- The Jay Peak receiver hires an investment bank to market Vermont’s northernmost resort to potential buyers.
- Now flying at Copper Mountain: the world’s longest bubble chair. Down to five new ski lifts that have yet to open this season in the United States.
- The government shutdown coincides terribly with Hurricane Ridge’s ski season, which can’t start without funding for the National Park Service.
- Alpine Media Technology launches digital signage on lifts at Steamboat with more Alterra resorts to follow.
- Many North American resorts enjoyed a banner holiday week.
- Vail Resorts North American skier visits are up 16.9 percent through January 6th.
- Killington applies for permission to replace the North Ridge chairlift with a fixed grip quad.
- The BBC traces the global rise of urban gondolas.
- A Maine county joins the state in suing the owner of Big Squaw Mountain for failing to operate the resort, which once was the second largest in Vacationland.
- The Lift 1 Corridor Project heads to Aspen voters March 5th.
- Arizona Snowbowl closes Agassiz for a mid season gearbox replacement.
- Elk Ridge, Arizona won’t operate for the second season in a row, leaving just three ski areas in the state.
- Attitash’s Summit triple is still closed.
- So are two of Pajarito’s main lifts indefinitely.
- The 2018 Olympic Downhill venue – gondolas, high speed quads and all – may be returned to a natural state.
- Lawyers for The Hermitage Club seek more time to respond to a lawsuit filed by investors who helped purchase the Barnstormer bubble chairlift.
- Santo Domingo, the largest city in the Dominican Republic, solicits bids for its third and fourth urban gondola sections with hourly capacities of 6,000 and 4,500, respectively.
- Scott Pierpont retires as Vice President of Sales at Doppelmayr USA and is succeeded by Shawn Marquardt.
- Glenwood Caverns’ old gondola is already rising again in southern Illinois.
- Last month’s lift evacuation at Whitefish got worldwide media attention. The Flathead Beacon digs into why the mountain was so well prepared for the situation.
Hermitage Club
News Roundup: Tough Week
- The first lift-served bike park in Texas opens January 18th with a fixed-grip quad called the Texas Eagle.
- What was once the longest triple chair on the continent is officially off the Sunrise Park trail map.
- Pajarito does a rope evac of the Aspen lift on opening day.
- Simultaneously, Whitefish evacuates East Rim, which goes over quite the cliff.
- Breckenridge brings out the ropes for the Quicksilver Super6 the same day.
- Yet another lift is rope evacuated at Loch Lomond, Ontario.
- 39 lawsuits have been filed against The Hermitage Club and its founder to date.
- Attitash provides daily updates on Summit, which has been down a bunch lately.
- Hickory, NY won’t reopen this winter.
- Killington still plans to open the new South Ridge quad sometime this winter.
- Map master James Niehues gives up on retirement and is painting a new trail map for Mt. Bachelor.
- The planned race training T-Bar at Sunday River is a go for this summer.
- A teenager dies from a chairlift fall at Blue Mountain, PA.
- A lucky nine year old keeps on skiing after falling 40 feet from Solitude’s Moonbeam Express.
- A teen girl dies after jumping from a quad chair in Quebec.
- Greater Vancouver’s transit agency still wants to build a gondola up Burnaby Mountain but needs funding for it.
News Roundup: Urban Momentum
- Plans for a 3S gondola servicing Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles move ahead.
- A new gondola system ridership record is set: 406,459 passengers in a single day.
- Killington joins the bubble club with Snowdon Six Express.
- Fatzer says it has donated more than 180 miles of wire rope leftover from ropeways to build 600 bridges in developing countries.
- Ramcharger 8 flies tomorrow at Big Sky Resort.
- Accidents knock two gondolas out of commission at the same Austrian ski resort in the span of a week. One due to a fire and the other a pileup of cabins. The latter one is already back in service.
- Doppelmayr USA taps former New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority head Ted Blazer to lead the company’s urban ropeway push.
- Copper Mountain hopes to have the new American Flyer bubble lift operational by Christmas.
- There might be some news regarding the shuttered Hermitage Club early next week.
- Big White’s Powder 2.0 opens today.
- So does the big Blackcomb Gondola.
- More than 150 guests are evacuated from the Blue chairlift at Mt. Hood Meadows after multiple systems fail.
- Peak Resorts releases quarterly financial results including strong season pass sales figures.
- Timerline Four Seasons Resort keeps pushing back its opening day, now scheduled for December 21st. Yesterday its managing partner was arrested and charged with failing to remit hotel taxes.
- Work carriers are spotted traversing Walt Disney World.
News Roundup: Heavy Snow
- The world’s largest vertical tramway is expected to reopen in time for Christmas, just three months after one of its cabins was destroyed in an unfortunate accident.
- Peak Resorts completes its acquisition of Liberty Mountain, Roundtop and Whitetail in Pennsylvania.
- There was a bit of a setback before American Eagle’s load test on Monday but repairs are complete and the first of two new lifts at Copper opens Saturday.
- A pulse gondola could join the skyline in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
- Investors who helped the Hermitage Club buy its bubble lift file a lawsuit seeking $9.8 million.
- Did you know the Lone Peak Tram‘s bottom terminal is slowly moving downhill thanks to a rock glacier?
- The White River National Forest grants final approval for Beaver Creek’s McCoy Park expansion and preliminary approval of Aspen Mountain’s Pandora project.
- Plans for a new Oakland Athletics ballpark include a 6,000 passenger per hour gondola across Interstate 880.
- A proposed Portland Major League Baseball stadium also has a gondola component.
- As Utah weighs growth, Alta seeks to retain some of the land it owns in Grizzly Gulch, key to any future connection between the Cottonwood Canyons.
- Heavy snow delays completion of Ascutney Mountain’s T-Bar until next spring.
- Arapahoe Basin drops the ropes on 339 new lift-served acres.
News Roundup: Friday Night
- Disney unveils a Skyliner cabin and confirms there will be no air conditioning.
- Could Vail Resorts or Alterra buy Jay Peak?
- Friday, December 7th is the big day Vail announces first quarter earnings and capital expenditure plans for next year.
- The Hermitage Club might be loaned $25 to $30 million next week.
- Doppelmayr/Garaventa worldwide revenues grow 5.7 percent to $965 million for the 2017/18 fiscal year.
- American Eagle at Copper is beginning to look like a Telemix.
- My brother Ben Landsman and Tiffany Wilson are Lift Blog Southeast Asian correspondents this week. Check out their adventure on the world’s longest and fastest gondola earlier today.
News Roundup: Adding More
- The Forest Service tentatively approves Vail’s Golden Peak T-Bar project.
- US Representative from New York Patrick Maloney dreams up a gondola across the Hudson.
- Red Mountain seeks approval to build the Topping Creek lift.
- Apple Mountain, Michigan is no longer a ski area.
- The first rope evac of the season goes to Super Bee at Copper.
- Gore Mountain solicits bids to replace Sunway and High Peaks with fixed grip quads. That brings the Olympic Regional Development Authority to five potential lift projects for 2019!
- The Aspen City Council considers Aspen Mountain’s Telemix project again.
- The Jackson Town Council rejects Snow King Mountain’s proposed gondola alignment.
- Doppelmayr apologizes for a delay completing the new Blackcomb Gondola. The new Catskinner and Emerald Express lifts open Thursday and the gondola will be finished by December 14th.
- Calgary voters say no to hosting the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
- The world’s largest urban gondola network now transports 250,000 passengers every weekday with the most popular line doing a million passengers every 19 days.
- Alterra’s Ikon Pass now includes three resorts in New Zealand; Vail adds Les 3 Vallées, France and Skirama Dolomiti in Italy to the Epic Pass.
- Following a lift failure and other struggles, the owners of Timberline, West Virginia seek to recapitalize and restructure the business.
- Remember Gudauri, the Georgian ski resort which made global headlines last winter? It’s fixing the quad that rolled back and adding six more lifts.
- The Hermitage Club receiver will retain a single lift mechanic to maintain five chairlifts in mothballed status over the winter.
- The longest Skytrac to date is ready for winter in Washington State.
- Killington puts new Sigma cabins on the K-1 Gondola a few at a time.
- The Ramcharger 8 haul rope is spliced and chairs are in place at the summit of Andesite Mountain.
- Ski Blandford is officially back in business minus one chairlift.
News Roundup: A World Away
- As Vail Resorts shakes up management in the northeast, outgoing Mt. Sunapee GM Jay Gamble reflects on 20 years of growth including four new lifts and 110,000 annual skier visits.
- Vail also says goodbye to Sunapee’s Duckling double after 55 years.
- The owner of Mt. Washington, British Columbia; Ragged Mountain, New Hampshire; Wisp, Maryland and Wintergreen, Virginia takes over operations at Powderhorn, Colorado.
- Propelled by five major projects in Colorado, Leitner-Poma says 2018 is it biggest year ever in the United States.
- The $2 billion Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco, which features a short aerial tramway, is mired in problems unrelated to the lift.
- Construction begins in Switzerland for the world’s second longest 3S with the most towers – seven.
- With new six and eight passenger lifts, Big Sky Resort shifts away from the double/triple/quad lift lingo.
- Alterra names KSL veteran Adam Knox Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development to lead the company’s acquisitions and resort partnership group.
- Due to the amount of lift work needed after seven shuttered years, Cockaigne, NY won’t reopen this winter after all.
- One of the longest Riblets retired from Snowmass turns up in the Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was killed.
- A freshly cut lift line is spotted in the Spanish Peaks development adjacent to Big Sky Resort, probably for the planned Highlands chair.
- The Berkshire Eagle looks at Catamount’s $5 million fall.
- A judge quashes spending for lift maintenance at the Hermitage Club, which remains in foreclosure. A new lawsuit against the ski area alleges breach of contract and consumer fraud.
- Another aerial tramway cabin crashes in Europe, this time on the one year old Bartholet jigback Staubernbahn. No one was hurt as the cabin that hit the ground was empty.
- The Boston Globe talks with Mainers about a fourth winter without Saddleback.
- In New Zealand, The Remarkables is set to build the inaugural D-Line in the southern hemisphere and Coronet Peak announces a Leitner Telemix.
- The new Bretton Woods trail map indicates the gondola may not be called Presidential Bahn after all.
- As Copper Mountain and Leitner-Poma crews work hard to finish two big lifts, opening weekend shifts to Super Bee.
News Roundup: More Maps
- As Aspen Mountain considers a Telemix combination lift, the Aspen Daily News looks back at other unique lifts in Pitkin County history.
- Purden Ski Village in BC is for sale at $1.7 million USD ($2.2 million CAD). The area operates two doubles and a T-Bar, all built by Mueller.
- Snowbird’s Chickadee has a new tower that hangs from a bridge.
- The final Disney Skyliner towers rise from a lake and one station gets a mural.
- Peak Pass sales are pacing ahead of last year by 19 percent in units and 22 percent in dollars despite increased northeast competition from Vail and Alterra.
- The shut down Hermitage Club expects to close on $25-30 million in financing around Thanksgiving. One potential reopening complication: the chairlifts haven’t been touched by mechanics since March.
- A new trail map shows the locations of Killington’s three new lifts.
- Beech Mountain is rocking two new quad chairs this winter and an all new trail map.
- Taos has an updated map to go along with its high speed quad.
News Roundup: Decisions, Decisions
- With approvals inked, Steamboat considers whether to build a second gondola or the Pioneer Ridge expansion first.
- The Kohlmaisbahn in Saalbach, Austria becomes the first gondola spotted with Omega V cabins.
- The Hermitage may miss Christmas.
- Catch a glimpse of the new Winter Park gondola cabins. Killington too!
- The eight urban gondolas in La Paz transported a 318,532 riders last Wednesday – a crazy new single day record.
- Thanks to community support, Antelope Butte is poised to reopen with two chairlifts.
- After having its summer camp shut down by the state of New Hampshire, Granite Gorge likely won’t open for downhill skiing this winter.
- The ex-Gore Mountain employee who claimed he was left on a lift overnight last winter is convicted of making a false statement to police and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
- Mont Gleason, Quebec will build a fixed grip quad with loading carpet next summer.
- The Iron Mountain Tramway in Glenwood Springs is carrying its final riders next Sunday as Leitner-Poma mobilizes to build an improved gondola this winter.
- Thanks to Jared Emerson for taking me around the newest North American lift by LST Ropeways at Waterville Valley. She’s a beauty!
News Roundup: Down to the Wire
- Beaver Creek renames the Buckaroo Express gondola Haymeadow Express, the name of the double chair which ran in the same alignment from 1980 to 2007.
- Whether the Hermitage Club closes a $30 million loan to catch up on lift maintenance and operate this winter is still an open question.
- Arapahoe Basin and Leitner-Poma fly steel for the Beavers project.
- As of yesterday, Vail Resorts officially operates Okemo, Mt. Sunapee and Crested Butte.
- Vail reports fiscal 2018 resort EBITDA was $616.6 million, an increase of 3.9 percent over the prior year. 2018-19 season pass sales are up 25 percent in units and 15 percent in dollars as of Sunday.
- West Mountain adds a million dollar chairlift and looks to build another.
- A New York-based developer receives one of many approvals for Mayflower Village at Deer Valley, which could eventually mean a slate of new lifts.
- Doppelmayr is named in connection with an urban gondola eyed for Long Beach, California.
- Watch a remarkable 3S gondola launch live from Zermatt at 9:15 Eastern tomorrow morning, 6:15 Pacific.
- The CFO and COO of Peak Resorts open up about their decision to buy Snow Time and note the three new mountains don’t immediately need much capital investment.
- The longtime owners of Great Divide, Montana plan to sell to another couple next year.
- Legendary ski resort builder Les Otten remains committed to The Balsams but laments, “time is killing this project.”
- Mountain Capital Partners releases more details on the Spider Mountain Bike Park project.
- The damaged Zugspitze cabin is successfully lowered to the valley for disassembly. The cable car’s operator says damage exceeds $1.2 million and the lift could reopen by year end.
- Boreal names its new quad California Cruiser.
- The latest Leitner-Poma six-pack at Hunter Mountain, seen below, will be called Northern Express.
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