Bottom terminal building.View up the line.Another view of the base terminal in Vail Village.Lift line on Vail Mountain. This lift is in some ways like two lifts with an angle station on Golden Peak.Golden Peak lift line on the Vail Village side.View back towards Vail Village.Arriving at the angle station. The turn is only a few degrees.Golden Peak station.Breakover before the mid-stationThis station offers unloading in both directions but no loading.Side view of the mid.Heading towards Northwoods.Looking back to Golden Peak.Drive station next to the bottom of Northwoods Express.Station with parking and maintenance rail.Uphill end of the Golden Peak station.Stage II goes down before going up.View down the front side of Golden Peak.Lift line.Tower 7 above Vail Village.The first pitch leaving the village.
I am in search of Vail and Beaver Creek lift operators who were trained by Vail or Beaver Creek Adaptive Ski program early season with guest trainer, Sarah Will. I was director of AXS Vail Valley and we expanded recreation programs and services for people with disabilities throughout the entire valley. I was also a lift op in the 80’s in Vermont. A few years after that I had a ski accident and became an adaptive skier. I participated in the Paralympic games, the X Games, mono X, just for reference. I would like to hear your feedback on what kind of impact I had on your experience. . What do you remember about training. I would also like to know what your personal experience was as an operator, loading and unloading adaptive skiers, What was your best or worst memory. So many questions for you! It is my goal to produce an adaptive lift operator safety video. You are stars of the show. At that time, you were the best trained and most talented employees on the mountain and the world and I want to share your story.
If I was at Vail I would take this lift first thing in the morning instead of the gondola and take laps on Highline and Northwoods while everyone else went to the bowls. Interestingly, the first recording is from 2015 and there is no offload ramp at the base, so everyone downloading would’ve had to get off at mid and ski the rest of the way. I don’t know when Peter’s summer pictures were taken, but there is an offload ramp at the base in the second video from 2011, so people would’ve been allowed to ride all the way to the base. Does anyone know what the current set up is?
There has always been unloading at the base as 6 has always been a 2 way lift with unloading only @ mid-6. We will push snow to the bottom of 6 to keep it accessible for downloading until the end of the season no matter what, we’d rather have people be safe and download than risk the shitty snow conditions that exist towards the end of the season.
Lapping 10 or 11 is great in the morning, but traffic on 11 in the am can cause it to have some lines. My usual route is 6 to 11 to 37 and I’ll lap BSB until it gets busy. Once it gets busy I head back to the front side where the lines have disappeared since most people are in the back.
For the future, I’d like to see 6 become a gondola going all the way to 2 Elk with 2 stops along the way. I’d also like to see a new learning area developed at 2 Elk, maybe a couple of magic carpets to help the beginners.
I looked at 3 peak days in 2017 to determine lift wait times. Here’s a chart of what I found for the three main access points: https://i.imgur.com/kxU72oD.png
This lift is really cool on how downloading it to the midstation is very useful, because otherwise you would have to take a horrible catwalk to the base. Really cool the way it works, considering the lift isn’t slowed or stopped when people get on and off at the mid and top(they slow it at the bottom).
Yeah it is cool and convenient. I do think that they need to replace this lift though, because it is old for a detachable and seems to run slower than most. It is also a very long lift, so I could see them going with an LPA 6 pack. Vail has switched from Doppelmayr over to Leitner-Poma
Vail switches back and forth between manufacturers. They didn’t go with Leitner-Poma for all of their new lifts in the 2010s. The Avanti Express and Mountaintop Express lifts were built by Doppelmayr.
During those brief glorious days when ski resorts still thought they could operate in the Covid era, this and 8 had some bigger lines as people didn’t want to ride gondolas. Wonder if that will be a consideration that will make chairs or chondolas more popular for out-of-base lifts in the future. Without Giant Steps there isn’t a great other way out of Vail Village if One is in trouble, and the alternative is hiking over to 6.
In my opinion, no need to do anything to 6 anytime soon. Certainly no need for a six pack here. My list of future six packs at Vail would be: 7, 21, 36, 3. Maybe use the current 36 to do the Mongolia expansion.
I found it on the vail corporate site
“At Vail, the Golden Peak base area and the Riva Bahn Express Lift (#6) are a designated race training area only and will open to the public at a later date.”
I’m sure every one at manor vail and Northwoods is really happy about that. http://news.vail.vailresorts.com/mountain/vail/vail-beaver-creek-open-early.htm
That wait was a real pain at 4pm when the line extended well out of the maze. The only alternative was traversing uphill on “Brisk Walk” to end the day.
This lift seems to have some sort of tribute added to it recently, “Art & Ben Bahn” … I think this sign was added in the past few days, but based on the vintage logo, definitely within this season.
From some googling, it looks like Art Clay and Ben Finley are ski racers affiliated with the ‘National Brotherhood of Skiers’ a group of black skiers who gathered at Vail this past week. Unclear if this is a temporary sign or something that will stay up for a while.
Lift Blog 
I am in search of Vail and Beaver Creek lift operators who were trained by Vail or Beaver Creek Adaptive Ski program early season with guest trainer, Sarah Will. I was director of AXS Vail Valley and we expanded recreation programs and services for people with disabilities throughout the entire valley. I was also a lift op in the 80’s in Vermont. A few years after that I had a ski accident and became an adaptive skier. I participated in the Paralympic games, the X Games, mono X, just for reference. I would like to hear your feedback on what kind of impact I had on your experience. . What do you remember about training. I would also like to know what your personal experience was as an operator, loading and unloading adaptive skiers, What was your best or worst memory. So many questions for you! It is my goal to produce an adaptive lift operator safety video. You are stars of the show. At that time, you were the best trained and most talented employees on the mountain and the world and I want to share your story.
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I’m surprised Riva Bahn doesn’t have EpicMix readers at the top station for those who ride back to midway.
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I don’t think there is a huge altitude difference between the 2. Plus, half the readers don’t seem to work anyway.
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If I was at Vail I would take this lift first thing in the morning instead of the gondola and take laps on Highline and Northwoods while everyone else went to the bowls. Interestingly, the first recording is from 2015 and there is no offload ramp at the base, so everyone downloading would’ve had to get off at mid and ski the rest of the way. I don’t know when Peter’s summer pictures were taken, but there is an offload ramp at the base in the second video from 2011, so people would’ve been allowed to ride all the way to the base. Does anyone know what the current set up is?
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There has always been unloading at the base as 6 has always been a 2 way lift with unloading only @ mid-6. We will push snow to the bottom of 6 to keep it accessible for downloading until the end of the season no matter what, we’d rather have people be safe and download than risk the shitty snow conditions that exist towards the end of the season.
Lapping 10 or 11 is great in the morning, but traffic on 11 in the am can cause it to have some lines. My usual route is 6 to 11 to 37 and I’ll lap BSB until it gets busy. Once it gets busy I head back to the front side where the lines have disappeared since most people are in the back.
For the future, I’d like to see 6 become a gondola going all the way to 2 Elk with 2 stops along the way. I’d also like to see a new learning area developed at 2 Elk, maybe a couple of magic carpets to help the beginners.
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That is too long a gondola, not to mention that as someone pointed out over at https://liftblog.com/2019/04/10/mapping-future-lifts-on-vail-mountain/, Two Elk’s atmosphere kinda hinges on it being a remote place that takes a minimum of three lifts to reach from a base area.
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I looked at 3 peak days in 2017 to determine lift wait times. Here’s a chart of what I found for the three main access points: https://i.imgur.com/kxU72oD.png
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This lift is really cool on how downloading it to the midstation is very useful, because otherwise you would have to take a horrible catwalk to the base. Really cool the way it works, considering the lift isn’t slowed or stopped when people get on and off at the mid and top(they slow it at the bottom).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah it is cool and convenient. I do think that they need to replace this lift though, because it is old for a detachable and seems to run slower than most. It is also a very long lift, so I could see them going with an LPA 6 pack. Vail has switched from Doppelmayr over to Leitner-Poma
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Vail switches back and forth between manufacturers. They didn’t go with Leitner-Poma for all of their new lifts in the 2010s. The Avanti Express and Mountaintop Express lifts were built by Doppelmayr.
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During those brief glorious days when ski resorts still thought they could operate in the Covid era, this and 8 had some bigger lines as people didn’t want to ride gondolas. Wonder if that will be a consideration that will make chairs or chondolas more popular for out-of-base lifts in the future. Without Giant Steps there isn’t a great other way out of Vail Village if One is in trouble, and the alternative is hiking over to 6.
In my opinion, no need to do anything to 6 anytime soon. Certainly no need for a six pack here. My list of future six packs at Vail would be: 7, 21, 36, 3. Maybe use the current 36 to do the Mongolia expansion.
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Riva Bahn is my favorite lift in Vail, hopefully they wont replace it soon to those “bigger” 6-pack chairs or upgrade it to have no halfway station.
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Anyone know why for the first 6 weeks of the 2019/2020 season, only the ski school could use chair 6?
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I found it on the vail corporate site
“At Vail, the Golden Peak base area and the Riva Bahn Express Lift (#6) are a designated race training area only and will open to the public at a later date.”
I’m sure every one at manor vail and Northwoods is really happy about that.
http://news.vail.vailresorts.com/mountain/vail/vail-beaver-creek-open-early.htm
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For reference as to where the predecessor Riblet had its upper loading area:
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And
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That wait was a real pain at 4pm when the line extended well out of the maze. The only alternative was traversing uphill on “Brisk Walk” to end the day.
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If the turn is only a few degrees, I find it interesting that on the map it looks like this
Click to access 1574485930.pdf
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That “turn” is actually the lift descending down the side of the ridge.
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Are there any other Garaventa CTEC detachables with angled midstations?
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https://liftblog.com/mountain-village-gondola-stage-i-telluride-co/
https://liftblog.com/collins-alta-ski-area-ut/
I probably missed a couple.
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This lift seems to have some sort of tribute added to it recently, “Art & Ben Bahn” … I think this sign was added in the past few days, but based on the vintage logo, definitely within this season.
From some googling, it looks like Art Clay and Ben Finley are ski racers affiliated with the ‘National Brotherhood of Skiers’ a group of black skiers who gathered at Vail this past week. Unclear if this is a temporary sign or something that will stay up for a while.
https://skihall.com/hall-of-famers/benjamin-finley-arthur-clay/
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