Sunday River Lift Severely Damaged as Terminal Falls

Peter Landsman13 Comments
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A Borvig return bullwheel lies in ruin Tuesday after a strange series of events in Western Maine over the weekend. Photo Credit: Sunday River

A truly bizarre incident came to light tonight when Sunday River revealed the top terminal of its Spruce Peak Triple chairlift slid downhill and flipped on its side over the weekend. Scott Crowell, the resort’s lift maintenance manager discovered the damage on Sunday. From the pictures, it appears the foundation and return bullwheel moved together, with the tension of the lift and gravity sending the line to the ground. Thankfully, the lift does not operate in the summer and no one was injured.

According to Weather Underground, Bethel, Maine received nearly an inch of rain in the four days leading up to the discovery of the damage.  Sunday River said the lift in question was last load tested in Fall 2015.

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Photo Credit: Sunday River

Spruce Peak is one of two Borvig triples remaining at Sunday River and its second oldest lift, built in 1986.  Chairkit added a loading carpet at the bottom station in 2014.  Spruce is 4,382 feet long and rises 1,211 feet with 17 towers and 177 chairs.  In a statement, Sunday River noted, “Decisions on repairing or replacing the lift have not been made at this point and will depend on several factors, including the results of the investigation. The resort is committed to moving forward as quickly as possible.”  The mountain is working with its insurance company, Willis MountainGuard, and state investigators.  Presumably there is still time to get a brand new lift built in time for the coming 2016-2017 winter season if the order is placed soon.  Alternatively, a lift manufacturer could come in and replace just the top terminal and any damaged chairs. Continue reading →

Mount Roberts Tramway Celebrates Twenty Years

Peter Landsman13 Comments
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Opened in 1996, The Mt. Roberts Tramway flies above downtown Juneau from the city’s waterfront.

Rising from the cruise docks on the edge of Alaska’s capital, the Mt. Roberts Tramway is the undisputed steepest lift in North America with an average slope angle of 39 degrees.  The now-famous tram carried its first passengers 1,800 feet above Juneau almost twenty years ago. It’s among the newest large aerial tramways in North America and one of two in the U.S. built by Poma. The summit terminal soars 165 feet above the forested slopes of Mt. Roberts, downtown Juneau and the massive cruise ships below.  On August 10th, the tram will celebrate twenty years of service and more than 3.5 million riders.

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The top terminal is basically a tower, similar the Portland Aerial Tram but located in a more spectacular setting.

John Heiser proposed the lift in 1994, becoming President of the Mount Roberts Development Corporation before leaving to join Intrawest.  He financed the $16 million project with investments from Anchorage businessmen and Goldbelt (an Alaska Native Corporation) and leased right of way from the City of Juneau.  Goldbelt took 100-percent ownership of the tram in 1998.

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The bottom terminal fits the definition of a tram dock!  The motor room is located above rather than below due to its unique location.

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News Roundup: New in New Zealand

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New England Gets a Lift: Suicide Six to Build New Quad Chair

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Vermont’s Woodstock Inn & Resort unveiled plans Thursday for a new quad chairlift at its Suicide Six Ski Area.  Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but it marks the first (and possibly only) major lift project in the Northeast United States for 2016.  Over the last ten seasons, Northeastern ski resorts have built an average of ten new lifts each year, testament to this year’s huge departure from normal in the wake of a rough winter.

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Suicide Six is replacing the longer of its two chairlifts.

The new Lift #1 will replace a 1975 Borvig double and be built by Leitner-Poma of America.  The Laurance S. Rockefeller Fund will foot the bill for the $1.5 million project.  The Rockefeller Family’s RockResorts once owned Suicide Six and the Woodstock Inn and spun them off as the nonprofit Woodstock Foundation in the 1980s.  Vail Resorts bought RockResorts in 2001.

The 2000′ Borvig double chair being replaced closed in February after the ski area found tower cracks following the Timberline, WV crossarm failure.  Although the two lifts’ towers were of different design, the State of Vermont ordered inspections of all Borvig-brand lifts.  The new quad will be Suicide Six’s first new lift since Poma built the 1,600′ chairlift way back in 1978.  The mountain first opened for skiing in 1936 and currently has two double chairs, a J-Bar and 24 trails.

Woodstock President and General Manager Gary Thulander said in a news release, “We recognized the need to upgrade this chairlift as part of the long-term support of the regional ski community including local schools, season pass holders, the Woodstock Ski Runners program, and visiting skiers.  Increased chair capacity means a dramatic upgrade to the overall experience of the mountain by all levels of skiers, racers and snowboarders.” Removal of the old chair is already underway.

Out with the old. Photo credit: Green Mountain Control Systems.
Out with the old Borvig. Photo credit: Green Mountain Control Systems.

This is Leitner-Poma’s eighth new lift project for 2016, up from seven last year.  With this news from Suicide Six and other recent announcements, the total new lift count for North America stands at 39, up 11 percent from last summer’s 35.

Hauling Bikes: How Far We’ve Come

Peter Landsman3 Comments

My first experience with lift-served mountain biking was at Sun Valley as a teenager.  In those days I would happily hand off my cross-country mountain bike to lift operators and they would heave them onto hooks on the bails of every other chair.  At the top, 2-3 operators would pull bikes off and wheel them to a nearby bike rack.  This worked alright with mostly empty chairs, few bikers and even fewer trails.  But this system required a ton of staff and could only carry a maximum of two bikes every two chairs – not very good for machines with capacity normally measured in thousands of riders per hour.

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Sun Valley’s bike haul setup on the Lookout Express in 2006.

Whistler-Blackcomb changed everything in 1998 with the opening of the Whistler Mountain Bike Park.  Its creators didn’t just build some trails but created an experience that thrills riders of all abilities with jumps, berms and bridges.  Eighteen years later, the Whistler Mountain Bike Park is now larger than most North American ski resorts with two gondolas and three high speed quads accessing 73 trails and 5,000 vertical feet.  The team behind the world’s best bike park now designs parks all over the world from Gravity Logic headquarters in Whistler. The Whistler Bike Park could never have succeeded without the invention of efficient, custom bike racks initially built for the Fitzsimmons Express.  Whistler-Blackcomb partnered with Murray-Latta Machine Co., which long ago transformed from a ski lift builder to custom fabricator.  The two companies set out to create the best bike racks for chairlifts.

The debut of roll-on, roll-off bike carriers was a huge leap forward.  They allowed a single lift operator at the bottom terminal to focus on watching the lift and guests rather than lifting heavy mountain bikes onto hooks.  Quick-load carriers can move 2-4 times as many bikes as hooks when installed on every other chair.  They reduce damage to bikes that get more expensive every year while limiting the number of workers compensation claims by lift staff. After the jump, see a rundown of innovative bike carriers now available for chairlifts and gondolas.

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News Roundup: Making Moves

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Red Lodge Mountain Mixes Past and Present

Peter Landsman5 Comments

Red Lodge Mountain, located near the famous town of the same name and the northeast corner of Yellowstone, is Montana’s fourth largest ski area.  You wouldn’t know it pulling up to the classic lodge and old school lifts out front.  Opened in 1960 as Grizzly Peak, it now skis like two distinct resorts – the original mountain with 1970s-era double chairs and a huge expansion served by dual high speed quads that opened in 1996. Approaching its 60th anniversary, the mountain faces dueling challenges of prolonged drought and competition from the booming Big Sky region.

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Grizzly Peak opened with one lift, now called Willow Creek, in 1960.  This classic Riblet double has since been shortened to start above the base area and only operates on peak days.  In 1970, the resort added two more Riblet doubles that also still operate – a beginner lift dubbed Miami Beach and another to the summit called Grizzly Peak.

In 1977, Red Lodge added a rare Borvig double at a western ski area called Midway Express.  It served no new terrain but allowed skiers to return to mid-mountain without having to ski all the way to the base area.  With just five towers and a vertical rise of only 400 feet, this lift proved too expensive to operate and was abandoned in 2010.  Most of the chairs were auctioned to raise cash and the sheaves, comm-line and haul rope were dropped to the ground and left.  The terminals and towers still stand today.

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The Midway Express double six years after closing for good.

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World’s Largest Aerial Tram Opens for Business

Peter Landsman6 Comments
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Photo credit: Doppelmayr/Garaventa

The Nu Hoang Cable Car’s 230-person cabins carried their first public passengers across Ha Long Bay in Vietnam Saturday after a dedication with owner Sun Group, builder Doppelmayr/Garaventa and representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records.  The spectacular 7,100′ reversible aerial tramway crushes records for the largest cabins and tallest towers of any lift worldwide.

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Photo credit: Doppelmayr/Garaventa

Meaning Queen in English, the Nu Hoang Cable Car links Ha Long City with Ba Deo Hill and a huge observation wheel. It’s part of a $270 million, 500-acre development called Sun World Ha Long Park.  The taller of the tramway’s two concrete tripod towers is 619 feet while the other is only 436 feet.  The old record was 373 feet on a tramway in Austria built in 1966.

CWA built the monster red and yellow Kronos cabins in sections and shipped them to Ha Long for assembly.  Each cabin has two levels and six sets of doors!  With these new cabins, the double-decker, 200-passenger Vanoise Express in France loses the title of world’s largest tram.

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Photo credit: Doppelmayr/Garaventa

The Queen is the latest mega lift project for Doppelmayr and Vietnam’s Sun Group, which also operates the world’s second longest gondola and the longest 3S.  In 2015, Sun Group ordered an even longer 3S to link three islands and the mainland on Vietnam’s Southern Coast.  This stunning 26,000 foot gondola will become the world’s longest lift of any type when it opens in the second quarter of 2017.