- In a real estate sales presentation, Red Mountain leaders say expansion lifts on Mt. Kirkup and White Wolf Ridge are a higher priority than replacing existing lifts.
- Sasquatch Mountain, BC provides an update on the Green Chair, which hasn’t spun all season.
- An avalanche strikes a closed detachable lift in France.
- Another French avalanche takes out a tower and hits a terminal.
- Rime ice topples a lift tower in Spain.
- A double chair rolls back during operation in China (likely a lift from BHMRI, not a western manufacturer.)
- Also in Asia, a viral video shows a gondola cabin dragging through deep snow.
- Bluewood, Washington upgrades Triple Nickel with Partek carriers, will sell old Borvig ones.
- Anakeesta offers up chairs from its former Chondola but not the gondola cabins.
- The 13 year-old critically injured in an unloading incident at Ski Vorlage, Quebec last week died four days later, her family says. Quebec’s ropeway regulator inspected the lift post-accident and identified several unspecified corrective actions, now completed.
- A five year old is hospitalized after falling from Sunday River’s Jordan Mountain double.
- Groundbreaking could come soon for the Aspen development that includes a new Lift 1A.
- Skytrac to construct both new lifts at Little Switzerland, Wisconsin.
- Five people board a quad chair on the Sourdough Express at Vail, one later jumps off after the lift stops (unclear if they were directed to do so by Vail Resorts staff.)
- Wisp temporarily closes two lifts for separate repairs.
- Tye Mill at Stevens Pass goes out of service.
- Also two lifts at Pico.
- Stratton’s gondola to remain closed into next week due to a maintenance issue.
- Sundance Express at Sun Peaks to be closed this weekend for maintenance.
- Castle Mountain, Alberta temporarily closes the new Stagecoach Express to swap a motor.
- At Marquette Mountain, Michigan, a misload bends apart a Riblet chair (quickly replaced without incident.)
- The Supreme Court strikes down some of President Trump’s import tariffs but not Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs most affecting lift manufacturers. In response to the decision, the President orders a 10 percent global tariff to last 150 days (USMCA compliant goods and items already subjected to Section 232 tariffs are exempted).
Anakeesta
News Roundup: 462 Cabins
- Telluride’s ski patrol strike ends after 13 days.
- Le Massif partially reopens with limited hours as a strike drags on.
- More than 500 people spend most of an overnight atop the Palm Springs Tramway following a technical issue, now resolved.
- Nearly 200 are rescued safely from Whitefish’s Big Mountain Express in a multi-hour rope evacuation.
- Sugarloaf’s SuperQuad goes down due to a gearbox issue.
- Leitner-Poma will build the new Canyons Village gondola at Park City.
- Anakeesta’s new LPOA gondola to be called Crystal Express.
- Doppelmayr wins the contract for Killington Snowdon with a total project cost of $7.04 million.
- Doppelmayr also will build the world’s longest urban gondola in Mexico City with 12 stations, 462 cabins and 114 towers over 9.4 miles.
- Wildcat reopens its beginner chair after a year-long closure.
- Castle Mountain’s new map shows lift expansion on Mt. Haig.
- A state evaluation following the Park City gondola mishap last week notes no mechanical malfunction but says “a gondola cabin leaving a terminal with a passenger being suspended by the foot is not acceptable and has the potential for extremely serious injuries.” During a Utah Passenger Ropeway Safety Committee Meeting, Park City’s Director of Mountain Operations Nick Dana notes “we did have a loading incident on Red Pine Gondola last week so we’re continuing to look into that and work with the manufacturer to investigate into our door monitoring switches there at top of Red Pine Gondola.”
- Also from the UPRSC, the Forest Service notes several recent chair detachments on Riblet and Stadeli lifts in Montana.
Anakeesta Announces New Gondola
Tennessee mountaintop theme park Anakeesta will debut a detachable gondola next year, part of a $100 million expansion called Making More Magic. The high-speed, six place lift will replace Anakeesta’s fixed grip chondola, which has carried millions of guests from downtown Gatlinburg to the park over the past nine years. The current lift moves only 200 feet per minute, leading to long ride times and limited capacity. Leitner-Poma designed the new gondola to move more people with 56 Diamond Evo cabins featuring floor-to-ceiling windows and glass floors. “Designed to offer panoramic, 360-degree views of the Great Smoky Mountains, each cabin transforms a simple ride into an unforgettable experience,” said Anakeesta. “As guests glide gently upward during the four-minute ascent, the world unfolds beneath the cabin—lush forests, native wildlife and the charming skyline of downtown Gatlinburg.” This will be the first true gondola in Gatlinburg, a bustling town with no fewer than five scenic chairlifts and an aerial tramway.
Construction will begin this month and the existing lift will spin through the Christmas holiday period. Anakeesta will close completely on January 5th and reopen in March with alternative transportation. The upgraded gondola will follow later in the spring alongside a reimagined mountaintop village and expanded treetop skywalk.
News Roundup: Last Tram
- Bretton Woods’ new map shows where the new BEQII goes.
- The new Bryce Resort map shows a backside expansion.
- Lutsen gets a new trail map by VistaMap.
- Deer Valley mountain operations leadership joins Doppelmayr on the Ski Utah podcast to preview the East Village expansion.
- Mont Gleason, Quebec plans to replace the Laurent-Lemaire quad soon.
- Anakeesta to replace its fixed-grip chondola with a detachable.
- The State of Texas to hold a press conference next week announcing the next steps in the Wyler Aerial Tram replacement project.
- It’s the final weekend for the Cannon Tramway with the last trip at 4:45 pm Sunday.
- Red Lodge Mountain details several modifications made to its Triple Chair over the summer due to a fatal deropement last spring.
- Ikon adds nine mountains in Japan, South Korea and China.
- Holiday Mountain offers up classic Poma double chairs.
- Whaleback, New Hampshire expects to lose $300,000 this winter without its chairlift; seeks to raise $210,000 by December 1st to open.
- Powder Mountain installs artwork on several lifts including a neon piece on the Paradise Express, flagpole on Timberline and colorful canopy on a conveyor.
- MND wins a tender to build an energy-neutral aerial tramway on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean.
News Roundup: Dollars and Euros
- Blackcomb Glacier won’t host skiing this summer.
- Snow King Mountain sells $150,000 worth of retired chairs in one hour.
- Poma unveils the first 34 passenger cabin for the new urban 3S in Toulouse.
- Okemo’s new lifts will be called Evergreen Summit Express and Quantum Six.
- Former Ticketmaster chief Jared Smith is named President of Alterra overseeing mountain and hospitality divisions.
- The latest on the Stresa-Mottarone disaster:
- Numerous pictures surface showing brakes blocked with passengers aboard as far back as 2014.
- An employee says pre-operational checks were skipped entirely on the day of the crash.
- Two of the three men arrested are released.
- A lawyer for the manager still held alleges Leitner was slow to respond to service calls.
- Leitner was paid €127,000 ($155,000) per year to perform major maintenance on the tram under a long-term contract, though officials do not consider the company or any of its employees suspects.
- The owner of the operating company is also under investigation over two injury incidents on a Wiegand mountain coaster at the facility.
- Eitan, the little boy who survived, is released from intensive care.
- Cannon Mountain opens its tramway for the first time in 14 months.
- Europe’s largest ski operator plans to spend €200 million ($244 million) per year through 2025 to catch up on investments sidelined by the pandemic.
- The Pandora’s expansion on Aspen Mountain notches another approval.
- Anakeesta’s chondola lift breaks down for a bit.
- New Zealand’s first 8 passenger chairlift is complete and she’s a beauty.
- With 35 percent of jobs unfilled, Whitefish Mountain Resort cuts summer operating days.
- Schweitzer raises $80,000 for local charities through the sale of chairs from Snow Ghost.
- The Sea to Sky Gondola outlines some of its security plan.
- Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LAART) unveils more on its planned 3S: four stations, three towers, 44 cars and underground cabin storage at Dodger Stadium.
- Steamboat’s gondola building comes down after 35 years.
- Trollhaugen will sell chairs from Chair 1 next week.
- Quebec records 6.1 million skier days in 2020-21, slightly above average.
- The State of Texas commits $10 million towards a replacement Wyler Aerial Tramway in El Paso.
Instagram Tuesday: Shades
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
News Roundup: Fly Day
- Firm pitches gondola to link South Station to the Seaport district in Boston.
- The United Nations Human Settlements Programme and Doppelmayr publish a 12-page summary of their first Academy of Sustainable Urban Mobility conference held in Austria last April.
- LST Ropeways will build its second North American lift at Waterville Valley, though Skytrac will no longer provide controls, operator houses and installation for the French company.
- A new Doppelmayr gondola, bubble high speed quad and triple chair will debut in December on Eglise Mountain at the Yellowstone Club, by far the biggest lift project in North American skiing for 2017. Thanks to Everett K. for these cool photos of the progress.
- Y.C. has also listed for sale the 160-acre Cedar View Ranch, offering someone the opportunity to build a private lift to the bottom of the Lake lift.
- Anakeesta opens tomorrow.
- Eldora flies towers and ditches the announced Eldo Express name in favor of Alpenglow. Photos credit Michael Weise.
News Roundup: Skyride
- MND Group secures $6.7 million private investment to support future growth.
- Whitewater’s new Leitner-Poma quad chair project update.
- Sunday River blasts some rock to make way for Spruce Peak 2.0.
- Timberline Helicopters, the company that flies the majority of lift towers in the West, plans to build a new $3 million home on 93 acres in Northern Idaho.
- SeaWorld San Diego commemorates 50 years of operation of its VonRoll Skyride, one of only 11 remaining in the U.S.
- Tragedy in Gulmarg, India as seven die following tree strike on the world’s second highest gondola. The accident was blamed on an ‘act of god’ and the gondola deemed mechanically fine. More trees will be cut before reopening.
- Human error caused 14-year old girl’s fall from a chairlift at Six Flags Great Escape. After video gets millions of views, editorial in the local paper calls for locking restraint bars.
- Colorado tram board votes against disciplinary action in Granby Ranch case.
- A Walt Disney World gondola update.
- Much-maligned New York State Fair gondola project is dead.
- Anakeesta load tests new Chondola.
Six Months After Flames, Gatlinburg Sky Lift Returns Friday
Two days shy of six months since an intentionally-set wildfire killed 14 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the iconic Gatlinburg Sky Lift will reopen this Friday. On November 28th, 2016, Sky Lift employees left the lift running on its auxiliary diesel as they fled the fire, saving the haul rope. However, the top terminal and some towers were so severely burned that the entire lift needed to be replaced.For 62 years, Boyne Resorts has operated a chairlift on Crockett Mountain and the company chose a Doppelmayr Alpen Star triple chair for its third incarnation. Previous versions were a Heron double recycled from Sugar Bowl in 1954 and Riblet double brought to Tennessee in 1991.
Boyne Resorts announced construction of the new $2.4 million lift in early February and received its operating permit less than three months later on April 27th. Doppelmayr and Boyne collaborated to re-create the Sky Lift’s iconic appearance with 11 orange towers and 92 yellow chairs with wooden slats in place of galvanized ones. Although guests cannot yet get off at the top due to ongoing construction, the new lift is sure to be as popular as it has been for generations. When Boyne sold and leased-back the Sky Lift operation in 2005, it attracted 400,000 annual visitors and was valued at $19.9 million. Not bad for a 1,300′ double chair!
News Roundup: Progress
- NPR devotes almost six minutes of airtime to Mexico City’s innovative new gondola.
- Ski Areas of New York members to host six free lift maintenance trainings this summer across the state.
- Jay Peak made $9 million this year, Burke Mountain lost almost $2 million and $4.9 million in tram upgrades are underway with completion scheduled for next month. Follow along with Moving Parts|A Tram Story.
- Unfortunate winch cable accident sends Peruvian chair to the ground at Snowbird.
- Friends of Squaw Mountain, Maine get ~$2.4 million quote from Skytrac to replace a base-to-summit Stadeli double, which has not operated since 2004.
- Follow this thread for sweet construction photos from the world’s largest urban gondola network.
- Crews load test the new Gatlinburg Sky Lift. Cool to see non-galvanized EJ chairs with wood slats! Anakeesta’s lift is not far behind.
- Noting plans to “definitively enter the US market,” LST Ropeways is hiring a design engineer.
- New York State Fair gondola may not happen.
- Blacktail Mountain is for sale for $3.5 million.
- Brian Jorgenson tells Skytrac why lift installation is his favorite kind of flying.
- Here are the full specs for Leitner’s new station and Sigma’s new Diamond Evo cabin.
- Apex Mountain Resort sells to new ownership group eyeing capital investments.
- New D-Line six-pack in Ischgl will cost a whopping $13.1 million.
- Leitner Ropeways publishes 2016 Annual Report (Leitner-Poma of America installations are featured in a separate Poma Reference Book.)
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