Brian Jorgenson of Timberline Helicopters flying towers for the Teton lift on July 28th, 2015.
Tower fly day number two for Jackson Hole’s Teton lift went smoothly with crews setting the remaining six towers in less than two hours. Some of the top and bottom terminal parts were also flown up the hill while the helicopter was here. With road access at both terminals, I don’t expect to see any more heli work on this project. Lower Valley Energy is currently running power to the top drive terminal site from Casper and the first lift cabin arrived from Doppelmayr. Footings for the bottom terminal are about halfway done. See below for more pictures of today’s flying.
Last night I heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter flying over my house. Around here it’s usually a search and rescue chopper but this time I looked out to see the double rotors of a Kaman K-Max. It’s the same helicopter that did the concrete footings for the Teton lift last week. Doppelmayr started flying towers early this morning and the crew worked their way down from the top, setting towers 15 through 5 before wind and snow shut them down around noon.
The K-Max can’t fly complete towers at 9,000 feet so the tubes, crossarms and sheave trains were flown separately. As the wind picked up, the pilot had to call it a day while working on tower 5 so it sits for now missing a crossarm. Tower 1 can be done with a crane when the lower terminal goes in so there are only a handful left to fly.
Vertical transport feet per hour (VTFH) is the best way to measure how lifts move people up mountains. VTFH combines hourly capacity and vertical rise into one number, usually measured in millions. Ski Area Management uses this metric each fall when they look at how good of a year it was for the lift-building business.
The second stage of Revelstoke’s Revelation Gondola has a VTFH of over 8 million, the highest in North America.
For a lift to score big it has to have a high hourly capacity (think lots of carriers, high speed) and large vertical rise (think big slope length with many towers.) The Jackson Hole tram has a huge vertical (over 4,000′) but very low capacity so its VTFH is only 2,654,600 – not even in the top 400. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola has a huge capacity but only rises 119 feet for a dismal VTFH of 243,950. There are 49 lifts in the US and Canada that move enough people high enough to achieve a VTFH over five million. Below are the top ten.
1. Revelation Gondola Stage II, Revelstoke Mountain Resort, British Columbia
2007 Leitner-Poma 8-passenger gondola
2,952′ vertical x 2,800 passengers per hour = 8,265,600 VTFH
2. Gold Coast Funitel, Squaw Valley, California
1998 Garaventa CTEC 28-passenger funitel
2,000′ vertical x 4,032 passengers per hour = 8,064,000 VTFH
3. Heavenly Gondola, Heavenly Mountain Resort, California
2000 Doppelmayr 8-passenger gondola
2,874′ vertical x 2,800 passengers per hour = 8,047,200 VTFH
4. Gondola One, Vail Mountain, Colorado
2012 Leitner-Poma 10-passenger gondola
1,996′ vertical x 3,600 passengers per hour = 7,185,600 VTFH
5. Centennial Express, Beaver Creek Resort, Colorado
2014 Doppelmayr 6/10 chondola combination lift
2,102′ vertical x 3,400 passengers per hour = 7,146,800 VTFH
Brian Jorgenson from Timberline Helicopters flies concrete for the new Teton Lift earlier this week.
It’s mid-July and construction is ramping up on the north side of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. A K-Max helicopter from Timberline Helicopters was on-site Sunday to fly concrete for the towers that couldn’t be accessed by road. The rest of the tower footings were already finished and back filled. Concrete work is also complete at the top terminal and steel will be going up shortly. The bottom terminal is a few weeks behind. Down in the parking lot, towers are mostly assembled and terminal components will be headed up the hill soon.
Tower heads are just missing sheaves. If a K-Max helicopter is used, sheave trains will be flown separately.Bottom terminal is still just a hole and tower one’s rebar cage is to the left.
Pomerelle Mountain near Twin Falls, Idaho announced they will replace their 39-year old SLI double chair with a new SkyTrac triple. This is SkyTrac’s only publicly announced project for this summer. Apparently they have another contract for a lift in Arizona. Leave a comment if you know where.
Saddleback, Maine has listed their Rangeley lift for sale for $350,000. They had previously listed just the drive terminal for $200k.
Sugarloaf removes the damaged drive terminal for the King Pine lift which rolled back in March to make way for a new Doppelmayr terminal.
Group wants to reopen Mt. Ascutney in Vermont. It’s tough to run a ski resort with no lifts, however. The mountain’s high speed quad was sold to Crotched Mountain and other lifts went to Pat’s Peak.
North America’s top ten longest lifts are all gondolas or aerial tramways and only half of them are directly used for skiing. Silver Mountain’s Gondola is number one although it is no longer the world’s longest. Since 2014, that title has belonged to the Bursa Uludag Gondola in Turkey which is a ridiculous 28,871 feet. This list does not include systems which have multiple haul ropes, such as Blackcomb’s Excalibur, which I consider to be two separate gondolas.
Silver Mountain’s VonRoll gondola was the world’s longest when it opened in 1990.
The view into Grand Teton National Park from the top of Jackson Hole’s new Teton lift.
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is celebrating its 50th anniversary in December which will coincide with the opening of new terrain and a shiny high speed quad called Teton. JHMR’s first Doppelmayr detachable will serve three new runs in the area formerly known as the Crags. This project is part of a major lift upgrade that included the new Casper detachable quad and will also include a second gondola.
Ready for a Uni-G terminal next to the Lower Werner run.
The new lift will serve approximately 1,800 vertical feet of terrain between the Casper and Apres Vous lifts. With a steep profile, Teton’s ride time will be under six minutes. Having four detachable quads on the north side of the mountain will hopefully take some pressure off the aerial tram.
Funny to see Doppelmayr staging next to a new Leitner-Poma terminal.
Park City and Jackson Hole just started building new lifts but trail map illustrator James Niehues is already finishing illustrations for their 2015-16 trail maps. Niehues planned to retire last year but apparently some projects are too good to pass up. There is no question Mr. Niehues is the best in the business and I hope he keeps painting as long as possible.
Jackson Hole’s new Teton lift will open up a handful of new trails in between the Apres Vous and Casper areas this coming winter. Mr. Niehues is repainting the portion of the map that was previously known as The Crags while the rest will remain true to his original 1991 painting.
Jackson Hole’s new map showing the Teton lift pod. Photo Credit: James Niehues
Vail Resorts contracted James to paint an all-new, unified map of Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons Resort which will operate as one from 2015-16. I was surprised and pleased to hear they were going with a painting instead of the awful computer-generated maps that Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Northstar have gone to. Niehues admits he had to get creative with portions of the map to show 37 lifts and 7,300 acres of terrain acres in one view. The final result below is impressive and shows why paintings make more compelling trail maps than satellite photos.
Illustration for the new Park City Mountain Resort. Photo Credit: James Niehues
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