oregon’s Wallowas
You probably don’t know about this lift, even though it has the largest vertical rise of any gondola in North America. Yes, more vertical than if Vail had a top-to-bottom lift and more than the (much newer) gondolas at Revelstoke, Kicking Horse, Silver Mountain and Aspen. You wouldn’t know how cool this lift is from the tiny ticket booth and parking lot, or from the tramway’s Facebook page, which lists it as “permanently closed.” Despite all signs pointing to a lackluster roadside attraction, the Wallowa Lake Tramway, as it’s known, is incredible.
Situated at the far shore of its namesake, past the end of an abandoned railroad and at the dead-end of a 13-mile road, it feels like a trip to the Alps with high mountain peaks all around. Opened in 1970 after two years of construction at a cost of $700,000, the tramway was conceived as the launch point for a large ski area, so the cabins have ski racks. Although skiing never materialized, nearly fifty years later the gondola serves as a scenic throwback for the lucky few who venture six hours from Portland or 4.5 from Spokane or Boise (the local Lions Club opened a ski area nearby called Ferguson Ridge in 1983.) Those who trek to the Wallowas are rewarded with a 3,700′ vertical lift to 8,256′ Mt. Howard with monster mountain views along the way and a shimmering blue lake below.
Stoneham Replacing Two Lifts with Doppelmayr Quad
This is big news as the last new lift built at Stoneham is 28 years old! Thanks to Julien C. for the head’s up.
Not So Happy: Reopening Spout Springs Just Got Tougher
Next I rounded the corner to the base-to-summit Happy double, which looked anything but happy. Surveying the scene above, I instantly assumed vandals had somehow knocked over the building that houses the 1965 double chair’s bottom drive bullwheel. But another clue was all around me. The massive snow load from this winter in the Blue Mountains was probably too much for the almost 55-year old building to handle. Not only did it fall on top of the terminal, wood got hung up in a chair which bent like a pretzel and caused the light side to de-rope in two places.
News Roundup: Replacements
- Suit filed against Ski Liberty by family of boy who dangled from a chair for seven minutes after mis-loading.
- Mi Teleférico’s four gondola lines transported 194,971 passengers last Wednesday, an impressive single day record.
- Squaw|Alpine now wants an extension of permit for replacing Hot Wheels.
- Doppelmayr remembers past CEO Artur Doppelmayr, who died May 12th.
- Apparently the Utah Olympic Park is adding two new chairlifts this summer, although I am still trying to confirm.
- Steamboat’s gondola rebuild is taking longer than expected and reopening has been pushed back two weeks to July 15th.
- Vail Resorts will re-use chairs and towers from Keystone’s Montezuma Express in building the new Red Buffalo Express at Beaver Creek.
- Saddleback Mountain Foundation needs $11.2 million to purchase Maine’s third largest ski area, including $3.2 million to replace the Rangeley lift with a fixed-grip quad. So far, the group has only raised a fraction of that amount.
- Sunday River’s new Spruce Peak triple will be a Doppelmayr Tristar, Boyne Resorts’ fourth.
- Schweitzer works toward $6-8 million Snow Ghost replacement.
- “It is not rocket science about lift geometry,” Aspen Council member says in frustration re: Lift 1A. “There is enough expertise in this community to know where a lift goes.”
- Mont Ripley offers $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of arsonist(s) who damaged lift.
- Longtime Whistler Blackcomb COO and Peak 2 Peak visionary Dave Brownlie is leaving to pursue new opportunities just seven months into Vail ownership.
Instagram Tuesday: Pulling
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
Six Months After Flames, Gatlinburg Sky Lift Returns Friday
Two days shy of six months since an intentionally-set wildfire killed 14 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the iconic Gatlinburg Sky Lift will reopen this Friday. On November 28th, 2016, Sky Lift employees left the lift running on its auxiliary diesel as they fled the fire, saving the haul rope. However, the top terminal and some towers were so severely burned that the entire lift needed to be replaced.For 62 years, Boyne Resorts has operated a chairlift on Crockett Mountain and the company chose a Doppelmayr Alpen Star triple chair for its third incarnation. Previous versions were a Heron double recycled from Sugar Bowl in 1954 and Riblet double brought to Tennessee in 1991.
Boyne Resorts announced construction of the new $2.4 million lift in early February and received its operating permit less than three months later on April 27th. Doppelmayr and Boyne collaborated to re-create the Sky Lift’s iconic appearance with 11 orange towers and 92 yellow chairs with wooden slats in place of galvanized ones. Although guests cannot yet get off at the top due to ongoing construction, the new lift is sure to be as popular as it has been for generations. When Boyne sold and leased-back the Sky Lift operation in 2005, it attracted 400,000 annual visitors and was valued at $19.9 million. Not bad for a 1,300′ double chair!
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