- The new lift at Great Bear Ski Valley is eight weeks ahead of schedule with chairs on the line.
- Another lockdown hits Australian resorts, this time Perisher and Thredbo in New South Wales.
- New Zealand shuts down all ski resorts as part of a nationwide freeze.
- A man dies after a fall from the sky ride at Utah’s Lagoon amusement park.
- Cape Smokey expects Canada’s first new gondola since 2018 to open next week.
- Sunlight solicits a new trail map painted by Kevin Mastin.
- Brazil’s government will study the feasibility of restarting the world’s largest abandoned urban gondola.
- A gondola system is being considered for Tijuana, Mexico.
- The Arizona Gondola re-enters service after 18 days of lightning-related downtime.
- Doppelmayr will build Latin America’s first gondola with air conditioning.
- An extended interview with Poma Chairman Jean Souchal covers Covid recovery, urban growth and why Americans call surface lifts of all brands Pomas.
- Despite offering $10 million, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania receives no bids for reopening Denton Hill.
- California and Nevada resorts report an almost 22 percent increase in skier visits during the Covid season of 2020-21.
- Washington, DC budgets $10 million to purchase property needed for a possible future Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola.
- Steamboat confirms the first section of the Wild Blue Gondola project is a go for next summer.
- The Boat will also retire the Priest Creek double and sell its chairs.
- Ontario’s Beaver Valley Ski Club plans to replace the Avalanche double in 2022.
- Time to vote! Choices for renaming Squaw Valley’s Squaw Creek triple are Eagle Eye, Highline, Resort, Snow King, Storm Rider and Valley View.
- Welch Village updates guests on the Cannon Valley Quad project.
Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola
News Roundup: Good Friday
- After a successful winter, Monarch Mountain will think about building a lift in No Name Basin in the next few years.
- The Georgetown-Rosslyn gondola concept is back under discussion in the nation’s capital.
- Leitner-Poma seeks workers to help build the Squaw-Alpine base to base gondola this summer.
- Whistler Blackcomb will not attempt to reopen for spring skiing once British Columbia’s closure order ends.
- Revelstoke shuts down early due to a Covid-related staffing shortage.
- Big White fires employees for attending a party widely shown in local media and is also closing 6 days early.
- Ontario shuts down skiing again.
- Indy Pass will announce new pricing and resort additions on April 27th.
- Snow King’s expansion receives final permission and chairs are already off the Summit double.
- Magic Mountain says the Black Line Quad will be re-engineered and completed for the 2021/22 season.
- A New Zealand operator is ordered to pay $8.4 million for spreading a wildfire via a moving chairlift in 2017.
- Skeetawk celebrates a successful inaugural season but a second chairlift remains years away.
- Okemo’s new six pack won’t have bubbles and the Green Ridge triple will head to another Vail resort in Pennsylvania.
- A GoFundMe is started to benefit the victims of the recent Camelback lift accident.
News Roundup: Worth the Wait
- Copper Mountain becomes the fifth US ski resort to offer a combination chair/gondola lift with American Eagle 2.0.
- Supply chain delays and five feet of snow push back delivery of the Bretton Woods gondola to an unknown future date.
- Les Otten is still working behind the scenes to line up financing for The Balsams rebuild.
- New owners close on Tamarack and reiterate their plan to resurrect Wildwood in time for next season.
- Vail Resorts won’t spin Crested Butte’s last remaining Riblet this season.
- Spout Springs plans to open this winter for the first time in three years.
- A metal panel falls 130 feet from the Portland Aerial Tram and hits a pedestrian.
- Is the Geogetown-Rosslyn Gondola idea a bold solution or vanity infrastructure?
News Roundup: Firsts
- One of Doppelmayr’s largest customers will open its first Poma gondola on February 7th.
- Leitner lift with new Pininfarina terminal design launches in Austria.
- Woodward Park City faces not one but three appeals.
- After more than a year of delays and false starts, LST’s first detachable opens again in France.
- The Balsams eyes April gondola groundbreaking.
- Telluride quits the Mountain Collective to join the Epic Pass, bringing together 14 Vail Resorts-owned mountains with two partner resorts.
- Sugar Mountain settles with the family of a boy seriously injured after jumping from a stopped chairlift two hours after it closed.
- Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola project inches forward.
- Ascutney Outdoors raises most of the money needed to install a used T-Bar this summer.
New Roundup: French
- First LST Ropeways detachable set to finally open in March.
- Silver Mountain’s new owner hints at future new lifts.
- Steamboat paper does a two part story on lift and gondola evacuations.
- Pandora’s lift still in the cards for Aspen Mountain but 1A might come first.
- In France, Poma finalizes contracts to build $121 million urban 3S gondola in Toulouse, $15.6 million jigback in Orléans.
- Arlington says no to Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola.
- Innsbruck to build $12.7 million D-Line gondola.
- Saddleback effort moves forward, but lifts will not spin this season.
- Al Henceroth of A-Basin explains why he chose a fixed-grip quad for The Beavers.
- Town of Gatlinburg to review Boyne’s design for new Sky Lift tomorrow.
- Leitner-Poma presents gondola technology as a potential solution to downtown traffic in Breckenridge.
- Wildfire tears through $24 million Christchurch Adventure Park in New Zealand, where a Doppelmayr high speed quad opened less than two months ago.
- The Skytrac blog has a cool post about the newest Rainforest Adventures park in St. Maarten and its two hurricane-proof fixed-grip quads.
- South Korea prepares for a Doppelmayr Olympics, Poma signs new contract for a 2022 venue in China.
- Whitewater’s Summit double goes up for sale.
- Poma begins hanging 160 Diamond cabins on Santo Domingo’s two new urban gondolas.
Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola is Viable, Study Says
At least 6,500 people would ride a a proposed gondola from Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood to Rosslyn, Virginia daily, according to a long-awaited study released last week. ZGF Architects and Engineering Specialties Group consulted with more than 20 federal, state and local agencies along with Georgetown University and local residents. Not only is the project technically feasible, it would improve mobility for residents and visitors while positively impacting the region’s economy. The system would cost $80-90 million, expensive by gondola standards, and take approximately six years years to open.
A look at 15 possible alignments yielded two preferred alternatives. Most require an angle station in public right of way on the Virginia side of the Potomac at an added cost in the neighborhood of $7 million. Both of the above lines terminate adjacent to the Rosslyn Metro Station and the southeastern corner of the Georgetown U. campus. Towers in or adjacent to the river would be 130-150 tall to allow vessels to pass below and give riders a compelling view over the Key Bridge.
Community Open House Launches Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola Study
Washington, D.C. is inching closer to building the first urban transit gondola in the nation. A team of consultants let by ZGF Architects held an open house last week to update the public on the feasibility study underway for the Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola proposed to cross the Potomac River. ZGF, whose mission is to “create beautiful spaces that best serve people and the community,” was chosen this spring from eight teams who bid on the study. Local governments, Georgetown University and private-sector businesses have dedicated $190,000 to the project to date.
Jamie Bunch and Mike Deiparine from Engineering Specialties Group will provide technical ropeway expertise. Their company has vast experience consulting on projects such as the Telluride Mountain Village Gondola, Portland Aerial Tram, Roosevelt Island Tramway, Steamboat Silver Bullet Gondola and the Jackson Hole Tram Replacement. ZGF Architects and its partners will study the gondola’s possible routing and overall feasibility, releasing their findings this fall.
At the meeting, project staff presented a Gondola 101 primer and chronicled the rise of urban cable transport globally. The presentation even included pictures from my lift database! Slides were impressively researched and something I wish every American city-dweller could sit through – explaining angle stations, towers and cabin spacing in an easy to understand way. Staff detailed four case studies: the Portland Aerial Tram, Roosevelt Island Tramway, Emirates Air Line and South American systems in La Paz and Medellín. After the formal program, community members got to check out five stations with display boards and ask questions.
Lift Blog 