Doppelmayr

Elkhead Express Construction Update from Steamboat

Peter Landsman6 Comments

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

Peter Landsman2 Comments

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.

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Look closely, there are two bullwheels, four towers and a terminal in this photo.
Cabins reach nearly 100 feet over Performance Lake, where fountains perform to music every 15 minutes.  “A fanciful dragon lifts you into the sky, affording a spectacular view of our iconic Performance Lake, before gently setting you down in a garden, where a member of our talented Reception team welcomes you,” notes the Palace website. “Our SkyCabs have quickly emerged as one of the most talked-about attractions at Wynn Palace.”

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.

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Challenger & Lone Peak Six Updates from Big Sky

Peter Landsman10 Comments

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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.

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Sunday River to Build New Lift on Spruce Peak

Peter Landsman7 Comments

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.

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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.

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Grand Targhee Begins Construction of Blackfoot Quad

Peter Landsman2 Comments
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Blackfoot looks to be getting Doppelmayr’s Tristar drive station.

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.

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Re-bar for towers staged near the bottom of Blackfoot.

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.

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Tower 1 ready to be poured adjacent to the drive station.

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News Roundup: South America

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This is an open thread.  Feel free to leave a comment on anything lift-related.

Sweetwater Gondola August Update from Jackson Hole

Peter Landsman2 Comments

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When riders on the tram ask about the construction going on at JHMR this summer, they rarely believe an entire gondola can be built in one summer.  “That’s going to be done this winter?!,” they say.  The answer of course is yes, and after a few months of work you can start to see why.  Since Doppelmayr flew the new gondola’s towers in late July, work has shifted to the mid and top terminals.  Over four days last week, a crane set the steel beams and tunnels for the Solitude mid-station.  This station is huge and will eventually serve a beginner complex with magic carpets, a rental center, cafeteria and more.  It will also be the site of the gondola’s cabin storage and maintenance facility, to be built next summer.

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Doppelmayr crews put together the erector set at Solitude.
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The mid-station is big in both height and length!

Not much has changed at the bottom station, where steel was set in early July.  The top/drive terminal is now the center of the action, where the last concrete for the masts will be poured this week.

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Olympic Spotlight Shines on Rio and its Teleféricos

Peter Landsman1 Comment

With the Olympics opening tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, the world looks to a seaside metropolis with more than six million residents and the first South American city to host an Olympic Games.  While Brazil has no ski resorts, Rio features aerial lifts ranging from hundred year-old tramways to modern gondolas connecting the city’s favelas to the regional transit network.

The famous Sugarloaf Mountain twin tramways were among the world’s first cableways of any kind when they debuted in 1912.  A century later, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff championed development of a five-section Poma gondola connecting some of Rio’s largest slums, modeled after the pioneering gondola network in Medellín.  In 2013, Doppelmayr built a three-station gondola in Morro da Providência, serving more than 5,000 residents in one of Rio’s oldest favelas.  Further urban cable projects proposed for Rio have faltered as the city works to combat challenges we’ve become all too familiar with leading up to the Games.

Teleférico do Alemão

Teleférico do Alemão is one of the largest and most complex gondola systems in the world with six stations and 152 10-passenger Sigma Diamond cabins.  Built by Poma and operated by private train company SuperVia, Teleférico do Alemão opened July 7, 2011. The system is capable of transporting 3,000 passengers per hour over 2.2 miles of dense neighborhoods in 16 minutes.  The lift changes angle four times, including a 100-degree turn at Alemão Station.

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Teleférico do Alemão’s striking gondola stations also serve as community centers.  Photo credit: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz via Creative Commons

70,000 residents are eligible for two free rides daily on the gondola, which links favelas in the Complexo do Alemão to the Bonsucesso train station. Six expansive rooftop stations that feature banks, stores and social services rise above the favelas.  The gondola system cost approximately $74 million to build and serves 9,000 daily riders.  Initial ridership estimates of 30,000 per day have not been realized as Rio has struggled to attract non-residents to ride the teleférico through crime-ridden neighborhoods.  Unlike in Medellín and La Paz, residents have criticized the construction of an expensive gondola through communities that lack electricity, clean water and basic sanitation.

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News Roundup: For Sale

Peter Landsman4 Comments

In Pictures: Sweetwater Gondola Towers Fly

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Teams from Doppelmayr and Timberline Helicopters put on a show yesterday in Teton Village as they flew 21 towers for JHMR’s new Sweetwater Gondola. The new gondola rises out of the base area with a mid-station at Solitude and tops out next to Casper Restaurant. With each tower flown in 4-6 sections, Brian and his co-pilot completed somewhere around a hundred laps up the hill over six hours using a UH-60 Black Hawk.  There’s still a lot of work to go before November 24th but Sweetwater is starting to look like a lift!

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