Leitner-Poma

New England Gets a Lift: Suicide Six to Build New Quad Chair

Peter LandsmanLeave a comment

Vermont’s Woodstock Inn & Resort unveiled plans Thursday for a new quad chairlift at its Suicide Six Ski Area.  Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but it marks the first (and possibly only) major lift project in the Northeast United States for 2016.  Over the last ten seasons, Northeastern ski resorts have built an average of ten new lifts each year, testament to this year’s huge departure from normal in the wake of a rough winter.

Suicide 6 Trail Map 2016.jpg
Suicide Six is replacing the longer of its two chairlifts.

The new Lift #1 will replace a 1975 Borvig double and be built by Leitner-Poma of America.  The Laurance S. Rockefeller Fund will foot the bill for the $1.5 million project.  The Rockefeller Family’s RockResorts once owned Suicide Six and the Woodstock Inn and spun them off as the nonprofit Woodstock Foundation in the 1980s.  Vail Resorts bought RockResorts in 2001.

The 2000′ Borvig double chair being replaced closed in February after the ski area found tower cracks following the Timberline, WV crossarm failure.  Although the two lifts’ towers were of different design, the State of Vermont ordered inspections of all Borvig-brand lifts.  The new quad will be Suicide Six’s first new lift since Poma built the 1,600′ chairlift way back in 1978.  The mountain first opened for skiing in 1936 and currently has two double chairs, a J-Bar and 24 trails.

Woodstock President and General Manager Gary Thulander said in a news release, “We recognized the need to upgrade this chairlift as part of the long-term support of the regional ski community including local schools, season pass holders, the Woodstock Ski Runners program, and visiting skiers.  Increased chair capacity means a dramatic upgrade to the overall experience of the mountain by all levels of skiers, racers and snowboarders.” Removal of the old chair is already underway.

Out with the old. Photo credit: Green Mountain Control Systems.
Out with the old Borvig. Photo credit: Green Mountain Control Systems.

This is Leitner-Poma’s eighth new lift project for 2016, up from seven last year.  With this news from Suicide Six and other recent announcements, the total new lift count for North America stands at 39, up 11 percent from last summer’s 35.

News Roundup: Six-Packs

Peter Landsman6 Comments
IMG_20160607_121048078
Into the air at Caberfae Peaks, Michigan. Thanks to Lawrence W. for the photo.

Five Challenges Facing Chicago’s Skyline

Peter Landsman2 Comments

David-Brody-Bond-3

Chicago doesn’t have an iconic tourist attraction.  There’s no giant Ferris wheel, no observation tower, no famous bridge.  Entrepreneurs Lou Raizin and Laurence Geller want to change that with a gondola.  Over the past four years, the men studied more than fifty signature attractions in cities around the globe and came up with the Skyline as an iconic attraction for the Windy City.  As presented to the City Club of Chicago on May 3rd, the plan includes a gondola from Navy Pier with multiple stops along the Chicago Riverfront. David Marks, the architect behind the London Eye, collaborated on the innovative design with New York-based Davis Brody Bond.  Marks also designed the British Airways i360 observation tower with a passenger capsule built by Poma and Sigma.  The Skyline project would likely bring together the same team from the Eye and i360 with engineering firm Jacobs Inc. and ropeway technology from Leitner-Poma.

Mr. Raizin and Mr. Geller say they’ve spent millions designing and studying the Skyline, which will cost an estimated $250 million raised from private investors.  The premise is sound but the proposal comes with significant challenges.

1. What is it?

“This is not your typical aerial gondola,” Mr. Geller told the City Club.  The system would transport 3,000 visitors per hour at 800 feet a minute.  That’s pretty standard for a monocable gondola.  The challenge is architects want big, beautiful cabins while also keeping a “light footprint” for the system.  Renderings show approximately 25-passenger cabins with only one haul rope and no grips.  To date, the largest monocable gondolas in the world carry 15 passengers, not 25.  Larger cabins require track ropes, bigger terminals and complex towers with saddles.

leadimage-42-

Continue reading →

Cascade Mountain Announces $9 Million Expansion with 2 New Lifts

Peter Landsman3 Comments

Cascade Mountain will get two new Leitner-Poma quad chairs this summer with more new lifts on the way, the resort announced today.  This summer’s $9 million slate of improvements includes a high speed quad replacement for the Cindy Pop chair, a new quad serving seven new trails, an expanded base lodge and snowmaking improvements.

13227602_10153593185252066_3214904904923624717_o

Cascade Mountain became the first ski area in Wisconsin with a high-speed lift back in 1998 and has eight lifts including three quad chairs.  The new Cindy Pop Express will be nearly twice as long as the 1991 Borvig quad chair it replaces and will move 2,400 skiers per hour.  The new “Lift C” will be a fixed-grip quad east of the current ski area serving new terrain.  Cascade owners Rob and Vicki Walz are excited to move forward with the expansion that’s been years in the making. “My dad always envisioned using the far east side of Cascade for an expansion and he started cutting trails many years ago.  The time has come to reach the next level for Cascade. Our customers will appreciate the new intermediate trails which are longer than what we have on the west side,” commented Rob Walz in the announcement on the resort’s website.

13198446_10153592813382066_5000212663733088283_o.jpg
The Cindy Pop Borvig comes down to make way for a Leitner-Poma detachable quad.  Photo credit: Cascade Mountain
Work has already begun in preparation for the new lifts.  Cascade has plans for two additional chairlifts to be added in upcoming years which would bring the ski area up to 11 lifts and 55 trails.  Congratulations to everyone at Cascade Mountain and Leitner-Poma on this exciting news!

In His Own Words: Carl Skylling of Skytrac on the Leitner-Poma Acquisition

Peter Landsman9 Comments

Last week on my way home from the Rocky Mountain Lift Association conference, I stopped by Skytrac headquarters to sit down with Carl Skylling, General Manager of the company that’s shaken up the lift-building industry in North America over the past eight years.  If you hadn’t heard, Leitner-Poma bought Skytrac two weeks ago in a move that surprised many.  Carl is an industry veteran who worked his way up through Garaventa CTEC, Doppelmayr CTEC and Skytrac in construction, operations and management positions.  In addition to kindly agreeing to be interviewed, Carl introduced me to some of the hard-working men and women who design and build Skytrac lifts in Salt Lake City.

Team-Sky-Trac-0106169-1

Peter: How did you get started with SkyTrac?

Carl: I started out with Garaventa CTEC and then got pulled into the merger with Garaventa and Doppelmayr, becoming Doppelmayr CTEC.  Jan Leonard had stepped down in 2008 and by 2010 I was Vice President of Operations but getting restless to do something different.

I approached these guys with a concept I had to continue this whole idea of doing service work and modification work because I saw that there was a big niche in the market that was missing there.   So I approached Dave Metivier and Alan Hepner, and about the same time Jan Leonard was also getting interested in finding a way to take care of his former customer base by supporting them with service and parts.  So there was this huge potential market to make all those parts.

One thing kind of led to another between [Jan] and I approaching our partners, Dave and Alan, who were running Hilltrac and Skytrac at the time.  We ended up taking this Skytrac concept to the point where, with the four of us, we realized why stop with parts?  Why not do a design of our own.  SkyTrac started in 2008 doing some engineering/modification work with Dave and Alan but we really, in 2010, took it to the next level.

IMG_9905
This lift bound for a fairgrounds in Sacramento won’t have Skytrac’s typical Monarch terminal but rather a simpler metal enclosure.  Skytrac prides itself on meeting the needs of its customers in the legacy of Jan Leonard.

Continue reading →

New Book Chronicles 80 Years of Innovation at Poma

Peter Landsman15 Comments
IMG_9929
“This work is dedicated to the men and women who have been part of Poma’s innovative and epic journey. It is for our clients and partners who have placed their trust in Poma throughout the world – whether up in the mountains or in the heart of cities.”

The above dedication sits on the first page of a new book celebrating eighty years of commercial success called Poma: 80 Years of Ropeways from Mountains to Cities.  The 190-page work, written by Béatrice Méténier and Christian Bouvier, looks back at the firm’s more than 8,000 ropeway installations from the mountains of France to Colorado, South America and beyond.

A skier at heart, Jean Pomagalski installed his first surface lift in 1934 at Alpe d’Huez. He constructed it mostly out of wood and with a used Ford motor.  After building three additional tows, Mr. Pomagalski had himself a company and filed a patent in 1936 for a “carrying device hauled by a rope moving at a constant speed.” After a break for Wold War II, Pomagalski S.A. grew to 15 employees by 1953.  Even so, Mr. Pomagalski still found himself simultaneously a salesman, surveyor, designer and builder of lifts that were sent off as kits for installation by customers. The company’s first chairlift, a single-seater, debuted in 1955 near Chamonix.

IMG_4080
Workers assembled, then disassembled early fixed-grip chairlifts in Poma’s French workshops before sending them to the field as seen in this 1963 photo.

By 1958, Pomagalski was selling 120 lifts a year, many of them to customers in the United States and Canada.   Mr. Pomagalski decided to drop the latter part of his name from the company’s in 1965 to better appeal to English-speaking clients.  Poma delivered its first gondola systems simultaneously in 1966 at Queenstown, New Zealand and Val d’Isère, France. A small new company called Sigma Plastiques provided the egg-shaped cabins.  Poma trusted Sigma again the next year for the world’s first gondola with automatic doors and the rest is history.

Continue reading →

Big News! Leitner-Poma Acquires Skytrac

Peter Landsman17 Comments

Leitner-Poma acquired Skytrac this week in a deal revealed today.  Even more exciting is Skytrac will continue to operate as a subsidiary brand of the Leitner-Poma Group.  “We would like to welcome Skytrac to our family,” said Anton Seeber, CEO of the European parent company of both Leitner and Poma. “Like Leitner-Poma, Skytrac also will be managed autonomously and independently to make sure the Skytrac team can focus on its strengths and hone its skills, all while having access to the Group’s resources to be able to benefit from particular synergies.”  Leitner and Poma have experience operating in Europe as separate brands while sharing technology such as the latest-generation LPA detachable grip.

IMG_3848
SkyTrac made a name for itself providing smaller resorts like Pomerelle in Idaho with modern lift systems like this one.

Jan Leonard and other former CTEC employees started Skytrac in 2010 to fill a niche retrofitting older lifts and building economical fixed-grip lifts in Salt Lake City.  The company has built 19 complete lift systems to date, mostly at small-to-medium sized ski areas from Washington to Massachusetts.  Skytrac had its best year in 2014, building as many new lifts as both Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr that year.  In addition to building complete lifts, Skytrac also specializes in outfitting older lifts with new terminals and control systems.

Continue reading →

Arizona Snowbowl & Purgatory Announce New Lifts

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Fresh on the heels of adding three lifts at his collective of Southwestern resorts last summer, James Coleman revealed today he will invest another $10 million to build new lifts and more at Arizona Snowbowl and Purgatory in 2016.

2016-17 New Chairlift_bold_0

The Leitner-Poma-built Grand Canyon Express will serve 85 percent of Arizona Snowbowl’s terrain with a 5.8 minute lift ride.  It will run approximately 5,500′ (1,530 vertical feet) in a new alignment starting near the Hart Prarie Lodge and topping out at 10,900′ in elevation near the Agassiz mid-station.  This is the second new chairlift at Arizona Snowbowl following last summer’s Humphreys Peak addition that expanded the mountain’s intermediate terrain with a SkyTrac quad.  The Sunset triple (a 1983 CTEC) will likely be removed and may be used to replace the Aspen double in the future. Arizona Snowbowl’s master plan also calls for a second detachable lift to replace the Hart Prarie double. Exciting times at a mountain whose very survival was questionable a few years ago!

In Colorado, Purgatory Resort will get a new two-way surface lift called T-3 to link the bottom terminals of backside lifts 5 and 8.  The latter is a 1980 Riblet double, the former a 2015 Leitner-Poma high speed quad. Purgatory plans to add a similar connection between lifts 3 and 5 and replace more of the resort’s aging fixed-grip chairlifts (namely #2, 4 and 5) in upcoming years.

Mr. Coleman is the Durango-based businessman who’s owned Sipapu since 2000 and took over operations at Pajarito, Purgatory and Arizona Snowbowl in 2014.  When the Durango Herald asked last year whether he was done buying ski areas, Coleman replied “no.”  That’s great news considering his willingness to invest in capital improvements to the tune of $20 million thus far.

Squaw-Alpine Applies to Build Base-to-Base Gondola(s)

Peter Landsman4 Comments
ImageUploadedByTGR Forums1450406020.299083
8-Passenger Sigma Diamond demo cabin in Squaw Valley’s shop.  Source

Earlier this fall, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings submitted its formal application to the Placer County Planning Department to build the three-stage gondola connecting Squaw Valley with Alpine Meadows that was first announced last spring.  Leitner-Poma will design the system on the heels of completing Squaw’s Big Blue and Siberia six-packs.  LPOA has lots of experience building detachable lifts with angle stations including similar three-section gondolas at Breckenridge and Sunshine Village.

The Squaw-Alpine gondola will be around 13,000 feet long with 37 towers and two ridge-top angle stations.  The unique system will have three haul ropes but only two drives located at the end stations (Breck and Sunshine’s gondolas have just one rope & drive each.)  In this sense, the base-to-base gondola is really two gondolas similar to Whistler Village and Revelstoke. What’s different at Squaw is the center section will operate with the Alpine drive by sharing a common bullwheel where the sections meet.  As such, the Squaw section could be run independently but the other two spans must operate together.  Regardless, cabins will normally make the entire trip from Squaw to Alpine.  The gondola’s hourly capacity will be 1,400 passengers per direction with 8-passenger cabins and a line speed of 1,000 fpm.  Squaw also plans full-speed operations during a power outage with generators at each drive station.

gondolamap
Updated map with some changes from the original alignment.

The north mid-station on the Squaw side will be sited on private lands near the summit of the KT-22 detachable quad while the south mid-station will be in the Tahoe National Forest within Alpine’s existing permit boundary.  Skiers will be able to access some pretty awesome terrain from both mid-stations when conditions allow.  The Squaw Village terminal will sit between KT-22 and the Squaw One Express while the Alpine terminal will be between the Roundhouse Express and Hot Wheels. The gondola will actually fly over Alpine’s base lodge and under Squaw’s Funitel.  One interesting point from the application is that the Alpine mid-station at just over 7,700 feet in elevation will have no permanent road access or power line to it, which is part of why the central section has no drive motor of its own.  The terminal control systems, lights, etc. will run off a line generator and diesel genset.

Continue reading →

News Roundup: 115.4 mph

Peter LandsmanLeave a comment

1516_StarBlog

  • Mt. Hood Meadows updates skiers on the windstorm that sent two hundred-foot hemlock trees onto the Shooting Star Express the night of November 17th.
  • Vail Resorts announces $100 million in capital improvements across its mountains for 2016/17 including replacement of the last major fixed-grip lift on Vail Mountain.  The new Sun Up Lift #17 will be a detachable quad, manufacturer unknown.
  • SkyTrac splices the Humphrey’s Peak Quad at Arizona Snowbowl.
  • The latest from Sugarloaf on the new King Pine.  An apparent Doppelmayr delay will push opening until late-December. Luckily (or unluckily) there’s no snow anyways.
  • Utah’s new ski resort, Cherry Peak, announces a December 21st debut with two lifts.
  • Doppelmayr’s 10th  3S gondola, the Penkenbahn, is ready to go.
  • A nonprofit ski area in Ontario that’s been unable to operate its quad chair since 2011 due to a 2006 Doppelmayr service bulletin hopes to crowdfund $80,000 for repairs.
  • West Mountain celebrates their new lift with fireworks rather than skiing and already has the drive terminal up for another new-used lift next summer.