This lift does not service new terrain but runs a brand new lift line in Sun Down Bowl.Upper station overview.Breakover towers 22 and 23.View down the long lift line.Tower 21.Open middle part of the lift line.Lift line crossing a number of stream beds.View down the line.Roller coaster profile.Upper half of the lift line.A tower with combination assemblies on both sides.Lower lift line.Towers 12 and 13.Another view up the line.Middle section of the line seen from below.The first few towers.Return station squeezed in next to the High Noon Express.View up at tower 2.Lower station and tower 1.Side view of the bottom station.Loading area and EpicMix reader.T1.Riding out of the bottom of the bowl.Middle lift line.Upper lift line.View back down at tower 18.T19.Tower 22.Arriving at the top of Game Creek Bowl.Unloading area.Another view of the drive station.
For all the bad press and negative coverage Vail absorbs, VR continues to invest impressively in its flagships. The lift fleets at Vail and Beaver Creek are basically flawless. This lift may not be “necessary” but it makes it one heck of a lot easier to lap some of the best Back Bowls terrain and greatly improves back of mountain access from the Lionshead base.
Gotta imagine Doppelmayr will get the next major contracts at Vail – Eagle Bahn and Orient replacements perhaps?
Yeah it really is annoying although I feel like the crowds there were better than previous seasons. It is Silverlode and Eagle in a new alignment that they rejected.
I agree, although at this point, I wouldn’t expect Doppelmayr to build any more lifts here in the foreseeable future. They haven’t built a new lift at Vail since Avanti in 2015, while Leitner Poma has built Sun Up, Northwoods, Game Creek, and Sun Down Express since then. It seems that Leitner Poma has secured its spot as Vail’s #1 lift manufacturer over Doppelmayr.
Each resort functions on its own regarding which lift manufacturer they go with. That’s why places like Vail, Winter Park and Breckenridge go with Leitner-Poma while places like Beaver Creek and Telluride go with Doppelmayr.
The narrow ridge connecting the top terminals of 3, 7, and the new Lift 17 at Wildwood is rather annoying to traverse for anything other than laps of the lift you’re riding up on
That roller coaster profile is a lot more impressive than High Noon’s.
High Noon just has two combi towers after the starting depression towers, then is regular support towers all the way up the bowl.
Sun Down has two mid-line depression towers, a very brief downhill leg going into tower 10, and then three combis as you begin the final ascent to Wildwood.
This is a very beautiful lift, in a very beautiful bowl. It’s also a great place to hide on crowded non-powder days (right up there with Chairs 10 and 38).
It definitely changes the character of Sundown Bowl, though it’s debatable if that’s a bad thing. Since this has opened, they’ve started grooming Ricky’s Ridge on a consistent basis. Prior to this lift, I don’t think they ever made a point of grooming anything in Sundown Bowl. And there’s something really cool about zipping down Sundown Catwalk and seeing this thing chugging along beside you, on the opposite side of the riparian zone.
In the 1960s and 70s there was a lone double chair (High Noon) servicing all of Sun Up and Sun Down bowls. That’s an utterly insane amount of acreage serviced by just one low-capacity chair. It must have felt very different from today. Now there are three high-speed quads that lap the terrain … a factor-of-eight boost in capacity.
All that said, you can still find plenty of untouched snow days after a storm out by Seldom/Never/OS. And it hasn’t turned the bowl into a giant mogul field (although part of that is surely how exceptional a snow year it’s been).
Vail is really into building lifts below max capacity right now, even when they should probably be higher. 400 pph is not enough of a capacity boost for Silverlode, that lift should have been planned to be built at least 4400 pph. I really think VR is kind of making a mistake. Their master plan has the old six packs be downgraded to quads, which is an AWFUL idea. I assume they’re forced to make the cheaper decision by their shareholders, many of which have never skied a day in their life. This lift is predominately expert and yet they’re building it below capacity? I should think they don’t want another situation like what happened two years ago now with the huge lines, so they should have probably payed for the extra chairs and built it at full capacity.
Sun Down was always on the master plan as a high speed quad.
And think about it: 2,400 pph is, if anything, the best you can get these days with a quad. That means that out of this area, there’s two lifts that combine to have 4,800 pph uphill capacity, pretty much ensuring that images of those awful long lift lines at High Noon don’t happen again.
For all the bad press and negative coverage Vail absorbs, VR continues to invest impressively in its flagships. The lift fleets at Vail and Beaver Creek are basically flawless. This lift may not be “necessary” but it makes it one heck of a lot easier to lap some of the best Back Bowls terrain and greatly improves back of mountain access from the Lionshead base.
Gotta imagine Doppelmayr will get the next major contracts at Vail – Eagle Bahn and Orient replacements perhaps?
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I kind of feel like PC is falling of as a flagship resort with everything that’s happened with their new lifts.
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Already they rejected the Motherlode (Silverlode?) Eight Pack Replacement though the traffic is high and bad.
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Yeah it really is annoying although I feel like the crowds there were better than previous seasons. It is Silverlode and Eagle in a new alignment that they rejected.
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I agree, although at this point, I wouldn’t expect Doppelmayr to build any more lifts here in the foreseeable future. They haven’t built a new lift at Vail since Avanti in 2015, while Leitner Poma has built Sun Up, Northwoods, Game Creek, and Sun Down Express since then. It seems that Leitner Poma has secured its spot as Vail’s #1 lift manufacturer over Doppelmayr.
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No, many VR resorts get all Doppelmayr, including neighbour, Beaver Creek.
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Each resort functions on its own regarding which lift manufacturer they go with. That’s why places like Vail, Winter Park and Breckenridge go with Leitner-Poma while places like Beaver Creek and Telluride go with Doppelmayr.
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VR splits the contracts evenly between the 2, as you said, Breck gets all LP while W-B gets all Doppelmayr.
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He was referring to Vail Mountain specifically, not VR as a corporation.
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The narrow ridge connecting the top terminals of 3, 7, and the new Lift 17 at Wildwood is rather annoying to traverse for anything other than laps of the lift you’re riding up on
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Very cool lift profile! Much more technical and less of a consistent grade than sister Lift 5.
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That roller coaster profile is a lot more impressive than High Noon’s.
High Noon just has two combi towers after the starting depression towers, then is regular support towers all the way up the bowl.
Sun Down has two mid-line depression towers, a very brief downhill leg going into tower 10, and then three combis as you begin the final ascent to Wildwood.
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This is a very beautiful lift, in a very beautiful bowl. It’s also a great place to hide on crowded non-powder days (right up there with Chairs 10 and 38).
It definitely changes the character of Sundown Bowl, though it’s debatable if that’s a bad thing. Since this has opened, they’ve started grooming Ricky’s Ridge on a consistent basis. Prior to this lift, I don’t think they ever made a point of grooming anything in Sundown Bowl. And there’s something really cool about zipping down Sundown Catwalk and seeing this thing chugging along beside you, on the opposite side of the riparian zone.
In the 1960s and 70s there was a lone double chair (High Noon) servicing all of Sun Up and Sun Down bowls. That’s an utterly insane amount of acreage serviced by just one low-capacity chair. It must have felt very different from today. Now there are three high-speed quads that lap the terrain … a factor-of-eight boost in capacity.
All that said, you can still find plenty of untouched snow days after a storm out by Seldom/Never/OS. And it hasn’t turned the bowl into a giant mogul field (although part of that is surely how exceptional a snow year it’s been).
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*factor of six, give or take
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It’s interesting how one can see the direct contrast between a first generation LPA quad and a current generation one in this picture.
High Noon Express: Omega chairs, 1990s style lifting frames, “gold swoosh” Leitner-Poma logo on the terminals and chairs
Sun Down Express: LPA chairs, 2012 style lifting frames, red Leitner-Poma logo on the terminals and chairs
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Still, to all but the most observant, a pretty consistent look despite the 12 year difference
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Imagine a scenario where both lifts swapped their chairs
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Vail is really into building lifts below max capacity right now, even when they should probably be higher. 400 pph is not enough of a capacity boost for Silverlode, that lift should have been planned to be built at least 4400 pph. I really think VR is kind of making a mistake. Their master plan has the old six packs be downgraded to quads, which is an AWFUL idea. I assume they’re forced to make the cheaper decision by their shareholders, many of which have never skied a day in their life. This lift is predominately expert and yet they’re building it below capacity? I should think they don’t want another situation like what happened two years ago now with the huge lines, so they should have probably payed for the extra chairs and built it at full capacity.
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I realize it’s hard to redesign a lift for more capacity but it’s not that much more expensive to design it that way.
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Sun Down was always on the master plan as a high speed quad.
And think about it: 2,400 pph is, if anything, the best you can get these days with a quad. That means that out of this area, there’s two lifts that combine to have 4,800 pph uphill capacity, pretty much ensuring that images of those awful long lift lines at High Noon don’t happen again.
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Sunny day video of the lift
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Is this going to help with the looooooooooooooooooooooooooong lines?
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You’ve got a combined capacity of 4,800 pph between High Noon and Sun Down. That should be more than ample for the crowds this area gets.
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