- Vail Resorts reaches an agreement with Crested Butte lift mechanics, averting a strike.
- A window falls from a cabin on Stowe’s Mansfield Gondola during operations.
- Mission Ridge acknowledges three different chairs have detached this season from Chair 4, a 1971 Riblet double (all empty and no injuries).
- Waterville Valley completes a midseason splice on the High Country T-Bar.
- A new owner looks to reopen Crystal Mountain, BC via crowdfunding.
- Winter Park’s High Lonesome Express is back after a four week maintenance closure.
- Still no Slide Brook Express at Sugarbush but hopefully soon.
- The Glade Triple at Catamount will miss the rest of the season.
- Badger Pass, California won’t open this season.
- Ditto for Cedar Pass, also in California.
- Park City gets serious about a gondola connecting Main Street to Deer Valley.
- President Trump imposes 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports with potential impacts on lift manufacturers.
- The US Forest Service, landlord to 124 ski areas, lays off 3,400 employees.
- A bipartisan group of Senators sponsor a bill that would direct the Forest Service retain some of the fees resorts pay to the federal government for ski purposes, such as processing resort improvement projects.
- The gondola in Moab, Utah which sat for 25 years without ever opening, is finally being removed.
- Solitude demystifies lift maintenance for customers.
Badger Pass
Yosemite’s Badger Pass Will Not Open This Season
The multinational hospitality company which operates Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park has announced the ski area will not operate for winter 2020-21. Badger Pass is one of only three US ski areas located in a National Park and features four fixed grip chairlifts and 90 acres of terrain.
“Due to ongoing concerns related to COVID-19, Badger Pass Ski Area will not open for the 2020-21 season. This includes both Nordic and downhill operations,” read a statement from Aramark Corporation, which operates Badger under a long term agreement with the National Park Service. “We are in the process of contacting season pass holders with the option of a season pass rollover or refund. Thank you for your continued interest in California’s original ski area, and we hope to see you next season,” the statement continued. Publicly-traded Aramark reported a $328 million operating loss in the most recent quarter with revenue down 46 percent due to the pandemic.
News Roundup: Norway
- Arctaris Impact Fund still wants to buy Saddleback but no deal has been reached after more than a year.
- The Banff-Norquay gondola project faces stiff headwinds from Parks Canada.
- The latest podcast from Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz highlights how the company takes over operations at newly-acquired resorts.
- A judge rejects the Hermitage Club’s proposed restructuring plan as members look to reopen under new management.
- In other Hermitage news, a New Jersey bank seeks to repossess 46 snow guns.
- Here is the complete incident narrative from the February SeaWorld gondola deropement.
- Lift construction gets underway at Skeetawk, America’s first all-new ski area since Cherry Peak in 2015.
- Village construction resumes at Tamarack with Wildwood Express installation to follow this fall.
- A helicopter delivers most of the new Steamboat gondola towers.
- Last week’s gondola incident at Vail was not a result of tampering or sabotage.
- Medellín’s sixth urban gondola, Line P, is on track to open in December.
- After 1,231 days as Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area, the Badger Pass name returns thanks to a $12 million settlement between the National Park Service and two competing concession companies.
- I spoke too soon on Eaglecrest possibly building Alaska’s first gondola. Icy Strait Point on Chichagof Island is planning a gondola project to open as soon as next summer.
- The haul rope is spliced for a rare fixed grip chondola in Illinois.
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Mi Teleférico in La Paz broke its own daily record again on Monday with 583,841 riders, more than average weekday ridership for Boston’s three subway lines combined.
- Municipally-owned Great Bear resorts to private fundraising in hopes of replacing its Borvig chairlift.
- Placer County leaders will vote Tuesday on the Squaw-Alpine gondola.
- Simon Fraser University steps up its Burnaby Mountain gondola marketing.
- The Los Angeles Griffith Park gondola study is underway.
- Eagle’s Rest 2.0 nears completion at Jackson Hole.
News Roundup: BMF Builds a Gondola
- The Boston Globe profiles a man who bought 62 lifts at 11 mountain resorts in his career and now wants to build a resort with 25 lifts at The Balsams.
- While states like West Virginia have no government oversight agency, a New Hampshire newspaper asks whether that state’s tramway board goes far enough. Part II of the investigation deals with lift inspections and Part III the recent grip-slip incident at Granite Gorge.
- The writing was on the wall but it’s now official; there will be no season at Saddleback.
- Nippon Cable will build Japan’s first chondola this summer at Niseko along with a pulse gondola.
- A San Diego County Supervisor thinks his city will have a gondola before the Chargers build a new stadium. The San Diego Bay to Balboa Park Skyway would cover two miles in 12 minutes and carry 2,400 people per hour.
- The federal government is in a dispute with the concessionaire that, up until yesterday, operated Badger Pass Ski Area in Yosemite National Park. Deleware North Corporation wants $51.2 million for trademarks including the Badger Pass® name so the National Park Service has re-named the mountain Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area. Its four chairlifts are safe from the litigation and now operated by Aramark Corporation as part of a $2 billion contract.
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