- Wire Austin gets some attention from folks who matter – the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority.
- Peak Resorts loses $7.9 million in the first quarter (it owns Alpine Valley, Attitash, Big Boulder, Boston Mills, Brandywine, Crotched Mountain, Hidden Valley, Hunter Mountain, Jack Frost, Mad River Mountain, Mt. Snow, Paoli Peaks, Snow Creek and Wildcat.)
- The deropement and evacuation of the pulse gondola between the Aiguille du Midi and Pointe Helbronner makes CNN.
- Austria’s Foreign Minister meets with former London Mayor Boris Johnson to talk Brexit. The mayor says the Doppelmayr cowbell that came with the Emirates Air Line is one of his most prized possessions.
- Federal receiver hopes to sell Jay Peak in the spring, says resort President Bill Stenger was duped.
- Laurel Mountain’s new Skytrac is complete.
- Maine’s Attorney General sues the owner of Big Squaw Mountain for not operating the ski area as promised.
- Tamarack Homeowners meet to discuss the future of Idaho’s newest ski resort ahead of an October lift auction. Owner Credit Suisse and its operator Replay Resorts appear to be on the way out.
- The owner of Montana Snowbowl tells the Missoulian he started construction on a new TV Mountain lift a few weeks ago and there’s a chance it will be completed in time for the coming winter season.
- Preservation group calls abandoned mines in American Fork Canyon a “ticking time bomb,” calls on Snowbird to turn private land over to the Forest Service where the resort plans to build two new lifts.
Doppelmayr
Big Sky Flies Towers for America’s Most High-Tech Chairlift
The new bowl lift will dramatically improve upon the old Lone Peak Triple, cutting a 6.2 minute ride to just three minutes. The triple chair opened in 1973 and was among two remaining lifts from the Chet Huntley era. Challenger and Lone Peak are the first all-new lifts built at Big Sky since 2005 and hopefully the first of many upgrades and additions. Capacity in the bowl will remain the same at first – 1,800 skiers per hour – with the ability to upgrade the six-pack to 3,200 pph in the future. Thirty-three six-place chairs running 985 feet per minute will move the same number of skiers as the old lift did with 122 triple chairs! The bowl lift is designed for 26 chairs to be added as needed for an eventual total of 59.
Sweetwater Gondola September Update from Jackson Hole
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort opens for skiing 76 days from today and the new Sweetwater Gondola will open for business in mid-December. Since my last update, the Doppelmayr crew finished the enclosure at the bottom terminal and erected the entire drive station up top. Doppelmayr custom-designed the lower station skin in Austria for JHMR with a round end to mimic the shape of Teewinot and Bridger. After some initial skepticism, the consensus around here is it looks awesome and we will have to see if Doppelmayr offers the design to anyone else going forward. The UNI-G is Doppelmayr’s standard detachable terminal worldwide but the new, boxier D-Line will be offered as an option in North America beginning next year.
The drive platform was hauled up the hill in the back of a dump truck and includes an electric motor along with CAT auxiliary and evacuation drives. Operator houses for the mid-station and summit arrived from Salt Lake last week along with the haul rope from France. 48 cabins from CWA will follow next week to meet their hangers and grips which are already here. Doppelmayr’s supply chain is fascinating – Sweetwater includes key components built in the USA, Canada, Austria, France, Germany and Switzerland.
News Roundup: Champagne
- Doppelmayr is reportedly working on a concept 3S gondola that can switch between being cable-driven and self-propelled along elevated guideways.
- The Mexican coastal town of Manzanillo plans to build a sightseeing gondola in 2017.
- Videos of child falling from a six-pack in New Zealand make the rounds.
- Transport for London wants to serve champagne to riders aboard the Emirates Air Line.
- Newly-named Arthur’s Seat Eagle unveils innovative gondola cabins with removable windows.
- Les Otten talks about what he hopes will become the largest ski resort in the Northeast.
- The Green Peak expansion is progressing rapidly at Waterville Valley.
- A new, longer Sunrise lift from Park City’s Canyons Village will likely be built next summer.
- The Rio Grande National Forest seeks public comments on the Meadow lift at Wolf Creek, also likely to go in next summer.
- A progress report from Suicide Six where Leitner-Poma is building a new quad chair.
- More than 32,000 people submitted comments to the Navajo Nation last week regarding the proposed Grand Canyon Escalade.
- Sweetwater Gondola is on schedule at JHMR.
New Owner Plans to Reopen Stagecoach, Colorado in 2017
If Don McClean gets his way, Steamboat Springs will have a third ski area again in a little over a year at the site of the largest ski resort failure in American history. His company, Stagecoach Communities LLC, is under contract to buy the Stagecoach property by October and plans to rebuild the ski area that opened in 1972 and closed less than two years later. Mr. McClean has 38 years of ski industry experience working at Alyeska, Telluride, Beaver Creek and Vail. “Our intention is to create a blueprint for responsible mountain development,” he told the Routt County Planning Commission. Investors include Bode Miller and others from the Vail Valley and Steamboat Springs. Two new Doppelmayr quad chairs are planned for next summer.
The old Stagecoach opened with three Heron-Poma double chairs in December 1972. It closed in March 1974 when its creditor abruptly pulled financing. The main lift named Big Hitch was relocated to Granby Ranch in 1988 before being moved again to Winter Park and eventually replaced by the Panoramic Express in 2007. Two other chairlifts, Little Hitch and Yellow Jacket Express, remain standing on the site and will be removed. A new high speed quad will replace Big Hitch in a similar alignment and a fixed-grip quad will reach the summit along the former Yellow Jacket Express route.
Mr. McClean surprised the County Planning Commission Thursday with plans to build temporary base facilities along with a high speed quad and fixed-grip quad on the 3,500-acre property that lies 18 miles south of Steamboat. He addresses the Commission starting at 99:45 of the Sept. 1st meeting which can be heard here. McClean noted, “[Stagecoach] will be a ski area built by skiers for skiers and riders.” Doppelmayr has already visited the site and bid the two lifts that will serve 2,200 vertical feet. The existing landowner, the Wittemyer Family, is working on the ski trails and mountain roads this fall. “It’s ready to go.” McClean said.
Elkhead Express Construction Update from Steamboat
This week’s construction update comes from northern Colorado where Steamboat Resort is in the midst of replacing a fixed-grip quad with a UNI-G detachable. The Elkhead Express will be Steamboat’s first Doppelmayr lift built since 1997 after three new Leitner-Pomas in a row. Nearby Vail went the other way this year, switching from Doppelmayr back to L-P. Elkhead Express is the third lift in its location following a 1972 Heron-Poma double and later a Lift Engineering quad. The not-that-old Yan has been carefully disassembled and will undoubtedly find a new home somewhere down the road.
The new Elkhead will only have around ten towers; the old lift had 13. The Doppelmayr crew has finished concrete and set the big steel with a crane at both terminals. Tower footings are ready to go but I couldn’t find any of the towers laying around yet. The stations will be blue and white with red stripes and are sure to look sharp. Compared with the UNI-G terminals going up in Jackson and Big Sky, Elkhead’s stations are noticeably smaller. Like all of Steamboat’s detachables, Elkhead Express will have a deluxe indoor maintenance bay attached to the bottom terminal. Steamboat’s eighth detachable lift will be ready to go by Thanksgiving.
Crazy Gondola Opens at Wynn Palace Cotai
It seems the lift companies can build just about anything these days, even a gondola that turns six times at the request of a casino magnate. Steve Wynn opened his $4.2 billion Wynn Palace yesterday in Macau, China along with one of the most complex gondola lifts ever built. The casino’s SkyCab is monocable detachable that turns six times. Doppelmayr designed the lift to run slowly enough that cabins can round four different bullwheels at line speed while only detaching at two loading and unloading stations, one of which has a ~110-degree angle on the roof of the main lobby. An upcoming rail station will be integrated with the second station. The entire system relies on the same principles Doppelmayr used to build a gondola at a zoo in Sweden that also makes six angle changes.
CWA adapted standard 8-passenger Omega cabins into 6-passenger VIP versions with custom audio-visual systems and air conditioning. Doppelmayr Cable Car will manage operations and maintenance for the system under a long-term contract. If you are looking to make a career move and like the sound of dragon bullwheels, they are hiring.
Challenger & Lone Peak Six Updates from Big Sky
Challenger
The first of two new Doppelmayr lifts under construction at Big Sky Resort this summer is a fixed-grip triple chair with loading conveyor replacing Challenger. A 1988 Superior Tramway double to the upper reaches of Lone Peak suffered gearbox damage last February (while I was on it) and never ran again. The new lift will be 25 percent faster than the old, ascending 1,670 feet in 9.5 minutes. Concrete for the new triple is finished except for the operator house footers up top. The triple chair will feature Doppelmayr’s Tristar bottom drive/bottom tension station with a simple return bullwheel up top. Interestingly, Boyne Resorts has ended up with four Tristar lifts after recent incidents at Sugarloaf (x2,) Big Sky and Sunday River.
About half of the tower footings were built from scratch while others were kept from the old lift that ran in the exact same alignment. Challenger will have 18 towers versus 15 on the old double. Both terminal locations have been completely re-graded with much more room for loading and unloading. Tower tubes and crossarms are in the parking lot ready to fly any day now.
Sunday River to Build New Lift on Spruce Peak
Sunday River announced this morning a $2.1 million Doppelmayr fixed-grip triple will replace the Spruce Peak triple, where a terminal literally fell over last month. Willis MountainGuard and Boyne Resorts deemed the lift a loss after suspected grout failure sent the top station sliding from the bedrock it was anchored to the weekend of July 9th. The 1986 Borvig triple was Sunday River’s second oldest lift and the new version will re-use its new Chairkit loading conveyor. Doppelmayr will also replace the top terminal of Sunday River’s other Borvig triple on Locke Mountain.
Exactly when the new lift will open is unclear. Doppelmayr already has a packed summer building 17 lifts across the US and Canada. In the meantime, most of Spruce Peak can be accessed from the Chondola and Aurora lifts.
This is far from the first (and won’t be the last) late-season lift replacement after unexpected disaster. On June 11, 2012, a wildfire burned through Ski Apache in New Mexico, damaging two chairlifts and a gondola. The Native American tribe that owns the mountain announced a $15 million deal with Doppelmayr on September 5th and three new lifts were completed by January.
Grand Targhee Begins Construction of Blackfoot Quad
Last time I stopped by Grand Targhee, I could still ski down Chief Joseph Bowl as the Blackfoot double was being deconstructed to make way for a new Doppelmayr quad chair. Three months later, workers have finished removing the last of the old Riblet and prepped both station locations for modern terminals. The new Blackfoot will move up to 1,800 skiers per hour 1,200 vertical feet in seven minutes. When completed, Grand Targhee will operate four Doppelmayr and CTEC quad lifts, all built after 1996, with a third high speed quad coming soon.
The new Blackfoot will start a little higher up and further north, though it’s tough to tell where the old base stood with how much dirt has been moved. The new top station is just about in the same spot as the previous one. Lots of rock is getting pushed to make a large unload area in place of the steep wooden ramp at top of Blackfoot since 1974. This week Doppelmayr is tying re-bar for towers and both terminals. The project is still in its beginning stages but will ramp up over as concrete gets poured and steel arrives this fall.
Lift Blog 