Doppelmayr

Lost Lifts of Moab

Peter Landsman12 Comments

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Moab, a town of 5,000 in the Utah desert is the surprising home of two failed lift projects – a gondola that never opened and a modern chairlift that lasted only a few years.

Moab Scenic Tram

Moab Scenic Tram from Google Earth.
Moab Scenic Tram from Google Earth.
Just south of Arches National Park stands the Moab Scenic Tram.  It’s actually a pulse gondola built by Doppelmayr.  A small group of investors spent $3.3 million to build the gondola along with a parking lot and two terminal buildings in 1999. From the outset it was criticized as the “tram to nowhere.”  Scheduled to open in April 2001, the tram’s owners got in a fight with the county over a removal bond to be paid in case the business failed.  Ironically the business never opened and the vandalized tram remains 16 years later.  Its windows and control panels have been smashed and graffiti is everywhere. The lift is very short with only five towers and a handful of cabins, some of which never made it onto the haul rope.  It is probably the world’s newest gondola to be tensioned with a counterweight and without level boarding.  If you’d like to check it out in person, it’s hard to miss at the intersection of US 191 and Route 128.

The lower terminal of the Moab Scenic Tram sits abandoned in 2015. The lift never carried a single customer.

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Some cabins remain on the line while others lie in ruin at the base station.

Moab Scenic Skyway

The Moab Scenic Skyway scaled the Moab Rim.
The Moab Scenic Skyway scaled the Moab Rim.
On the other side of town was the Moab Scenic Skyway, a Garaventa CTEC quad chairlift which took hikers and bikers 1,000 feet up to the Moab Rim.  Longtime resident Emmett Mays had dreamed of building a lift on his property since the 1970’s.  He spent $2.2 million to build the lift, trails and parking lot and it opened in May 1999.  The entire lift was painted brown and orange camouflage colors to blend in with the rocks below.  Designed purely for sightseeing, it ran 250 feet a minute and took 16 minutes to ride round-trip.  The attraction lasted five years, closing in 2004.  The Nature Conservancy bought the land and the lift was sold to Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana.  It operates today as the Easy Rider Quad.  The galvanized chairs still have patches of brown paint on them!

It cost $7 to ride the Skyway.
Moab Scenic Skyway circa 2002.

Lift Profile: Sea to Sky Gondola

Peter Landsman3 Comments

I got a chance to check out the Sea to Sky Gondola during its first few months of operation last summer.  It’s located along the Sea to Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler.  The system is just over 7,000 feet long and goes from a parking lot at sea level to a lodge 3,000 feet above.  There are 20 CWA 8-passenger cabins that take riders to the top in 7.1 minutes.  The summit lodge has expansive views of Howe Sound in addition to hiking trails and snow tubing in the winter.  The project cost $22 million to build and is owned by a small group of private partners.

The bottom terminal has a unique wooden roof over it. No snow to worry about here.
The bottom terminal has a unique wooden roof over it. No snow to worry about here.

Doppelmayr began building the gondola in April 2013 and it passed its acceptance test in January 2014.  The bottom drive terminal has a unique wooden structure over it instead of the normal Uni-G terminal.  The lower section climbs an 800 foot cliff and none of the lift line is accessible by road.  Many of the 14 towers were anchored directly to bedrock.  Most trees under the line were left standing which would make for a challenging evacuation.

The first 3 towers have a combined 80 sheaves.
The first 3 towers have a combined 80 sheaves.

The gondola had a major accident on February 4th, 2014.  At the time it was only open for construction workers and the media.  The system stopped automatically around 8:30 am due to two rope position faults at tower 7.  The only personnel on-site were two operators, the Mountain Manager and an employee from Doppelmayr.  It took the Doppelmayr employee almost two hours to reach tower 7 on foot where he found a cabin on the ground.

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New Roundup: Ouch!

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Subway in the Sky

Peter Landsman7 Comments

There is a ropeway revolution going on in the Bolivian city of La Paz.  Last month, Doppelmayr won the largest lift construction contract in history to expand the region’s urban gondola network.  The government of Bolivia will pay $450 million for six new 10-passenger gondolas.  To put it in perspective, Doppelmayr’s total revenue last year was $915 million.  The company says 80% its business still comes from building lifts at ski resorts but that seems poised to change with La Paz as an urban ropeway success story.

La Paz's Yellow Line. Photo credit: Doppelmayr
La Paz’s Yellow Line. Photo credit: Doppelmayr

La Paz already has three Doppelmayr gondolas that opened last year.  They have already carried more than 16 million people.  Each line operates 17 hours per day and a ride costs less than fifty cents US.  There are 11 Uni-G terminals where passengers load and unload.  The only major incident happened when a eucalyptus tree fell on the yellow line back in February, causing a deropement and rope evacuation.

Map showing Phase I and Phase II gondola lines.
Map showing Phase I and Phase II gondola lines.

Phase II of the system will add 6 lines and 23 terminals between 2017 and 2019.  Once completed, the network will include 19 miles of gondolas spread across 9 haul ropes.  There will be a total of 34 stations and a ridiculous 1,350 CWA 10-passenger Omega cabins.

There are plenty of examples of urban ropeways scattered around the world, but no other city has gone all in on gondolas like La Paz.  It will be interesting to see if any American cities follow their example.

Lifts by State (and Province)

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Ever wanted to know how many lifts are operating in each state?  Read on.  Colorado has the most operating lifts of any state with 275.  California is close behind with 263 followed by New York (189) and Michigan (165).  There are only 9 states with more than 100 lifts each.  The majority of states have fewer than 20 lifts today.  Five sad states have no aerial lifts at all to my knowledge – Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii and Louisiana.  (Louisiana used to have a 6-passenger Poma gondola called MART that crossed the Mississippi River.)

Each one of Canada’s 10 provinces has at least 3 lifts used for skiing.  Only the Nunavut and Northwest Territories do not have a lift.  Quebec has the most lifts by far with 226 followed by British Columbia (165), Ontario (162), and Alberta (87).

The average age of lifts varies significantly by region.  Maryland’s 7 lifts average 17 years old while Ohio’s 33 lifts are more than twice as old at 34.4 years.  Utah and Montana stand out as having new lifts averaging 19.4 and 19.9 years old, respectively.  Places with really old lifts tend to be in the East and Midwest.  Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and New York all have lifts that average more than 30 years old.

It’s also interesting to look at which brand has the most operating lifts in each state/province.  25 states/provinces are dominated by brands which disappeared decades ago – Yan, Riblet, Borvig and Hall.  Borvig dominates in 5 eastern states – IL, VA, IA, ME, and PA.  Hall lifts are pervasive in many eastern states – ND, CT, MA, NY, WI, MN, OH, and SC.  Riblet still dominates all of the northwest and some of the midwest – MO, OR, WA, SD, AK, NM, IN, MI, and KY.  Yan takes its home state of Nevada and neighboring California and Arizona.

Doppelmayr is the most common lift brand in surprisingly few states – MD, GA, MT, NJ, NH, ID, and NC.  The story is different in Canada where Doppelmayr is the top brand in most of the country – BC, MB, SK, AB, QC, and NB.  Despite being gone for a decade, CTEC and GaraventaCTEC are still the most popular in Utah, Wyoming and West Virginia (thanks solely to Snowshoe Resort.)  Finally Poma and Leitner-Poma take their home state of CO plus VT and ON, NL, PEI and NS in Canada.

News Roundup: Reset and Go!

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  • Sugarloaf shuts down 2nd Borvig quad lift.
  • Sugar Mountain, NC to build a base-to-summit Doppelmayr six-pack.
  • Leitner-Poma might have to pay $222k back to the State of Colorado.  This summer doesn’t look to be too busy for them either.
  • Vail Resorts goes to Australia.
  • Lift operator sued after boy hanged from backpack tangled in a chair.
  • The State of Pennsylvania is “not normally in the business of ski-lift construction.”
  • Another child falls from a chair, this time in eastern Canada.  Seems like there have been a lot of similar incidents this winter particularly with children.

Summer 2015 New Lifts – Early Trends

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Resorts are starting to close and construction season is upon us.  Many new lift projects have already been announced.  You can see the full list here.  After last year’s “win” by Leitner-Poma, Doppelmayr will return to dominate with at least 14 projects.  Remarkably almost all of them will be detachables – more on that later.  So far the only other confirmed projects are a Leitner-Poma detachable at Powderhorn, CO and 2 Leitner urban gondolas in Mexico City.  (Apparently these are being built by Leitner in Italy, not by Leitner-Poma in Grand Junction.)

Lifts by manufacturer-year
Last year was the only year since the merger with CTEC that Doppelmayr did not build the most lifts.
The overall lift construction trend continues downward.
The overall lift construction trend continues downward.

2015 also will be the first year since 2011 that more detachable lifts are built than fixed-grip lifts.  So far only 3 fixed grips have been announced.

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