Doppelmayr

Snow King Outlines Gondola & More

Peter Landsman4 Comments

There aren’t many ski resorts that lose $200,000 in a good winter. That’s the loss Snow King Mountain projects for the next four months as it struggles to find a sustainable operating model in downtown Jackson, Wyoming.  The ski area opened in 1939, decades before its more famous neighbors even existed.  Snow King’s alpine slide, opened in 1978, sees many times more riders in the summer than the entire mountain attracts each winter.  Beginner and intermediate destination visitors simply don’t choose to ski the rugged, north-facing mountain with a 12-minute double chair ride to the top.

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Snow King managing partner Max Chapman, Jr. outlines his group’s investments to date and vision for the future at a community open house December 11, 2015.

Last year, an investment banker with local ties named Max Chapman, Jr. led a group of investors in purchasing Snow King Holdings from the ownership group that struggled with the ski area since 1992.  This past summer, Chapman and company spent a crazy $14 million to build an alpine coaster, base lodge, retail store, ski school building, quad chair and fully-automated TechnoAlpin snowmaking system.  General Manager Ryan Stanley overhauled ticketing systems, bought new uniforms and even commissioned a brand new trail map and website.  This week, the King held a community open house at Snow King Hotel to outline a vision for phase 2 expansion and begin a multi-year public process in hopes of pushing Snow King to consistent profitability.  SKMR operates on a mix of private, federal and town land so Chapman knows he needs the community’s support.

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The Panorama House will be re-imagined with a modern facility and integrated gondola (apparently with 1960s Riblet towers!)

The anchor of the project is a base-to-summit gondola to an all-new complex that will serve a variety of visitors year-round.  The facility up top would include a movie theatre, planetarium, cafeteria and fine dining overlooking the town of Jackson and Teton Range.  As of now the building would also include gondola cabin storage/maintenance and takeoff for a quad zipline plunging into town below at speeds up to 75 mph.  Chapman noted, “we want everything we build to be the best.”

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News Roundup: 115.4 mph

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  • Mt. Hood Meadows updates skiers on the windstorm that sent two hundred-foot hemlock trees onto the Shooting Star Express the night of November 17th.
  • Vail Resorts announces $100 million in capital improvements across its mountains for 2016/17 including replacement of the last major fixed-grip lift on Vail Mountain.  The new Sun Up Lift #17 will be a detachable quad, manufacturer unknown.
  • SkyTrac splices the Humphrey’s Peak Quad at Arizona Snowbowl.
  • The latest from Sugarloaf on the new King Pine.  An apparent Doppelmayr delay will push opening until late-December. Luckily (or unluckily) there’s no snow anyways.
  • Utah’s new ski resort, Cherry Peak, announces a December 21st debut with two lifts.
  • Doppelmayr’s 10th  3S gondola, the Penkenbahn, is ready to go.
  • A nonprofit ski area in Ontario that’s been unable to operate its quad chair since 2011 due to a 2006 Doppelmayr service bulletin hopes to crowdfund $80,000 for repairs.
  • West Mountain celebrates their new lift with fireworks rather than skiing and already has the drive terminal up for another new-used lift next summer.

The Next Four Big Gondolas

Peter Landsman1 Comment
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CWA Taris cabin design for the Eiger Express in Grindelwald, Switzerland.

Back in September, I wrote about three new 3S gondolas under construction in Vietnam, Switzerland and Austria.  As reader Michael E. let me know, there are at least four other 3S systems in the pipeline by both Leitner and Doppelmayr that will bring the total number to over twenty. Below is a look at the systems I missed in my last post, all of which happen to be in the same three countries.

Fansipan Cable Car – Sa Pa, Vietnam

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If you look closely, you can see the four tower locations along what will be one of the world’s most spectacular ropeways scaling Mt. Fansipan.

The Fansipan Cable Car is another partnership between Doppelmayr and the Sun Group, which will operate at least five unique ropeways in Vietnam by 2017.  Fansipan is the tallest peak in Southeast Asia at 10,312 feet and the cable car, which has been under construction for the last three years, goes just shy of the summit.  It will slash a two-day trek up the mountain to 15 minutes.  The gondola departs from the town of Sa Pa at 7,000 feet and travels over four towers and 20,063 feet of rugged mountainside.  It will be the world’s longest tri-cable gondola when it opens early next year.  Doppelmayr designed the system with an hourly capacity of 2,000 at a line speed of 8 m/s and with CWA Taris 35-passenger cabins.

https://www.instagram.com/p/-3fyfbQ7dq/?taken-by=darkflames232

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News Roundup: Peak Buys Another

Peter Landsman1 Comment
  • The first non-prototype photos of Doppelmayr’s new detachable terminal that will replace the Uni-G model over the next few years.  It’s certainly different; note the huge windows, Frey controls and stairs instead of ladders on the Kirchenkarbahn’s terminals.  Thanks for the head’s up, snowtirol.
  • Maine’s chief tramway inspector releases his report with pictures on the King Pine rollback and Sugarloaf’s GM responds.  Eight months after the incident, the replacement drive terminal is nearly finished.
  • Doppelmayr Garaventa Group revenue was down 7.5% to $841 million in fiscal 2015 while the company’s global employee headcount rose to 2,546.
  • Still more bad press surrounding Saddleback and the resort’s asking price is down to $9.5 million for 2,000 acres.  Meanwhile Boyne offers passholders in the lurch last spring’s rates on New England Passes.
  • Peak Resorts, the fourth largest operator of lifts in North America, buys Hunter Mountain for $36.8 million.  After the deal closes the publicly-traded company will operate 14 ski resorts with 153 lifts in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri.
  • Two different models of LPOA chairs going up at Okemo and Purgatory.
  • West Mountain demonstrates an old lift can be new again with help from Leitner-Poma, SkyTrac, Green Mountain Control Systems and Alpine Engineering.
  • They call it ‘The Beast’ for a reason.  Killington opened for skiing on October 19th and is running 240 snow guns nightly, all while flying concrete and adding a mid-station to their Snowdon triple.  The 1973 Heron-Poma is evidently going to stick around for awhile.  Fun fact: Snowdon had a mid-station in nearly the same spot which was removed in 1990.
  • Lutsen’s recently retired Hall Skycruiser gondola cabins sold out in 4 minutes on Cyber Monday for $1200 each.  A new gondy opens to passengers December 11th after a brief delay.  If you missed out on the $1200 gondola cabins, you can still get someone a $150 double chair this holiday season.

Sun Peaks Plans to Double in Size Again

Peter Landsman3 Comments

Sun Peaks is Canada’s second largest mountain resort with 4,270 acres and 360-degrees of ski terrain spread over three mountains.  The biggest of those is Tod Mountain, which was also the original name of the ski area in 1961.  Nippon Cable of Japan purchased the resort in 1992 and doubled its size, adding eight new lifts in nine years and expanding onto Sundance and Morrisey mountains.  Nippon Cable should be a familiar name; the company licenses and sells Doppelmayr technology throughout Japan. Thus Sun Peaks is North America’s largest 100% Doppelmayr mountain.

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Today Sun Peaks operates 9 lifts, all but one of which were built since 1993.

Ecosign Mountain Resort Planners updated the master plan for Sun Peaks Resort in 2013 that aims to expand lift service into new areas and make significant changes to the current lift system.  Many of the proposed changes center around the Top of the World, the ski area’s 6,824-foot summit.  The two lifts that currently end here will be shortened or removed and three new ones added.  The Burfield quad (the world’s longest fixed-grip lift) will be shortened to just above its current mid-station. Primary access to Top of the World will become the Crystal Express, a six-pack replacement of the Crystal triple chair in a new and extended alignment.  A 30-passenger aerial tram is proposed from the top of the Sunburst Express to Top of the World for sightseeing.  A new high speed quad called Sunnyside Express would come from the west and top out near the two other summit lifts.

The West Bowl T-Bar would be replaced with a new, longer version while two of Sun Peaks’ three detachable quads – Sunburst and Sundance – would be replaced with six packs.  The missing link between the village and Mt. Morrisey would finally be added with a new West Morrisey quad chair.

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News Roundup: Flying Volkswagens

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  • Gunther Jochl, the Austrian-born owner of Sugar Mountain, got the CEOs of both Doppelmayr and CWA to come christen his new six-pack Saturday along with the governor of North Carolina.  Apparently the lift may get gondola cabins in the future.
  • A lawsuit from a homeowner could force the closure of Pennsylvania’s second largest ski resort. Seven Springs Mountain Resort operates two six-packs and eight fixed-grip lifts on 300 acres.  Unfortunately, four of those lifts and 75 percent of the mountain’s ski runs cross a public road that the homeowner wants opened in winter.  There are plenty of other ski resorts that have major highways passing through that close seasonally, including Deer Valley, Bridger Bowl and Mt. Baker.
  • Cherry Peak, the new ski area in Utah, won’t be able to complete their Summit lift in time for this season.  When I was there a few months ago, towers were laying on the ground along the line which will either have to be set or moved elsewhere.  Two other triple chairs and a carpet are set to go.
  • Arizona Snowbowl’s first new lift in 30 years is almost finished.
  • An 8.5 mile gondola system coming to Missouri’s Las Vegas?
  • Bartholet’s aerial tramway across the city of Puebla in Mexico will be finished December 15th, about a year behind schedule.  Speaking of BMF, they have a new website.
  • The Balsams clears some more hurdles but has still yet to break ground.
  • Staying on the mega-resort topic, Hemlock Resort near Chilliwack, BC receives approval to spend $1.5 billion on 23 new lifts and 20,000 lodging beds among other improvements over the next 60 years.  Hemlock currently has a 1977-vintage Doppelmayr triple and two even older Mueller doubles.  Buried in the linked article is the fact that the ski area never opened last year due to lack of snow.

    Hemlock Master Plan rendering from Brent Harley & Associates.
    Hemlock Master Plan rendering from Brent Harley & Associates.

Finishing Up in the Snow at Solitude

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Finishing up at the drive terminal.
Drive terminal for Solitude’s Summit Express on 11/8/15.

Since I last posted about Solitude’s Summit Express project in September, workers from Solitude and Highlander Lift Services have made a ton of progress, completing 19 towers and the top terminal.  Comm-line is being installed and the haul rope is on a spool at the bottom terminal location.  I say location because the lift doesn’t actually have a bottom terminal yet.  Walking up to the summit today, it’s obvious why the top got priority.  Not only is it the drive, the top is also located on a ridge at over 10,000 feet.  These guys are lucking out with the weather to be building terminals in November with just inches of snow on the ground instead of feet.  The bottom terminal will be at 8,690′ in a more accessible spot and should go up quickly. The biggest components for it are already up there and the operator house is installed.

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The bottom terminal has a ways to go!
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Towers 3-8. The lift line has lots of ups, downs and double fall lines.

The Summit Express is a Doppelmayr detachable quad replacing a double chair which was one of the first twenty lifts CTEC built back in 1982.  The replacement high speed quad’s lift line is completely new and very steep with a bunch of challenging tower locations.  At one point, the lift line crests a ridge and jogs sharply down before continuing up again.  This lift reminds me of Peruvian at Snowbird (which is only a few miles away) with some very steep sections alternating with flat ones.

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What $50 Million Looks Like at Park City

Peter Landsman3 Comments

Tomorrow will mark 11 months since Vail Resorts announced their massive $50 million project to connect Park City Mountain Resort with Canyons to create the largest ski resort in the country.  A significant chunk of that investment went to Doppelmayr USA to build two new detachable lifts and relocate another.  All three projects are nearly finished before there’s even much natural snow on the ground.  In addition to the three new lifts, Park City built a huge new restaurant called Miner’s Camp, added significant snowmaking and did a lot of painting & re-branding.

The Quicksilver Gondola is a month away from uniting Canyons with Park City.

When I visited today the new King Con six-pack was spinning and the Motherlode Express was also finished with chairs on the line.  Crews were pulling com-line at the Quicksilver Gondola and finishing up the angle station.  Check out pictures of all three projects below.  Park City is making snow on both sides of the mountain under sunny skies this weekend and all three new lifts are scheduled to open by the holidays.

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Summer 2015: The Good and the Bad

Peter Landsman1 Comment

It’s almost November and by my count construction is wrapping up on 33 lifts across the US and Canada.  With the usual caveat that there could be a lift project I haven’t heard about, 2015 will be the fourth year in a row that the total number of new lifts has declined.  Nonetheless there are some encouraging trends – namely more of this summer’s lifts were (expensive) detachables and more were brand new rather than re-installations of used lifts.

Click on the map above to explore our interactive map of 2015's new lifts powered by Google Maps.
Click on the map above to explore our interactive map of 2015’s new lifts powered by Google Maps.

Looking geographically, there’s no question the dismal snow situation last winter killed the market for lifts in the Sierras and Cascades.  In a typical year, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia account for five new lifts and this year they had zero.  The Rockies were a bright spot this summer, with at least one new lift being built in every Rocky Mountain state except Montana.  Colorado had a particularly strong year, building five new lifts including four detachables.  Utah had almost as good a year, thanks largely to Vail Resorts’ mega-project at Park City.  Colorado averages 4.4 new lifts a year and Utah 3.3 and both came out ahead of those numbers this summer.

The Midwest was about average for snowfall last winter but its ski areas built just one new lift and one used lift this year.  The one bright spot was Lutsen in Minnesota which spent $7 million with Doppelmayr to rebuild the Midwest’s only gondola.  Looking further east, Vermont was a success story, getting three brand new lifts from both Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr.  Despite averaging more than five new lifts a year, nowhere else in the Northeast invested in a new lift despite a stellar winter in 2014-15.

Canada had a tough year with only three lifts going in at Sunshine Village, Boler Mountain and Mont Cascades.  In a normal construction season the country’s resorts build 7-8 new lifts. My take is newer resorts in Western Canada – places like Sun Peaks, Revelstoke and Kicking Horse – were hit particularly hard by the Great Recession and still haven’t recovered.2015 by manufacturer

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