- SkyTrans Manufacturing announces the passing of its founder and president, Jerry Pendleton, who began his career with O.D. Hopkins in 1960.
- John Dalton’s tale of how two brand new lifts survived the Category 5 hurricane in St. Maarten is a must read.
- A dangling Mammoth Mountain guest escapes a fall from a chair unharmed; lifty who caught her isn’t as lucky.
- Snowbird’s in-house magazine demystifies how detachable lifts work with a sweet diagram from Doppelmayr and copy from a guy you might have heard of.
- Hatcher Pass, Alaska moves toward building a SkyTrans triple chair ASAP.
- Video of a swinging Austrian bubble chair with two skiers struggling to hang on goes viral worldwide.
- The Hermitage Club comes within days of having its water and sewer services shut off and is still working through other payables.
- A gondola cabin blew off an outdoor parking rail at Sunday River during last week’s storm and a slew of other lifts suffered damage but are now back in action.
- 9-year old unharmed after falling 15 feet from a lift at Boyce Park, PA.
- A three-station gondola is one of ten finalists for a signature attraction in Edmonton, Alberta. You can vote for it in an online public advisory poll.
- Fernie’s White Pass lift will be closed for awhile while new bullwheel bearings are sourced and installed.
- Powerful storm snaps a 30 mm wire rope on Mont Blanc’s iconic panoramic cable car, which was not operating and typically only runs in the summer.
- Granite Gorge’s sole chairlift has yet to open this season, apparently due to gearbox issues.
Hatcher Pass
Lift-Served Skiing Likely Coming to Hatcher Pass, Alaska
A group planning to open a rare new American ski area just got a big boost, securing $500,000 towards building chairlift number one yesterday. Despite encompassing 425 million acres and with more residents than Vermont and Wyoming, the great state of Alaska includes just five lift-served public ski mountains, three of which are in close proximity to Anchorage. The proposed Hatcher Alpine Xperience sits in the Mat-Su Valley, well north of the Alyeska, Hilltop and Arctic Valley ski areas, where locals have been dreaming of their own mountain for decades.
Not satisfied with dreaming, citizens formed a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 2015 and got to work. Already, they’ve completed a federal environmental impact statement, forged an agreement to operate within the Government Peak Recreation Area, cleared trails and built a maintenance facility. An access road, parking lot and utilities are also in place. This winter, trails will be groomed but without lift service. Hatcher Pass tentatively plans to acquire a used triple chair from SkyTrans next spring and install for a 2018-19 opening. Just today I learned Vail Resorts removed Chair 8 from Afton Alps, Minnesota over the summer – a 1969 Heron which was 1,280′ x 190′ – and might be the lift in question. It’s just a theory, but no other recently-removed triple chair matches the stats.
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