The Disney Skyliner towers near Pop Century and Art of Animation resorts are being put into place as the station is being built. #WaltDisneyWorldpic.twitter.com/QvMkjTD77C
Walt Disney World is currently building America’s inaugural Doppelmayr D-Line gondola, actually three gondolas. Although Orlando is a long way from the mountains of Wyoming, the world’s most visited resort is also one of Earth’s most photographed places. So, through the magic of the internet, I am able to give a construction tour of the Disney Skyliner from afar.
Let’s start at Epcot. Foundations for this key station are taking shape but the bulk of work still lies ahead. Though they look like lift terminals, the dark green roofs are actually related to ferry boats the Skyliner will partially replace.
Next up is an angle station that Disney says will showcase the inner workings of the Skyliner as riders pass. No loading or unloading will take place here but the line will deflect around 110 degrees (double grooved bullwheel, maybe?) This one is also just beginning to be formed in what used to be a pond.
Aerial view of the turn in the Disney Skyliner route between Riviera Resort and Epcot. Located south of Boardwalk Resort. pic.twitter.com/6EGqXpHbB7
Arizona Snowbowl files paperwork with the Coconino National Forest to replace the Agassiz lift with a combination Telemix/chondola as soon as this summer.
It’s not every day you read about lifties being caught in an avalanche at the bottom of a high-speed quad. Thankfully no one was injured.
I’m thinking President Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel (and 10 percent for aluminum) will have negative implications for the ski lift business, though Mexico and Canada are exempted for now.
Doppelmayr Canada seeks an experienced construction manager for its four lift megaproject at Whistler Blackcomb.
Triple double Massachusetts mountain Bousquet is on the block.
Tenney Mountain opened for skiing yesterday for the first time in eight years.
Another viral video shows a child falling from a lift at Bear Mountain.
Edmonton gondola idea wins a design competition, beating hundreds of other entries.
New owner of Mt. Norquay eyes building a gondola from Banff for improved access.
Vail Resorts posts strong second quarter results with net income up 58 percent and lift revenue up 6.6 percent despite skier visits dropping 4.9 percent. In addition, Vail is raising its corporate minimum wage to $12.25.
Doppelmayr proclaims Big Sky’s upcoming 8-seater the most technologically advanced lift the company has ever delivered.
This afternoon couldn’t have been a more beautiful one for unveiling what will be America’s biggest lift. Over the next nine months, Big Sky Resort and Doppelmayr will create Ramcharger 8, a machine packed full of technology on Andesite Mountain. The current Ramcharger high-speed quad will move to Shedhorn and replace one of Big Sky’s most popular high-alpine lifts while a two-stage North Village gondola and more will eventually follow as part of Big Sky 2025. “The Biggest Skiing in America is getting bigger and better, again,” said Big Sky Resort General Manager and President Taylor Middleton before the bombshell announcement. Never before has America seen an 8-passenger chair of any kind, let alone one packed with every bell and whistle available.
We trail Slovakia in 8-Passenger chairlifts, Stephen Kircher noted to laughter in the gathered crowd. Not anymore.
I was lucky enough to be invited by Big Sky Resort and the Kircher family to be part of this momentous day in the Mountain Village, where Boyne Resorts’ Stephen Kircher detailed plans for being the North American ski industry’s D-Line launch customer. Kircher emphasized Big Sky’s lengthy path to this point and how the community has really come together in the past decade. “My family is proud of its 42-year commitment to southwest Montana and will continue the momentum that is underway at Big Sky Resort,” he said. “We are excited to bring the biggest chair in the world to Big Sky, and to work with the resort team and community to recognize the Resort’s full potential – rivaling the best of the Alps and our North American brethren.” With a huge snowpack, the Biggest Skiing in America is on track to have its best season ever with more than 500,000 skier days – a feat once only dreamed of here.
Lone Peak on an afternoon that turned into a historic one in Big Sky, Montana.
One of the world’s first chairlifts with heated seats but without bubbles will launch for the 2019-20 season at Sommet Saint-Sauveur, formerly known as Mont Saint Sauveur in Quebec. The new $4.7 million lift will be constructed by Doppelmayr, which is no surprise given that company’s significant manufacturing base just 15 minutes away in Saint-Jérôme. The six-pack will replace the Atomic Express, named for the famous ski brand and tied for the oldest operating detachable chairlift in North America at 33 years.
The Government of Quebec will provide approximately $2.3 million in funding for the new lift and other projects, an agreement which many American ski resort operators may envy. Sauveur is owned by MSSI, a holding company with five Laurentian resorts and is the previous owner of Jay Peak, Vermont.
A new, high speed, detachable 6-pack is on its way to Windham! It will be installed this summer & will be accompanied by state of the art lift access, with RFID ticketing for the 18/19 season. "A Lift" will remain in place, servicing the Bike Park and sky rides summer. pic.twitter.com/f20jvfpO6x
A base-to-summit six-passenger chairlift is coming to Windham Mountain in the Catskill Mountains of New York. The mile-long Doppelmayr system will replace the Whistler triple, a 1983 VonRoll triple with a ten-plus minute ride. A parallel detachable quad called Whirlwind, built by Garaventa CTEC in 1993, will remain in place at least through this summer. Windham also revealed today it will launch RFID ticketing across its seven lifts next season and Doppelmayr now has at least a dozen lifts to build in the United States and Canada this year.
Current Windham Mountain trail map.
The Catskill region has seen a number of big new lifts recently, including a gondola at Belleayre and six-pack at nearby Hunter Mountain. Peak Resorts could build another new high-speed lift at Hunter in 2018, raising the bar for the entire region. Windham’s announcement comes after two very quiet months for new lift news, with hopefully a bunch more to come this spring.
A new gondola at South Korea’s Jeongseon Alpine Centre glides over a Wold Cup race in 2017. Photo credit: Doppelmayr
The Olympics have become a boon for ski lift companies, which often supply tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in new lifts in the run up to each Games. Most recently for Sochi’s 2014 venues, Doppelmayr built a staggering 40 ropeways including multiple tricable gondolas that could even carry cars in the event of road closures. Poma built another $137 million worth – 16 lifts – the most concurrently at a single area in company history. Even summer host cities often feature ropeways that I’d like to think contributed to them being chosen as hosts in the first place. Transport for London and Doppelmayr launched the Emirates Air Line just in time for the 2012 games and Rio de Janeiro debuted multiple urban gondolas in the run up to 2016.
Jeongseon
Jeongseon Alpine Centre is a purpose-built Olympic downhill facility with 100 percent automated snowmaking coverage.
The 2018 games kick off February 9th in and around PyeongChang, South Korea. Three ski resorts will host alpine events just 125 miles from where North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un opened his own new ski resort with a gondola and four chairlifts in 2013. The South’s democratic government has constructed a similar facility from scratch to host the downhill and super-G events, called Jeongseon Alpine Centre. Doppelmayr supplied a unique two-section gondola in 2015 and added additional two high-speed quad lifts in 2016. This is notable because there are really only two runs! One of the chairlifts is very similar to the temporary Timing Flats high-speed quad at Whistler, which simply ferried foot passengers from the base area to finish plaza during the 2010 Games and was moved to Sunshine Village after just two weeks of public use.
Spectators for the downhill, super G and combined will ride this lift to access a 6,500 seat stadium finish. Photo credit: Doppelmayr
The two-section Jeongseon Downhill Gondola is powered by a single 857 horsepower motor and services the entire 2,707 vertical-foot men’s downhill course. A stacked bullwheel at the lift’s angle station has two grooves for the two different haul ropes. After some delays with site prep, the gondola was built by multiple crews in just three months from November 2015 to February 2016, just before an IOC deadline. The finish line at Jeongseon sits at only 1,788 feet above sea level and a 4,500 gallon-per-minute snowmaking system was also built here. The venue receives little natural snowfall and has been criticized for its ecological impact and questionable future as a public facility.
For the first time since their journey across the Atlantic, Jackson Hole’s newest gondola cabins slept inside last night. With a parking and storage facility officially commissioned at Sweetwater‘s Solitude Station, 48 luxury vehicles that cost tens of thousands of dollars each now have a world-class home that brings together the latest lift technology with proven principles.
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort opened its Bridger Gondola barn in 1998 and 84 cabins have been going inside for twenty years there. The CWA X models are in incredible shape for their age and number of hours, a testament to their quality construction, dedicated maintenance staff and indoor storage.
Sweetwater’s new cabin storage building is located in an underutilized area adjacent to the middle station.
JHMR launched gondola number two in December 2016 and its CWA Omega IV cabins remained on the line continuously until yesterday. The winter of 2016-17 proved to be a monster in the Tetons and while the cabins performed well, fifty feet of snow often turned to ice on flat roofs. Frozen chunks would bounce up and down, making sounds that mimicked falling metal. Jackson Hole sometimes goes weeks or even months without a thaw and ice would also accumulate on the cabin floors and in ski racks (other fun liquids would freeze too!) Ice storms that can cripple door mechanisms and plague detachable grips thankfully never materialized last year and the days of worrying that storm would come are now over.
This new high-speed chairlift on Beaver Creek Mountain is one of six new lifts on Colorado slopes this season, representing the most new additions in a single year since 2013.
With over 100 detachable chairlifts, 22 gondolas and some 150 fixed-grip lifts, the Colorado lift fleet represents a total investment somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 million. The Centennial State has more ski lifts than any other state or province and on each visit I’m amazed by the caliber of ski infrastructure here. More than half of Colorado’s lifts are detachable models, a feat which no other North American region comes close to achieving. This winter, six more high-speed chairlifts came on scene, and while none open up new terrain, each one serves an important purpose. I was lucky enough to ride the new machines at Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Copper, Eldora, Keystone and Vail over three days this week, testament to the remarkable amount of skiing available within a few hours’ drive here. This year’s class includes two Doppelmayr high-speed quads, a Doppelmayr six-pack and three Leitner-Poma six-place chairs representing half of all new detachable chairlifts built in North America for 2017-18.
Red Buffalo Express – Beaver Creek Mountain
The last lift from Beaver Creek’s 1980 inaugural season, Drink of Water, was replaced with a new lift with a new name over the summer. The quad’s namesake, Red Buffalo Park, is now a dedicated learning zone with awe-inspring views of the Gore Range from 11,400 feet. While lift 5’s terminals, hangers, grips and operator houses are new, most of the tower components and chairs are from the former Montezuma lift at Keystone. Like its sister Vail, Beaver Creek now has just one fixed-grip lift of appreciable length remaining alongside an amazing 14 detachable chairlifts and gondolas.
Falcon SuperChair – Breckenridge
Breckenridge debuted its third next-gen Leitner-Poma LPA six-pack on December 28th. The new Falcon SuperChair replaces a Poma high-speed quad that opened along with Peak 10 itself in 1985. The new ride lifts capacity by 25 percent to 3,000 guests per hour in this popular advanced-intermediate pod. The Falcon has the same sweet plush chairs as the new Colorado and Kensho SuperChairs.
The Hon Thom-Phu Quoc Cable Car in Vietnam is the newest of three record-length gondolas in Vietnam. Photo credit: Fatzer AG
It’s finished! The new longest lift in the world, spanning a ridiculous 26,000 linear feet with just six intermediate towers, is undergoing testing and will open soon off the southern tip of Vietnam. With this latest achievement, the Doppelmayr Garaventa Group breaks its own record held since February 2, 2016 by the Fansipan Legend, a 20,755-foot 3S gondola to the highest summit in Southeast Asia. Before these two 3S lifts launched, the lift length record belonged to the Ba Na Cable Car, a monocable gondola stretching 19,032 feet that opened on March 29, 2013 in, you guessed it, Vietnam. With completion of the Hon Thom-Phu Quoc 3S, Da Nang-based Sun Group now operates the three longest gondolas in the world as well as the planet’s largest aerial tramway with the tallest ropeway towers. Silver Mountain’s gondola, the world’s longest when it opened in June 1990, is now fourth at 16,350′. The lengthiest gondola in multiple sections remains the Bursa-Uludag three stage system built by Leitner in 2014 at almost 29,000 feet.
The new record-breaking gondola hopscotches from the large Phu Quoc Island over two smaller ones to an emerald isle called Hon Thom (Pineapple Island), previously undeveloped and encircled by white sand beaches. $458 million of development is planned for the area which currently is a small fishing community with a state-of-the-art gondola station.
Setting aside its length, the rest of the gondola’s stats are also remarkable. Hon Thom-Phu Quoc is the world’s fastest gondola, with cabins transiting at 8.5 m/s or 1,673 feet a minute (another Doppelmayr 3S built for the Sochi Olympics can also go 8.5.) Sun Group’s latest system has more cabins than any other 3S – 70 CWA Taris models for 30 passengers each. At 3,500 passengers per hour per direction, it would be the fourth highest capacity gondola in North America (Peak 2 Peak, the only 3S in the Americas, moves 2,050 an hour.) A ride will take only 15.6 minutes at full speed and the lift’s six towers reach up to 525 feet above the Gulf of Thailand. Four track ropes supplied by Fatzer are a crazy 58.5 mm thick with a 52 mm diameter haul rope. The haul rope loop is so long that it had to be manufactured in two sections totaling 54,212 feet. The new gondola will open to the public sometime this spring and we’ll see what Sun Group and Doppelmayr come up with next as they push the boundaries of ropeway technology in Vietnam.
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