Doppelmayr USA has redesigned all of their controls for 2015.
Apparently Doppelmayr has redesigned their controls for 2015. A new pedestal pictured above looks like an improvement, especially the speed selector replacing slow/medium/fast buttons.
Willard Mountain, NY files for bankruptcy, proving once again it is best to control all of the land your ski resort sits on. The area has a Borvig and Partek doubles.
Saddleback Maine has put the drive terminal for its main lift up for sale on Resort Boneyard for $200k. Hopefully a new lift is on the way.
Whistler-Blackcomb to test snowmaking as a means to preserve summer skiing on Horstman Glacier, home to the only glacier-anchored lifts in North America.
These days building a detachable lift means a capital investment of at least $3 million plus around $100,000 in annual maintenance. A so-called ‘pulse’ lift offers the speed of a detachable system with similar infrastructure to a traditional fixed-grip lift. Chairs or cabins are grouped together into ‘pulses’ and the entire lift slows down for loading and unloading. When comparing types of aerial lifts there are always trade-offs; here they include low capacity and long headways. Most pulse lifts can only move 300-600 passengers per hour and headway – the time a passenger has to wait for a carrier to show up – can be minutes instead of as low as six seconds. Perfect for certain applications but unsuitable in most.
Pine Ridge lift at the Yellowstone Club, Montana.
There are currently 17 pulse lifts operating in the US, Canada and Mexico; all but three are gondolas. Nearly all were built in the last 15 years. Panorama Mountain Village, Northstar California, Steamboat, Snowmass, Canyons Resort, and Le Massif all use pulse gondolas to connect village areas. These lifts are usually less than 3,000 feet long and convenient for skiers and non-skiers alike. Other pulse gondolas are attractions in their own right such the Iron Mountain Tramway at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, SkyTrail at Trees of Mystery, the Gondola at Royal Gorge Bridge Bridge & Park and the Riverfront Park SkyRide in Spokane. There is also a new Leitner-Poma pulse gondola in Orizaba, Mexico with tripod towers that are hundreds of feet tall.
Riverfront Park SkyRide, built by Doppelmayr.
Snow Valley in Edmonton, Alberta has a very unique pulse chairlift built by Doppelmayr in 2008. Instead of having groups of 3-5 chairs, it has just two groups of 20 closely-spaced quad chairs. Because it is only 850 feet long, the lift can move 1,378 skiers per hour at up to 5 m/s, the same speed as most detachable lifts. In fact the ride is only about a minute. The lift slows to a beginner-friendly 0.8 m/s for loading and unloading. Because of the low speed, skiers ride around the bullwheel at the top and unload facing down the hill. It’s the only lift I know of with 180-degree unloading.
Little Snow King Mountain in downtown Jackson, Wyoming is in the midst of an $8 million transformation. They are simultaneously building a new Doppelmayr quad, Wiegand alpine coaster, zip-line adventure course and brand new base lodge. The lift is nearly complete and expected to open shortly along with Snow King’s famous alpine slide. The goal was June 15th but I think it will probably be a week or so later. The alpine coaster is well on its way and planned to open in August. With a $4 million base-to-summit TechnoAlpin snowmaking system installed last summer, the future is looking good for this community ski area. The only thing they need now is a detachable summit lift and restaurant overlooking the Town of Jackson with the Tetons in the background. Willamette Pass’ six pack with gondola conversion would be perfect.
The crew from Doppelmayr is just about finished at Snow King and they are moving down the road to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort to build the new Teton detachable quad. Most of the return terminal parts are now on site along with the haul rope. I was surprised to see the rope was manufactured in France by a company called ArcelorMittal. Apparently it’s the largest steel company in the world and they supplied the rope for Vail’s Gondola One.
Two new aerial tramways are about to open on the Italian side of Mont Blanc that will be among the steepest in the world. This is Doppelmayr’s largest project ever on Leitner’s home turf. The €110 million contract was awarded in late 2011 and construction began in 2012. Two sets of 80-passenger cabins will ascend a crazy 7,093 vertical feet in ten minutes. For comparison, Palm Springs’ tram does 5,873 feet in 12 minutes, Jackson Hole’s 4,084 feet in nine minutes.
Mont Blanc will have CWA’s first fully-rotating cabins.
Mont Blanc can be accessed from both the Italian and French sides. There is also a highway tunnel under the mountain, but that’s not nearly as cool. The existing setup on the Italian side requires riding three lifts built in the 40s and 50s to reach Point Helbronner at 11,358 feet. The French side has two tramways, the famous Aguille du Midi 1 & 2 that reach 12,392 feet. Connecting the French and Italian summits is a 3.1 mile bi-cable pulse gondola that opened in 1957.
Both new trams will have the world’s first 360-degree rotating cabins (others like the Palm Springs Tramway have only rotating floors.) Built by CWA, these 80-passenger cabins will feature heating, air conditioning and video screens showing live camera views.
System Statistics
Both sections will be in new alignments as shown in Google Maps above. The first section ascends from the village of Entreves to a mid-station called Le Pavillon with three towers along the way. It will move 600 passengers per hour with a four minute ride. The second section from Le Pavillon to Point Helbronner has only two towers and ascends over 4,000 feet in six minutes. Both sections will operate year-round once they open in mid-June.
Red McCombs’ 28-year battle with the Forest Service over the Village at Wolf Creek may be coming to end. A private lift would access Wolf Creek Ski Area, although the owners of the ski area do not support the Village.
The only lift I know of that crosses under a major bridge.
The $2.5 million Spokane Falls SkyRide is one of only a handful of lifts in North America owned by city government. Doppelmayr CTEC built the pulse gondola in 2005 to replace a Riblet version that debuted in 1974. Riders board at the drive station in downtown Spokane’s Riverfront Park. The gondola travels down through the park, across the Spokane River and under a four-lane bridge before turning around. All this happens in only 1,120 feet. It takes 15 minutes to ride round-trip at a painful 150 feet per minute (the design speed is 600 fpm.) The gondola’s turnaround station on the far bank of the river does not have loading/unloading or even an operator. A ticket for the SkyRide costs $7.50 and it operates year-round.
Looking down at one of five pulses of cabins.
Spokane’s original Riverfront SkyRide, built by Riblet, ran in a similar alignment from 1974 to 2005. (Riblet built over 500 lifts in a shop three miles away.) The Riblet version of the SkyRide had open air cabins but the new one has 15 CWA Omega 6-passenger cabins. Because the cabins are enclosed, the SkyRide shuts down when the temperature exceeds 85 degrees, which happens fifty days a year in Spokane. Last year Doppelmayr developed a plan to retrofit cabins with larger opening windows but so far these have not been installed. Despite this issue, over 70,000 people ride the SkyRide every year.
The owner of West Mountain, NY tells the local paper there’s a 25 percent chance both of his new-used lifts will be finished this summer. At least he’s honest!
Some taxpayers are calling for Steamboat’s Howelsen Hill to abandon its Heron-Poma double after a landslide took out a tower.
North America is getting its first Doppelmayr RopeCon at the El Limon gold mine under construction in Mexico.
I got to check out the Rafferty lift construction at Snow King Mountain this weekend. This project is on track to be Doppelmayr USA’s fastest lift installation ever. Snow King actually sells more alpine slide rides in the summer than they do ski tickets in the winter so the lift needed to be completed quickly in between seasons. Construction began in April and will be done by June 15th. Snow King is also building a Wiegand Alpine Coaster that will open in August.
New and old Rafferty lift lines.
The old Rafferty was a Hall double installed in 1978. It will find new life at the Bearizona Wildlife Park in Williams, Arizona. The new Rafferty quad goes 400 vertical feet higher than the old one but the load- and mid-stations are pretty much in the same spots. The bottom drive-tension terminal is a brand new design from Doppelmayr called the Alpen Star. It is a single-mast terminal that looks a lot like SkyTrac’s Monarch design to me. Check out more pictures below of this $8 million project.
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