- Homewood to reopen next season but its D-Line gondola delivered in 2023 won’t be installed this summer.
- Powdr abandons plans to sell Mt. Bachelor.
- Powdr’s sale of Eldora is said to be in the final stages.
- Le Massif, Quebec signs on to the Ikon Pass.
- New details emerge from the antitrust case against the owner of Song Mountain and Labrador Mountain, New York; he plans to appeal.
- Whaleback, New Hampshire looks toward a new chairlift.
- Sun Valley seeks to be removed from a lawsuit filed by a homeowner regarding the placement of the new Flying Squirrel quad.
- Stratton’s American Express closes early and will reopen for summer later than normal for a major systems modernization.
- The Forest Service approves Steamboat to replace Sunshine Express with a six pack.
- The world’s second largest gondola network is proposed in India with 15 stations and 660 cabins.
- If Bluewood, Washington can’t complete its planned relocation of a used high speed quad from Austria next season, it will keep its Borvig lift and credit passholders $100.
- The US government implements a blanket 20% tariff on goods from the European Union and 31% on products from Switzerland, both major source regions for lift components.
- Skeetawk, Alaska works to repair its only chairlift but snow may run out first.
- Arctic Valley, Alaska’s T-Bar will be inoperable the rest of the season due to an incident damaging the haul rope.
- Holiday Mountain, New York looks to reopen long lost terrain with a third chairlift.
- Alta to realign Supreme this summer, re-doing every foundation and re-using towers and terminals.
- Castle Mountain’s expansion lift to be called Stagecoach Express.
- The owner of Berkshire East and Catamount would operate Burke Mountain under a proposed sale to local investors. The group also plans to refurbish the J-Bar and relocate Willoughby if the sale goes through.
Castle Mountain
News Roundup: Lynx Express
- June Mountain closes for two days due to issues with againg J1.
- Loveland proposes replacing Lift 7 with a quad.
- Indy Pass plans more resort additions through the spring and fall.
- One of them is Tenney Mountain, which also looks to build a high speed quad.
- Tenney’s Hornet double needs a gearbox rebuild, will be closed until mid-March.
- Skeetawk, Alaska seeks state funding to develop electrical infrastructure for a future Lift 2.
- Burke Mountain’s receiver says a sale may be near.
- The proposed Burnaby Mountain Gondola in metro Vancouver would include significant transit oriented development.
- Mt. Seymour, BC removes the Brockton chair from service for an unknown amount of time.
- Manning Park, BC closes the similar Blue Chair for inspections due to the incident at Mt. Seymour.
- Marble Mountain, Newfoundland hits the market.
- Chair 8 at Bear Mountain suffers a grip slip incident with passengers.
- Rezoning paves the way for more development at Powder Mountain.
- Leitner to build a seven station gondola in Iraq.
- Poley Mountain, New Brunswick works to repair its triple chair.
- Bretton Woods applies to build a new lift, Attitash seeks to reduce capacity on the closed Flying Bear.
- Solitude completes a mid-winter bullwheel bearing replacement on Sunrise.
- The first terminal and towers go up for the winter build Saluda Skyride in South Carolina.
- Mt. Crescent, Iowa rebrands as Crescent Hill.
- An inside look at operating the largest lift fleet in the country.
- And one of the smaller ones.
- Mineral Basin at Snowbird to be closed for a week-ish due to a machanical issue.
News Roundup: The Bar
- Vail Resorts reports a 0.3% decline in North American skier visits through 1/5 with revenue up 4.5%, ski school up 1.1%, dining up 6.6% and retail/rental down 5.4%.
- Park City offers guests who visited during the patrol strike partial credit toward a season pass next year.
- Park City businesses report a drop in business following the patrol strike.
- Kimberley, BC’s Tamarack chair goes down for awhile.
- Another snowboarder falls from a lift in Colorado – this time at Copper.
- A man who fell from Willamette Pass’ Peak 2 triple in high winds seeks $3.6 million in damages.
- Europeans poke fun at the lack of bars on lifts and Americans’ refusal to use them on lifts that are equipped.
- A trial in British Columbia finds proper signage increases bar use dramatically.
- The Atlantic runs a story on ski industry consolidation, labor relations and cheap season passes.
- Mt. Hood Meadows provides an update on Heather Canyon, which has yet to open this season.
- An Alaska windstorm blows a lift shack over on one lift and sends a chair into the bullwheel on another at Arctic Valley.
- Sugarbush apologizes for not having Castlerock and Slide Brook operable at this point in the season.
- Leaders approve a large development at Nordic Valley, Utah; likely to coincide with a new out-of-base lift.
- The municipality of Whistler to study a valley gondola transit line.
- Castle Mountain seeks a name for its first high speed quad.
Castle Mountain Announces Haig 1 Expansion
Alberta’s Castle Mountain will expand lift-served terrain by 25 percent next season as it opens its first detachable quad on Haig Ridge, located above the existing Huckleberry lift. Castle is currently the second largest resort in North America without a high speed lift behind only Red Mountain, British Columbia. Installation of the quad chair, which previously operated as Angel Express at Sunshine Village, represents the largest capital investment in Castle’s nearly 60 year history. Independent Castle Mountain has a long history of repurposing used lifts from Sunshine, Beaver Creek in Colorado and Angel Fire, New Mexico. “The addition of a lift serving this phenomenal terrain will forever transform our guests’ experience”, said Dean Parkinson, General Manager. “The terrain that will soon be available to all has been well loved by our cat skiing guests for over a decade, primarily for its deep snow and great skiing. We are excited to finally be opening up this terrain for everyone to enjoy.”
The 20 tower Haig 1 lift will span 4,757 linear feet with an impressive 1,805 foot vertical rise and five minute ride time. It’s is expected to open for the 2025-26 season, marking the end of cat skiing in the expansive Haig zone. The project is known for now as Haig 1 but will receive a new name before opening. “Castle Mountain Resort is proud to be taking on this project, utilizing its fantastic team, augmented with subject matter experts to ensure the success of the project,” the resort said in a release. “The lift will receive mechanical, electrical, and operational upgrades in order to be ready to go for December 2025.”
News Roundup: In Memoriam
- U.S. skier visits totaled 60.4 million this season, down from last year but fifth highest ever.
- The Colorado Supreme Court rules a liability waiver doesn’t protect Crested Butte from a chairlift fall claim.
- Huff Hills, North Dakota may pack up and move to a new location.
- Leitner-Poma parent company HTI reports a 13 percent revenue increase with strong sales in North America.
- Alterra-owned Schweitzer postpones the next phase of the Schweitzer Creek Village expansion.
- Castle Mountain plans to reinstall a 1988 detachable from Sunshine Village as soon as next summer.
- The municipality of Park City approves Deer Valley’s proposed Lift 7.
- Park City Mountain to begin construction shortly on the new Sunrise Gondola.
- A Maine developer will try again to revive Big Moose Mountain.
- A proposed lift-served bike park in Conifer, Colorado moves toward public hearings.
Castle Mountain Plans First Detachable Quad
Canada’s second largest resort without a high speed lift plans to build one soon. Castle Mountain, located in Southwestern Alberta, today announced it has reached an agreement in principle to acquire Sunshine Village’s outgoing Angel Express for an undisclosed sum. The 1988 Poma detachable quad will be retired this spring to make way for a new six person bubble chair at Sunshine.
“We are excited to be acquiring such a great lift from a reputable industry partner,” said Dean Parkinson, Castle Mountain Resort General Manager. “It is a great thing to be keeping this lift in Alberta and we appreciate Sunshine’s willingness to work with us on this purchase,” he continued. No location or timeline for reinstallation was announced. One logical scenario would see the quad replace the Sundance triple, Castle’s main out-of-base lift which opened in 1996. The used detachable could also replace the Huckleberry or Tamarack lifts. Perhaps more likely than either of those locations is an entirely new alignment. Castle’s latest master plan identified 10 different locations for possible future lifts as the resort grows. “When information is available on the reinstallation location and the expected timeline, we expect to share this in future press releases,” said Castle.
Once this project is complete, the largest remaining North American mountains without detachable lifts will be Red Mountain, British Columbia (4,200 acres); Discovery, Montana (2,200 acres); Bridger Bowl, Montana (2,000 acres); Lost Trail Powder Mountain, Idaho/Montana (1,800 acres); and Silverton Mountain, Colorado (1,800 acres).
News Roundup: Grab Bag
- Timberline Lodge evacuates 42 guests from the new Pucci detachable quad by rope.
- Another late day evac happens on Castle Mountain’s Tamarack chair.
- Mt. Spokane considers upgrading two 60 year old chairlifts.
- The seemingly cursed Gold chair at Nakiska goes down for a week (now back in action).
- Under new ownership, Sundance Resort eyes an out-of-base detachable.
- Bogus Basin plans expansion and lift upgrades in a new master plan coming later this spring.
- Dakota at Big Sky has been down since March 1st.
- The first of its kind Leitner 2S gondola undergoes testing in Germany.
- Ischgl, an early pandemic hot spot last year, gives up on opening this season.
- Vancouver’s transit authority picks a preferred alignment for the Burnaby Mountain Gondola.
- The Seattle Times profiles Washington’s first bubble chairlift.
- A transportation bill which includes Little Cottonwood funding heads to the Utah Governor’s desk.
- Once slated to close, Sleeping Giant now considers adding more lifts.
- Zincton Mountain Village, a proposed resort in BC, announces the purchase of a late model Riblet quad.
- Facing capacity challenges, Crystal Mountain eliminates unlimited access on the Ikon Base Pass.
- Magic Mountain needs some mid-’80s vintage Poma sheave assemblies to complete the Black Line quad. Give them a shout if you can help!
- Winter Park’s proposed lift replacements I mentioned last week are a Pioneer Express six place and Lariat conveyor.
- On a podcast, Indy Pass creator Doug Fish says more resorts are coming, including in Canada (along with a price increase.)
- During recent historic snow, the Portland Aerial Tram ran for 114 consecutive hours while other transit modes shut down.
- When the Disney Skyliner stops for a bit, you better believe it will make the news.
- Nitehawk looks for funding to replace its landslide-destroyed chairlift.
Alberta’s Castle Mountain Looks to Grow
Something interesting happened in Western Canada over the past few decades. Just as many struggling small- and mid-sized American ski areas looked toward government ownership or nonprofit charity as solutions, private investors up north did the opposite, convincing communities to sell their publicly-owned ski areas for a brighter future. Residents in the town of Golden, British Columbia voted by a 97 percent margin in 2000 to give up control of a one-Riblet ski area called Whitetooth to a Dutch construction company. After debuting one of the world’s greatest gondolas and two new quad chairs, the renamed Kicking Horse Mountain Resort was sold to the Resorts of the Canadian Rockies conglomerate in 2011.
Seven years after Golden’s experiment, a Denver-based developer bought the Powder Springs ski area from the City of Revelstoke and announced a $22 million contract with Leitner-Poma Canada to create North America’s first resort with a vertical greater than 5,500 feet. One more lift out of a planned 30 was built in 2008 before a mountain of debt and the global financial crisis nearly forced Revelstoke Mountain Resort to close. Now controlled by giant hotelier Northland Properties of Vancouver, the jury is still out on Revelstoke’s viability as a billion dollar destination.
Meanwhile in Alberta
Another public to private transaction took place in 1996, when a group of 150 skiers purchased Castle Mountain from a nearby municipality to form Castle Mountain Resort, Inc. Castle was privately developed with two Mueller T-Bars in 1965 but became insolvent after a 1976 fire and was rescued by Pincher Creek taxpayers. Just across the continental divide from Fernie, BC, the mountain shares the same dramatic scenery as other Canadian Rockies destinations but without the fancy hotels and high-speed lifts. With a local population only around 35,000 and a three hour drive from Calgary, Castle currently averages only 90,000 skier visits despite its terrific snow and terrain. Some 3,200 acres are serviced by five main lifts and a nearly 3,000′ vertical drop exceeds those found at places like Squaw Valley and Alta. Averaging zero winter rain days at mid mountain (a perennial problem in much of British Columbia) and 350 inches of snow, there’s a lot to love for those willing to make the trek.
When the current investors took over, they inherited the two T-Bars, one of which is among the longest remaining in the world at 4,518 feet. Designed to be turned into a chairlift but never actually converted, the dinosaur was named T-Rex in 1996 and these days only rarely drags guests up its 1,670′ vertical. Castle Mountain has installed four new chairlifts since ’96, all of which came used from mountains like Sunshine Village and Beaver Creek. The ski area continues to generate all of its own power with diesel fuel.
In 2016, Castle Mountain Resort partnered with Whistler-based Brent Harley and Associates to develop a road map for the next decades of growth with input from the mountain’s shareholders, the local community and other stakeholders. The new master development plan was completed in May of last year and envisions the replacement of most of the current lifts, construction of up to nine new ones and expanded year-round recreational opportunities.
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