The crew from Doppelmayr is flying through work on the Teton lift with 110 days until opening. Jackson Hole’s fourth high speed quad now has a complete top terminal with the bottom not far behind. The Uni-G model terminals are mostly gray with white ends. The 8,500′ haul rope, which was manufactured in Canada, was brought up the mountain earlier this week. Eighty DT-104 Agamatic grips also arrived in crates last week. The bottom lift shack is the only large component not in already in place besides the haul rope. At this rate I would not be surprised to see a load test by October 1st.
Bottom terminal and haul rope.Those are windows on the roof.
When Vail opened the 10-passenger Gondola One in 2012, it marked the return of gondola service to Vail Village for the first time since 1976. Gondola One is named after the original Bell gondola at Vail, which opened fifty years earlier in 1962. After a de-ropement on that gondola the Lionshead gondola that killed four, various chairlifts served Vail Village for the next thirty years. Gondola One replaced the Vista Bahn, one of Vail’s original detachable quads from 1985. The Vista Bahn was a beast of a lift – over 9,000 feet long with 216 bubble quad chairs that could move 2,650 skiers per hour to the heart of Vail Mountain. By 2011, the Vista Bahn had reached the end of its useful life and needed replacement.
The bottom terminal is located in the heart of Vail Village and has a spacious loading area.The Mid-Vail station houses the drive and cabin parking.
Gondola One is an impressive upgrade, full of modern features and an example of how the gondola is staging a comeback. Built by Leitner-Poma, it has 120 10-passenger Sigma Diamond cabins with heated seats, LED lighting and Wi-Fi. Cabin 50 is painted gold to celebrate Vail’s 50th anniversary which was celebrated the year it opened. Exterior ski racks on the cabins have space for ten pairs of skis or six snowboards and bikes can fit inside the cabins in the summer.
Jan Leonard, founder of CTEC and a 40-year veteran of the lift-building business, died unexpectedly this morning at the age of 69. Most recently, he was Director of Sales for SkyTrac Lifts in Salt Lake City and previously was President of Doppelmayr USA.
Jan Leonard at SkyTrac earlier this year. Photo credit: Ski Area Management.
After graduating from Penn State in 1968, Jan went to work for American Bridge in Pittsburgh before meeting the manager of Killington on a ski trip and getting into the lift business. He went to work for Vic Hall in Watertown, New York in 1971 before moving to Logan, Utah in 1973 to join Thiokol Ski Lifts. When Thiokol wanted out of the business a few years later, Leonard and Mark Ballantyne bought the company’s designs and started CTEC (Cable Transportation Engineering Corporation) in 1977. CTEC built its first complete lift in 1981 and by 1992 was the largest lift manufacturer in North America with 450 employees. CTEC built 144 lifts as a privately owned American company.
Leonard and Ballantyne sold CTEC to Garaventa of Switzerland in 1993. Doppelmayr merged with Garaventa in 2002 to form today’s Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group, which ironically included Hall, where Jan Leonard started his career decades earlier. Leonard stayed on as the President of Doppelmayr USA until 2007, when he left to be an independent ropeway consultant. He was was off a lift company’s payroll for less than three years before joining SkyTrac in 2010 as director of sales. “I don’t like losing. The thrill of getting the sale is phenomenal,” he told SAM earlier this year.
Leitner-Poma flies concrete for Loveland’s new Ptarmigan lift, a triple which will replace two lifts in a new alignment.
Aerospace Engineer Michael Bouchard is determined to reopen Tenney Mountain after five seasons being closed.
Season pass sales have been suspended at the troubled Magic Mountain in Londonderry, Vermont. The classic New England ski resort is down to two working chair lifts (in 1990 it had five.)
Poma has a new brochure about its urban lift projects.
One of Garaventa’s retired engineers has written an 834-page book called Ropeway Technology. It can be yours for only 125 Swiss Francs (plus $32 for shipping to the USA.)
Vail Resorts is in the midst of a major program at its four Colorado resorts to replace first-generation detachable quads with new six packs and gondolas. Up for a refresh this summer is Chair 2 at Vail, the Avanti Express. The 1989 detachable quad is being replaced with a Doppelmayr six-pack. This follows the replacement of the Vista Bahn with a Leitner-Poma 10-passenger gondola and the Mountaintop Express with a Doppelmayr six-pack last summer. Vail has been saving parts from these lifts to keep others of the same vintage going. Lifts 7, 8, 11 and 21 are the only 1980s detachables left at Vail and will likely be replaced in the next few years. Northwoods and Game Creek are the oldest two lifts of any kind left at Vail, dating back to 1985.
The bottom terminal will have a loading carpet.
The new 2 is in the same alignment as the old and re-uses its tower tubes. New, wider crossarms were flown into place a few weeks ago with the exception of towers 24 and 25 at the summit. Concrete work for both terminals is finished except for the loading carpet pit at the bottom terminal. Steel for the terminals has been delivered. New chairs are staged at the summit and the haul rope spool sits at tower 9.
Middle portion of the line with the haul rope ready to go.
Doppelmayr prototype unfinished in November 2014. Photo credit: Michael Simons
Back in November, Seilbahntechnik.net posted some interesting pictures of a prototype lift being built at Doppelmayr’s headquarters in Wolfurt, Austria. The lift is detachable with at least one six-pack bubble chair and 8-passenger gondola cabin on the line. More interesting are the terminals, which are different from any production model I have ever seen. They look similar to the Uni-G (the current standard terminal used worldwide) but are definitely different. Doppelmayr has been rumored to be working on a more economical detachable lift and this could be it.
Prototype detachable terminal at Doppelmayr in Wolfurt. Photo credit: Michael Simons
Remember Doppelmayr CTEC tried using a less-expensive detachable terminal in North America called the Uni-GS from 2003-2010. It was discontinued it in favor of the Wolfurt-designed Uni-G, which made its North American debut in 2000. The terminal model used before that, what I call the “Spacejet,” lasted from 1995-2001, so the Uni-G may be due for a refresh.
If you’ve been following the $50 million being spent at Park City this summer, you know that Vail Resorts opted not to buy a new lift for the upgrade of Motherlode to a high speed quad. Instead they are re-using the old King Con, a 1993 CTEC. Only the tower/terminal tubes and one crossarm are new. Tower heads and sheaves were flown into place a few weeks ago. Electrical work is ongoing at both terminals, which still say King Con on the outside. A new Redaelli haul rope is sitting at the bottom and chairs are ready to go at the top. Motherlode is about 1,000 feet longer than King Con but I haven’t seen any sign that more chairs will be added.
Yesterday saw the 100th post on Liftblog.com, four months after starting this project out of off-season boredom. I can see on my end that readership is increasing every week but I really would like to know who is reading and what types of posts you would like to see more of. Google tells me that the most popular time for the site is 2:00pm on Tuesdays but they cannot tell me everything. Please take two minutes to fill out the below survey and let me know your thoughts. Thanks for the support!
Poma has begun construction on a 13,000 foot gondola to the ancient Peruvian fortress of Kuelap. The $18 million system will span 2,170 vertical feet in 20 minutes and open by July of next year.
Despite having a bunch of brand new lifts that haven’t spun since the Olympics, Russia is spending $76 million to build four new lifts in 2016 at Rosa Khutor.
Sun Peaks Resort, already Canada’s second largest resort, is cutting new runs in preparation for a new West Morissey lift. If you haven’t gotten the chance to ski there, Sun Peaks has a very cool 360-degree layout with three mountains circling the village.
Berkshire East’s former Summit triple is up for sale. It’s a 1988 Poma that was previously at Magic Mountain, Vermont. The other lift on there is from the defunct Ascutney Mountain.
Alpine Valley, Wisconsin is getting a new beginner lift which will be a used Hall double with a new SkyTrac Monarch drive terminal. SkyTrac is also reportedly finishing the half-completed Stagecoach lift on the Moonlight side of Big Sky.
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