Doppelmayr

World’s Largest Aerial Tram Opens for Business

Peter Landsman6 Comments
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Photo credit: Doppelmayr/Garaventa

The Nu Hoang Cable Car’s 230-person cabins carried their first public passengers across Ha Long Bay in Vietnam Saturday after a dedication with owner Sun Group, builder Doppelmayr/Garaventa and representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records.  The spectacular 7,100′ reversible aerial tramway crushes records for the largest cabins and tallest towers of any lift worldwide.

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Photo credit: Doppelmayr/Garaventa

Meaning Queen in English, the Nu Hoang Cable Car links Ha Long City with Ba Deo Hill and a huge observation wheel. It’s part of a $270 million, 500-acre development called Sun World Ha Long Park.  The taller of the tramway’s two concrete tripod towers is 619 feet while the other is only 436 feet.  The old record was 373 feet on a tramway in Austria built in 1966.

CWA built the monster red and yellow Kronos cabins in sections and shipped them to Ha Long for assembly.  Each cabin has two levels and six sets of doors!  With these new cabins, the double-decker, 200-passenger Vanoise Express in France loses the title of world’s largest tram.

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Photo credit: Doppelmayr/Garaventa

The Queen is the latest mega lift project for Doppelmayr and Vietnam’s Sun Group, which also operates the world’s second longest gondola and the longest 3S.  In 2015, Sun Group ordered an even longer 3S to link three islands and the mainland on Vietnam’s Southern Coast.  This stunning 26,000 foot gondola will become the world’s longest lift of any type when it opens in the second quarter of 2017.

Construction Underway on New Lifts at Big Sky

Peter Landsman9 Comments
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Challenger looks to be getting a Doppelmayr Tristar drive terminal.

Next winter is going to be huge at Big Sky with a bubble six-pack detachable opening in The Bowl and a new triple chair replacing the legendary Challenger double.  Doppelmayr is off to a solid start with terminal and tower footings going in for both lifts.  Big Sky is known for its crazy steeps and rocky terrain which makes both projects challenging.

Challenger Triple

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New footing for Challenger tower #2.

From what I can tell approximately half the old Challenger tower bases from 1988 will be re-used on the new lift.  Dyer All Terrain Excavation was working on the upper section of Challenger with a spider hoe today.  The only way to the top of Challenger is scrambling on foot or riding the Headwaters chair from the Moonlight side.

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One of the footings that will be re-used.

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News Roundup: Big Week

Peter Landsman2 Comments
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Garaventa recently fabricated new hangers for the Grouse Mountain Red Skyride cabins so riders can stand on the roof for an extra charge. Photo credit: Max U.

Beartooth Basin Summer Ski Area Lives On Despite Setbacks

Peter Landsman3 Comments
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This platter lift sits at 10,900′ atop Beartooth Basin, thousands of feet above treeline at a unique summer-only ski lift operation.  The lifts haven’t spun for two years in a row due to lack of snow.

In a stunning alpine setting along the Beartooth Highway in Northwestern Wyoming sits the summit of one of America’s most unique ski destinations.  “You could call it backcountry skiing with a lift,” proclaims the website for Beartooth Basin Summer Ski Area.  Located at 10,900 feet between Red Lodge, Montana and the Northeast Entrance to Yellowstone National Park, Beartooth Basin is the only ski resort in North America that opens for summer but not winter.  To give a sense of the environment we’re talking about, the parking lot sits 450 feet higher than the top of the Jackson Hole Tram, 115 miles and two national parks to the southwest.  I made some turns this spring in Beartooth Basin to check out the lifts shortly after the pass reopened Memorial Day weekend.

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In good times, Beartooth Basin offers 900 vertical feet of skiing on six hundred acres serviced by two platter lifts that generally spin late-May through mid-July.  But everything here is subject to exception rather than rule and it hasn’t snowed enough for Beartooth Basin to open the past two years.  Even in good seasons, storms close the road and ski area, subjecting it to the whims of National Park Service plowing.  In 2005, the highway never even opened.  Despite years with too much snow, others without enough snow and still more with landslides, the dream lives on for the love of skiing.

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Both platter lifts are remarkably steep, combining to serve the even steeper Twin Lakes Headwall.

Pepi Gramshammer of Vail fame created Red Lodge International Race Camp with help from fellow Austrians Eric Sailer and Anderl Molterer in 1967 with the purchase of a portable Poma from Jean Pomagalski.  Named for the closest town in Montana, the ski area actually lies just across the border in Wyoming.  A permanent Doppelmayr platter was added in 1983 with another one following in 1984.  Five Red Lodge locals purchased the mountain from the original ownership group in 2003 and renamed it Beartooth Basin.

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Soelden Announces Record-Breaking Giggijochbahn

Peter Landsman4 Comments

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Soelden, Austria unveiled its record-breaking gondola today called Giggijochbahn, to open next winter with the ability to carry 4,500 passengers per hour. The ropeway will feature Doppelmayr’s next-generation D-Line components and two modern terminal buildings, one featuring panoramic images of the Alps and the other showing off ropeway technology behind real glass.  The top terminal will have parking for most of the lift’s 134 CWA Omega IV-10-D cabins.  Innsbruck architect Johann Obermoser designed the stations in collaboration with Soelden and Doppelmayr.

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This will be an impressive system by any measure with 3,022 feet of vertical rise and an 8,688-foot slope length.  Travelling at the record-breaking speed of 6.5 m/s (1,280 fpm) the ride will take just 8.87 minutes.  The fastest monocable gondolas in the world currently top out at 1,212 fpm.  The Giggijochbahn will have 26 towers and a 62 mm haul rope driven by a ~2,180 HP electric motor.  The biggest innovation will be the capacity – reaching 4,500 passengers per hour, per direction.  I believe 3,600 is the current capacity record for a monocable gondola, a record shared between many lifts including the 10-passenger Gondola One at Vail and the 15-passenger Village Gondola at Mammoth.

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News Roundup: Vail Effect

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Sweetwater Gondola June Update

Peter Landsman3 Comments

Construction on Jackson Hole’s second gondola is ramping up as the last of the snow melts.  The new Sweetwater Gondola will run from the base of the Teewinot high speed quad to the Casper Restaurant with a mid-station unload, boosting out-of-base capacity and providing an improved experience for beginner skiers.  As the photos below show, the project is off to a solid start with awesome weather in the last few weeks after a very wet spring.

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Tower and terminal components have begun arriving in Teton Village.
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The mid-station will be located about dead center of this photo.  The old Sweetwater lift is headed to Pine Creek Ski Area near Cokeville, Wyoming.
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The Doppelmayr crew used a spider excavator to dig holes for many of the 21 new towers.

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News Roundup: Into the Mountain

Peter Landsman1 Comment
  • Doppelmayr’s latest Wir Magazine has lots on D-Line.
  • Vail Resorts looks far and wide for its next acquisition with eyes towards Canada and Japan.
  • Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows enters strategic alliance with Genting Secret Garden, one of China’s newest ski resorts with a 6/8 chondola and two bubble high speed quads.
  • Great Divide, Montana is buying a new drive terminal for its Good Luck double.
  • Jay Peak receiver calls the resort’s financial situation “dire” as he reveals the resort lost $6.2 million last winter and looks for cost savings.
  • Queenstown’s Skyline Gondola will be replaced with a $60 million 10-passemger version in 2018.  The current 4-place Doppelmayr  gondola debuted in 1987.
  • The game-changing Leitner 3S gondola to the Stubai Glacier will open July 9th.

News Roundup: Dramatic

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News Roundup: Skyline

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  • Two men want to build an iconic gondola called Skyline along the Chicago Riverfront.
  • Sandia Peak unveils new tram cabins for its 50th anniversary.
  • Sugarloaf updates the public on its summer lift maintenance projects.
  • BMF wins contract for its first 10-passenger gondola to be built next year in Switzerland.
  • The owner of Gletscherjet 3+4 built last summer in Austria say it has already carried 3 million passengers, believed to be a record for a winter lift.  The system is an 8/10 combination lift interlining with a 10-passenger gondola.
  • Poma’s 2015 Reference Book is now online highlighting last year’s projects from around the world.
  • Are Vail Resorts and Powdr Corp. bidding on Eldora?
  • A New Zealand developer will test whether a Whistler-style bike park with its own high speed quad can stand alone without skiing.
  • Doppelmayr and its contractors take responsibility for a construction accident at one of the terminals under construction in La Paz that injured ten people on Saturday.