- Power company blames ski resort, ski resort blames power company for gondola downtime.
- The last of 12 Riblets at Snowmass is being replaced with a Leitner-Poma high speed quad.
- Doppelmayr already flying towers on Snow King Mountain.
- No improvements imminent at Vail Resorts’ newly acquired Perisher. (They already have an 8-pack!)
- Jury sides with Terry Peak in wrongful death tower pad lawsuit.
- Another setback for Jumbo Glacier Resort, the idea that just won’t go away. Does BC really need another Revelstoke or Kicking Horse?
- New Navajo nation president may not like the Grand Canyon gondola plan.
- Maine newspaper digs deeper into ski lift safety in the wake of Sugarloaf’s 2 major incidents. Be sure to check out the bottom of the page which has inspection records for every lift in Maine.
Doppelmayr
The 3S Gondola
A “3S” is a detachable gondola with two track ropes and one haul rope. It combines the speed and stability of a tram with the capacity of a gondola. Cabins generally hold about 30 passengers. 3S systems can move up to 4,500 passengers per hour at up to 8.5 meters per second. They can withstand high winds and traverse long spans between towers. These highly capable lifts are also expensive. Only 12 3S gondolas have been built. Perhaps the most famous of them, Whistler’s Peak 2 Peak, cost $51 million!
The 3S was developed by VonRoll of Switzerland. The first one to open was the Alpin Express at Saas-Fee in 1991. A second section opened in 1994. When Doppelmayr merged with VonRoll in 1996, they inherited the 3S technology. Doppelmayr built its first 3S in 2002 at Val d’Isere, France. Called L’Olympique, it accesses the famous ski area of Escape Killy.
Kitzbuhel, Austria opened the 3S Bahn in 2004. It connects two ski areas across a valley with an 8,200 foot-long unsupported span. Four years later, Doppelmayr connected Whistler and Blackcomb with the Peak 2 Peak, featuring an even longer unsupported span of 1.88 miles. Peak 2 Peak’s highest point above ground is an incredible 1,427 feet. It remains the only 3S gondola outside of Europe.
Leitner got into the 3S business in 2009 with a system in northern Italy. The towns of Renon and Ritten were connected by a 2.8 mile-long 3S. This was the first 3S built outside of a ski resort. Another urban 3S was built across the Rhine River in Koblenz, Germany in 2010. This Doppelmayr system moves 3,800 passengers per hour in each direction. Also in 2010, Doppelmayr built the Gaislachkogl 2 at Solden, Austria.
Up and Over Lifts
What if you could build two lifts for the price of one longer lift? A handful of ski areas have done it with “up and over” lifts. With this setup, riders load at each end and unload at a ridgetop mid-station. There are obvious cost advantages but also limited locations where such a lift makes sense. Due to multiple load/unload areas more stops and slows can occur. Another disadvantage is that the entire system has to run even if only one side is open. Most up and over lifts are located in the Pacific Northwest.
Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort built a CTEC up and over quad in 1995 to replace two lifts. Skiers who load Ray’s Lift in the main village can unload at the Mont Mountain summit or continue down the other side to the base of the Arrowhead lift. Guests can also load at this end to ride back up to the mid-station. Ray’s lift is a beast – depending on the season it has eight different load/unload points, five lift shacks with controls and 33 towers.
Stevens Pass considers its Double Diamond/Southern Cross system as two separate lifts. Skiers load at both ends and unload on two ramps at the summit which are monitored by one operator. The front side portion, called Double Diamond, is short and steep while the rest of the lift is on the Mill Valley side and dubbed Southern Cross. This system was also built by CTEC in 1987. The combined lift is 5,700 feet long and moves 1,200 people per hour up each side.
Perhaps the most famous of the up and over lifts is the Dinosaur at Snoqualmie’s Hyak. It was built by Murray-Latta in 1965. Over 5,000 feet long, it started at the base of Hyak, crossed the summit and continued down into Hidden Valley. This one lift accessed 100% of the resort’s terrain on both sides of Mt. Hyak. The lift had a rollback in 1971 that injured dozens of skiers. The Dinosaur continued to run until 1988. When it closed, large portions of Hyak became abandoned. The Dinosaur sat idle until was removed in 2009 and replaced with two used Riblet lifts, a triple on the front side and a double in Hidden Valley.
Lost Lifts of Moab
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 Skyway
Lift Profile: Sea to Sky Gondola
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.
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 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.
New Roundup: Ouch!
- Crowdfunding campaign to put up a used Riblet double in BC not going very well.
- Skier-lift tower collision ends badly at Deer Valley.
- 2 Borvig quads at Sugarloaf won’t reopen this season. Spokesperson says they have not decided what to do for next year.
- Woman wants $75,000 after maze sign fell on her at Park City Mountain Resort last season.
- Doppelmayr’s April 2015 Wir magazine is now online. Check out their new chair suspension (page 17) and new work carrier design (page 25.)
- Deropement and rope evacuation at Winter Park.
- Three days in, conservation group vows to kill Squaw’s Base-to-base gondola plan.
Subway in the Sky
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 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.
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)
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!
- 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
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.)
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.
Lift Blog 