Top drive station on the ridge.Side view of the top terminal.Doppelmayr Uni-G station.Doppelmayr tower and chairs.Tower 13.Upper lift line.Lower part of the line.Tower 2.Bottom terminal next to Backside Express.Drive station and operator house.Bottom station with grip maintenance bay.Lift overview.View riding up the line.Upper part of the lift line.View back down at tower 13.Arriving up top.
Given Vail’s new strategy of eliminating redundant lifts, they must be kicking themselves for building this right after acquiring Northstar. I know it had some mechanical issues in the past, but it is still a ten-year-old detachable lift that they are planning on using as a backup at most for the foreseeable future.
If I were Vail, I would take this lift and move it elsewhere on the mountain so they can actually have a reason to use it. This would entail it replacing something else or anchoring an expansion. If they go for the replacement route, the lift that needs to go is the Lookout platter because it is horribly designed to just cut across ski trails and create potential collisions. To retain easy access to Lookout Mountain, I would go with a modified version of the Lookout Mountain access lift proposed in the master plan, only moving the bottom terminal from the village up to mid-mountain. Alternatively, they could just reangle this lift from the Backside almost ninety degrees to terminate adjacent to Martis Camp Express to simultaneously maintain a backup lift in the event Backside Express goes down. Expansion-wise, the choices based on the master plan are Sawmill Lake, Sawtooth Ridge, or west Lookout Mountain.
Lift Blog 
Rope Evac currently underway. Comments on the Northstar Mountain Update twitter feed are worth a read.
https://twitter.com/northstarmtn?lang=en
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What happened to the lift? Why was it on evacuation?
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Given Vail’s new strategy of eliminating redundant lifts, they must be kicking themselves for building this right after acquiring Northstar. I know it had some mechanical issues in the past, but it is still a ten-year-old detachable lift that they are planning on using as a backup at most for the foreseeable future.
If I were Vail, I would take this lift and move it elsewhere on the mountain so they can actually have a reason to use it. This would entail it replacing something else or anchoring an expansion. If they go for the replacement route, the lift that needs to go is the Lookout platter because it is horribly designed to just cut across ski trails and create potential collisions. To retain easy access to Lookout Mountain, I would go with a modified version of the Lookout Mountain access lift proposed in the master plan, only moving the bottom terminal from the village up to mid-mountain. Alternatively, they could just reangle this lift from the Backside almost ninety degrees to terminate adjacent to Martis Camp Express to simultaneously maintain a backup lift in the event Backside Express goes down. Expansion-wise, the choices based on the master plan are Sawmill Lake, Sawtooth Ridge, or west Lookout Mountain.
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So what you’re saying you’d do is one of the following:
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Yes, although it might make sense for your red option 1 to terminate slightly east of Martis Camp as shown in the master plan.
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