- More new trail maps are out with new lifts on them: Brian Head, Jackson Hole, Montana Snowbowl, Schweitzer, Revelstoke and Windham.
- Sea to Sky Gondola turns its parking lot into a drive in theater while rebuild of the lift continues.
- “Boyne is looking at replacing a lot of lifts throughout the whole company and we’re on that list,” says Karl Strand of Sugarloaf in an annual fall update. His wish list includes replacing Timberline, Double Runner, Sawduster and West Mountain.
- Mike Solimano at Killington also has a lift replacement wish list for Powdr.
- Arapahoe Basin plans to replace both Pallavicini and Molly Hogan next summer.
- Sunrise Park says a replacement for the decommissioned Cyclone lift would cost more than $10 million but is a long term goal.
- Hunter will convert its D triple to a double with Partek chairs.
- The Forest Service tentatively approves Arizona Snowbowl’s proposed Agassiz Telemix project.
- An Orlando TV station plays some 911 calls from the night the Disney Skyliner broke down two weeks ago.
- Seven months after an announced sale of Granby Ranch, the ski area still hasn’t changed hands.
- Montana Snowbowl’s long-awaited expansion lift on TV Mountain will be called Snow Park and open in December.
- Sugar Mountain puts the finishing touches on its first high speed quad.
Granby Ranch
News Roundup: Dedication
- Stowe rope evacuates 160 people from the Lookout double.
- The New Hampshire Union Leader runs a well-researched story on lift evacuations.
- Doppelmayr Cable Car is the contracted maintenance provider for the Disney Skyliner and is now hiring for multiple positions.
- Two years after the death of Kelly Huber at Granby Ranch, changes are still being considered.
- The new lift to Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park will have a new name when it opens in March: Glenwood Gondola.
- Magic gains approval to build the Black Line quad lift.
- A proposed settlement could see the Hermitage Club parent company give control of the Barnstormer chairlift to the investors who bought it.
- Pajarito reopens one of two chairlifts which became inoperable over a month ago.
- A gondola window falls hundreds of feet and nearly injures a farmer working below in Taiwan.
- The one year old T-Bar at Burke Mountain is now the D-Bar, named in honor of longtime supporter Don Graham. Mr. Graham once saved the mountain from closure, covered years of operating losses and personally financed half of the Mid Burke Express.
News Roundup: On the Block
- Alterra’s David Perry says significant capital is likely be spent at Steamboat in 2018 and 2019 with phase two of the gondola rebuild and other big projects on the table.
- A Denver TV reporter heads to Texas for a two-part interview with the husband of Kelly Huber, the woman killed during a lift malfunction last year at Granby Ranch.
- Two loaded chairs collide at Owl’s Head, Quebec after the Green Chair was pressed into rare operation amid downtime on a neighboring high-speed quad. The 1972 Heron-Poma is the former Big Hitch lift from Stagecoach, Colorado.
- China Peak’s owner wishes he still had the $900,000 he spent to build a new lift last summer that can’t open with no snow.
- The new Peak triple was rope evac’d at Pats Peak last Monday, apparently due to a gearbox issue.
- Poma dedicates its newest factory in France.
- Disney Skyliner’s first tower is up and it’s tapered in the cool Wolfurt style.
- Ian Cumming, founder of Powdr and majority owner of Snowbird, dies at age 77.
- Granite Gorge’s chairlift opens for the season after a gearbox issue and other problems.
- Ariel Quiros officially settles with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $82 million, paving the way for the sale of Jay Peak and Burke Mountain.
- The world’s longest lift is open!
- Killington formally applies to replace the South Ridge triple with a quad chair, manufacturer unknown. The sample profile confusingly shows a Poma Alpha drive and Doppelmayr Eclipse return terminal.
- Teton Pass, Montana won’t reopen under current ownership and is up for sale.
- Skier visits have declined 30 percent in South Korea over the last five years and there are several lost ski resorts in the Olympic region.
- The Sawtooth National Forest tentatively approves Sun Valley’s project to replace the Cold Springs lift with a longer high-speed quad as soon as this summer.
- A chairlift will be studied studied for one of Alabama’s most popular state parks.
- Alterra names Mammoth veteran Rusty Gregory as the company’s first CEO.
News Roundup: Eruption
- Move over Epic Pass, Alterra is launching the Ikon Pass.
- Granby Ranch is officially listed for sale.
- Aspen CEO Mike Kaplan says snow challenges bring out the best in people.
- Think your area is busy on a Saturday? The urban gondola network in La Paz sets a new one day record: 278,621 riders!
- New York Governor calls previously announced state fair gondola “an exciting idea” but withholds funding for now.
- More stories surface of the Hermitage Club owing people money.
- Skier records volcano erupting from a Doppelmayr detachable in Japan. One person was killed and a gondola damaged by rockfall.
- ORDA, the state owner of Belleayre, Gore Mountain and Whiteface, lost $20.8 million last year.
- Powder catches up with Alterra President and COO David Perry, who stresses the company will do things differently than Vail.
- Public comment period opens for Mt. Rose’s Atoma expansion, which would include construction of one or two new chairlifts as early as 2019.
- The draft environmental impact statement is also out for Steamboat’s expansion, to include a second gondola, Rough Rider chairlift, new Bashor lift and Pioneer Ridge pod with groundbreaking possible by May.
- Lake Louise and Nakiska are probable venues for a possible 2026 Calgary Olympics. Denver, Reno-Tahoe and Salt Lake also weigh bids.
- Just upgrading electric infrastructure for Disney’s Skyliner gondola system will cost $3.8 million, around the total price tag of a typical ski lift project!
- For the first time since I started keeping track, 2018 new lifts are pacing behind 2017.
News Roundup: Lost
- Tussey Mountain thinks weakened spring packs caused last weekend’s lift incident and plans to reopen Saturday.
- As many speculated it would, Vail is taking a wait and see approach to capital improvements at Stowe.
- A lawsuit is filed against Granby Ranch one year after a fatal lift accident there.
- Billionaire philanthropist Barry Diller considers gifting a $30 million gondola to the people of Los Angeles, which would travel over 2.2 miles of parkland from the city’s zoo to the Hollywood sign.
- One Hall double at the defunct Big Tupper ski area will reopen next winter, with another needing extensive work before it can spin.
- A report suggests Sunrise Park mechanic Reggie Antonio lost his life when the lift he was working on moved while he was in a work chair but still attached to a tower.
- Proposed urban gondolas find friends and foes in San Diego.
- LiftDigital safety bar screens go live on five chairs at Winter Park.
- Garaventa completes the world’s steepest funicular railway in Switzerland.
- New owner of Mt. Whittier, NH weighs the future of a lost ski area with a 1963 Mueller gondola that still stands adjacent to a McDonald’s drive through.
News Roundup: High Level
- The Denver Post talks details with Dave Perry, head of the new KSL-Crown Family resort company.
- James Coleman is buying Elk Ridge, Arizona and plans to build a chairlift.
- Nonprofit operator of Cape Smokey in Nova Scotia seeks private investor to revive a mothballed 1995 quad chair.
- T-Bar mania continues in New England as Ascutney proposes installing a 2,500′ Doppelmayr from Le Relais.
- Man falls from the Black Mountain Express on Arapahoe Basin’s opening day.
- Tram board finds insufficient evidence to act against Granby Ranch for allegedly leaving a child on a chairlift years ago.
- Granby also moves forward with replacing Quickdraw’s drive.
- Eldora takes local media on a tour of Alpenglow.
- Sometime after I took pictures of the Basin quad at White Pass, a wacky offset half tower was added.
- Groundbreaking at The Balsams is delayed yet again.
- The private owner of the former High Pond Ski Area in Vermont is installing a new Leitner-Poma T-Bar on the site.
- In a podcast interview, chief of Canada’s third largest transit agency says high-level talks are underway toward building the Burnaby Mountain Gondola.
- Purgatory seeks approval to build a 4,200′ lift called Gelande to the south of Needles next summer.
News Roundup: Retirements
- Telluride weighs building at least one big detachable next summer as the Forest Service tentatively approves replacements for Plunge, Sunshine Express and Village Express.
- White Pass, WA retires its platter in favor of a 380’ carpet.
- LiftDigital goes live for testing at Winter Park.
- Taos says goodbye to two more chairlifts – that’s four in one summer!
- Song Mountain, NY is replacing its 1965 Thunderbird T-Bar with a chairlift.
Anyone know where it’s from? - The Rainforest Adventures crew gets one Skytrac back in action and works to repair the other following Irma’s devastation of St. Maarten.
- Scroll through these photos of a new high-speed quad in Switzerland with four stations, three sections, two haul ropes and only one drive!
- Albany gondola group to be led by former chief executive of the New York State Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration Thomas Madison, Jr.
- Authorities briefly seize Granby Ranch, site of last season’s fatal lift incident, over delinquent taxes.
- Spout Springs in Oregon won’t open for a second year in a row and remains for sale.
- Mi Teleférico’s Orange Line did 93,847 riders its first weekend.
- Frank F. sent over these photos of the new Skytrac Buttercup Quad going in at Mt. Hood Meadows:
Granby Ranch Investigation Report Released

The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board released its 151-page final report on last December’s fatal accident at Granby Ranch this afternoon. The investigative team included seven professional engineers with more than 250 years of combined lift experience with support from Leitner-Poma and Granby Ranch personnel, among others. The team conducted extensive tests on the Quickdraw lift from the afternoon of the accident through January 5th and spent months writing this detailed analysis, identifying contributing factors and making recommendations for changes. Appendices include witness statements, photographs and prior inspection reports but the core of the document is 13 pages which everyone who works on ski lifts should read. I’ve done my best to summarize below.
Chair 58 contacted tower 5 at a 40-degree angle that morning due to two contributing factors. The first was the tuning of a new drive installed last Fall by an independent contractor. Two specific parameters may have created pulses of energy and rope instability, the report notes. “It is probable that the combined effect of [these two settings] may have resulted in the drive trying to respond too aggressively to lift demands when changing from ‘Fast’ to ‘Slow’ and back to ‘Fast’ again.” The second contributing factor was the influence of one or more speed changes leading up to the incident.
Other potential contributing factors were:
- Control system complexity resulting from the new ABB DCS800 drive’s interface with older Pilz/Leitner low-voltage controls.
- A control board replacement from February 2016.
- Possible damage to the electric motor encoder.
- Unknown electrical cycle shown in data logs that had occurred at a 3.7 second interval over the entire life of the lift.
- Tension factor(s) that would require more testing to determine.
- Natural instability of the profile. “There appears to have been a very unique combination of rope tension, carrier spacing, tower spans, tower height, carrier loading and natural carrier movement that led to the transverse carrier swing that resulted in Carrier 58 hitting Tower 5,” the document states.
- Natural harmonic response of the haul rope.
Wind was not found to be an outside influence, nor was passenger conduct. “The incident that occurred on December 29th, 2016 at Granby Ranch was unprecedented,” the investigative team wrote. “Although many factors may have combined to amplify the effect of the rope instability leading to Carrier 58 colliding with Tower 5, the performance of the new drive is considered to be the primary cause of the incident.” The report explains electronic drives such as the DCS800 added to Quickdraw last year and used on many lifts are also used in a wide variety of other applications. The tuning and “fine-tuning” of a drive is complex and unique to each application and lift. “It appears the new drive was not comprehensively tuned to this particular lift during installation,” the document says.
News Roundup: Pass Wars
- The latest Wir highlights Doppelmayr Connect, various drive concepts and the Sweetwater Gondola.
- U.S. skier visits climbed 3.7 percent last season to 54.7 million. 479 ski areas operated in 2016-17, up from 464.
- Silverton Mountain is not a fan of the Epic Pass.
- Royal Gorge Bridge & Park considers chairlift down to the Arkansas River.
- Intrawest re-invested 8 percent of revenues at its resorts between 2013 and 2017 (compared with 11 percent across Vail Resorts.) The company had 173 interested buyers, 16 of which were ski industry players.
- Early summer update from the Magic Mountain rebirth and Green Chair project.
- Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group buys Frey AG Stans, a leading global provider of ropeway control systems.
- Lifts from the defunct Talisman Mountain Resort have been sold; one is headed to Sunridge, Alberta.
- Granby Ranch investigation update.
- LA mayor suggests gondola to the Hollywood sign from Universal Studios.
- Ghost Town in Maggie Valley, NC goes up for sale, including Carlevaro-Savio chairlift that last operated in 2012.
- Nonprofit nearing purchase of Frost Fire, ND, hopes to repair two chairlifts and reopen skiing next winter.
- Government considers building world’s longest gondola into the world’s largest cave in Vietnam.
- Here’s a recap of what we missed at Interalpin.
- Lutsen Mountains’ six-lift expansion plan moves forward.
- The Denver Post reports a joint Aspen/Intrawest/KSL/Mammoth pass is in the works for 2018-19, meaning the Mountain Collective could lose seven members and 43 percent of its lifts. The MAX Pass might fare better, losing the six Intrawest resorts and 85 lifts (20 percent.) I chart one scenario below.
News Roundup: Setbacks
- Oakland Zoo’s California Trail gets North America’s first safari-style Omega cabins.
- Vail purchase could mean replacements for Toll House, Lookout and Mountain at Stowe.
- Denver station reports new complaint filed against Ski Granby Ranch last week, though details are sparse.
- Hesperus Ski Area voluntarily closes, possibly for the season following unannounced visit by Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board inspectors. Hesperus similarly closed for a season in the mid-1990s after being found to be running the same lift without an operator.
- Cherry Peak finally opens Sundays, still has not completed promised Summit lift.
- Setbacks pile up for the Grand Canyon Escalade.
- Emirates Air Line ranked highest in customer satisfaction among Transport for London modes and is the only one to turn a profit.
- Sweden once had a material cableway that stretched 26 miles.
- Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows, taking a beating on social media, explains why the Headwall lift has been closed all but 16 days so far this year.
- Mexican city of Zacatecas seeks to re-hang its old tramway cabins, further delay execution of its contract with Poma for a new gondola system.
- Urban gondola story makes the front page of the Seattle Times.
- The new urban aerial tram in Brest, France is a hit, seeing 6,000 rider days.
- Whistler Blackcomb’s Master Development Agreements renewed and Master Plan approved.
- Suit seeks at least $75,000 from Sugar Mountain, where a teenager apparently went around a bullwheel at closing time, became stranded and jumped from a chair overnight last season. edit: Resort says rescuers were close by when teen jumped.
- The Georgetown-Rosslyn Gondola idea lives to fight another day.
- Outside profiles James Coleman and his commitment to improving the ski experience at five Southwestern resorts.
- Snow King Mountain abandons plans for East side lift, will try for backside lift instead.
