- On an all-star podcast with Katharina Schmitz and Mark Bee, Stephen Kircher discusses more new lifts coming to Boyne Resorts and the two companies’ shared history.
- Leitner-Poma forecasts another busy year of building lifts in Grand Junction despite high material and shipping costs.
- 2022 will be the busiest year ever for Doppelmayr USA with 25 installations including 6 D-Line detachables.
- Mt. Rose launches a page dedicated to Lakeview Express updates.
- A €100 million 2S gondola project in France is cancelled due to rising costs.
- The Matterhorn Alpine Crossing 3S will open one year from now.
- Canadian and Quebec governments will spend CA$400,000 to modernize the world’s first six passenger chairlift.
- At a Palisades Tahoe town hall, leaders discuss on this summer’s $60 million capital infusion and Alterra’s plan to spend $150 million over the next 2-4 years.
- Solitude commits to replacing Eagle Express in 2023; will look at upgrading Link and adding a Moonbeam-Roundhouse-Powderhorn gondola after that.
- Following last weekend’s mishap, Doppelmayr and Snowbird now plan to reopen the tram in mid-July with one new cabin and one old cabin on the line but not carrying passengers.
- Big Sky and Garaventa break ground on America’s first new large tramway since 2008.
- As real estate sales begin, more detailed maps emerge from Mayflower Mountain Resort.
- Michigan considers returning a second chairlift to Porcupine Mountains State Park.
- The appeal pausing Park City’s lift projects will be heard next week.
Leitner-Poma
News Roundup: Best Ever
- The Bud Light Seltzer SkyView gondola at Hard Rock Stadium becomes the Heineken High Line for the Miami Grand Prix.
- A chairlift which rotates between two fairs in California and one in Arizona now also goes to Texas.
- Granite Gorge is scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure auction next month.
- A Swiss paper interviews Roland Bartholet about his company being acquired by HTI. The brand will remain separate from Leitner and Poma, will focus on new products and help the group compete with Doppelmayr Garaventa.
- Indy Pass signs six more resorts as affiliate partners; redemptions totaled 125,000 this season.
- Gore Mountain signs with Leitner-Poma for the North Creek Ski Bowl detachable.
- Doppelmayr proposes a $200 million urban gondola system in Auckland, New Zealand.
- Bottineau Winter Park fundraises for a new T-Bar.
- Friends of the Tulsa Skyride say the only lift in Oklahoma may be removed in the next few weeks.
- The United States sets an all-time skier visit record – 61 million – with 11 more ski areas operating than last season.
- NSAA says offseason capital improvements will also set a record this year at $728 million.
- A big urban 3S opens in France.
- Doppelmayr’s latest Bike Clip carriers will make their North American debut at Loon Mountain.
- Mt. Rose’s first high speed quad will be called the
Tahoe Express. Update: Lakeview Express - A tram breakdown makes the news in Palm Springs.
News Roundup: All Over
- The Disney Skyliner suffers a minor breakdown.
- Construction resumes on the first MND/Bartholet detachable in the Americas.
- Two are dead following a collision and multi-day helicopter evacuation of a sightseeing gondola in India.
- Park City needs more time to present its upcoming lift projects at a public hearing.
- Issues with multiple lifts spell the end of Marble Mountain’s season.
- I recently joined the Powder Hounds Ski Trivia Podcast to talk lifts.
- Sunlight purchases Arapahoe Basin’s Lenawee Mountain triple to replace Segundo; Primo will be next.
- The name for Grand Targhee’s new lift on Peaked Mountain will be Colter.
- Paris selects a cabin design for its upcoming urban gondola system.
- Juneau moves ahead with purchasing a used Austrian gondola.
- A construction update on SkyLand Ranch, Tennessee, which will include a SkyTrans combination lift.
- Vail Resorts bags summer operations at Attitash to focus on lift maintenance and construction.
- Sugarloaf details plans for two new lifts over the next two summers.
- Leitner-Poma of America launches a new website.
- Big Sky profiles the maintenance manager of one of America’s largest lift fleets.
- Sunshine Village posts fun facts about its chairlift system.
- Former Jay Peak head Bill Stenger is sentenced to 18 months in prison for the fraud scheme involving the mountain and a biomedical research facility.
- A publicly-funded study says a gondola would be the best option for sightseeing above Butte, Montana.
- Cuchara looks to reopen one chairlift this summer.
- A tram or gondola is considered for Half Moon Bay, California.
- One of the Roosevelt Island Tramway‘s stations will receive a $7 million renovation.
New Six Packs Coming to Blue Mountain and Camelback
A report by Ski Area Management reveals new six place chairlifts will be installed at both Camelback Resort and Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania this summer. The resorts share common ownership and are located within an hour of each other in the Pocono Mountains, though the lifts will be built by different manufacturers.
At Camelback, Doppelmayr will replace the aging Sullivan Express with a bubble lift named Black Bear 6. The existing high speed quad was the site of a tragic accident a year ago which injured three guests. Black Bear will feature a 667 foot vertical rise, 3,000 passenger per hour capacity and indoor parking for its 50 chairs.
Blue Mountain’s new six pack will replace the Main Street and Burma doubles but start lower on the mountain than the existing lifts. The Leitner-Poma machine will rise 980 vertical feet in under five minutes. “The new lift aims to improve connectivity between Valley Lodge at the base and the Summit Lodge, as well as access to terrain on the western part of the mountain,” reported SAM. The lift will spin at 1,000 feet per minute with 80 carriers.
Both projects are expected to begin construction this month and open for the 2022-23 ski season.
Jackson Hole’s Thunder Quad to Go High Speed
A detachable chairlift is coming to the upper mountain at Jackson Hole for the first time. The Leitner-Poma high speed quad will replace the Thunder fixed grip quad, a favorite with Teton Village skiers since 1994. Thunder 3.0 will feature 90 degree loading to the north and 90 degree unloading to the south for improved skier circulation.
Ride time on the 1,454 vertical foot lift will be reduced from seven minutes to three and a half with a line speed of 1,000 feet per minute. “The Thunder lift has been the most popular lift on the upper mountain, and it delivers access to some of the legendary terrain JHMR is known for,” said Jackson Hole Mountain Resort President Mary Kate Buckley in an announcement. “The new Thunder lift will dramatically cut down on skiers’ and snowboarders’ time spent waiting in line and on the lift.”
Fans of the current Thunder will be happy to learn it will spin on at a resort in California. Construction on the Thunder detachable will begin in May with completion scheduled for October.
Photo Tour: Palisades Tahoe Base to Base Gondola
More than just a new name and logo dot the landscape at Palisades Tahoe this season. Whether starting a ski day in Olympic Valley or at Alpine Meadows, it’s impossible to miss dozens of newly-standing towers for the upcoming Base to Base Gondola. Leitner-Poma accomplished an incredible amount of work last offseason, completing four sets of terminal foundations and 33 towers for the $65 million project. Two haul rope spools sit 2.2 miles apart ready for construction to resume this spring.
Alterra and Palisades have been amazingly restrained marketing what will be a truly iconic lift. As of yesterday, no signs indicate what’s going on and there’s nothing on the trail map to indicate Palisades will be a unified 6,000-acre behemoth in a matter of months. For now, a zig-zag line of tower tubes gives a pretty good indication of greatness on the horizon.
The traffic-busting gondola will begin in the Village where the current Red Dog triple has loaded for the past 32 seasons. That lift is set to be removed this summer and swapped for a six passenger detachable in a new alignment. The gondola will ascend KT-22, crossing over Exhibition and the high speed quad affectionately known as The Mothership. The second of four B2B stations sits near the top of KT, where the shorter of two haul ropes will turn back around while cabins continue on. When conditions permit, skiers will be permitted to unload here, creating a whole new way to access much of KT-22’s storied terrain. Riders destined for Alpine Meadows will turn and descend into the middle section of the lift on a second, longer haul rope. The gondola roughly parallels another line of lift towers for a never-completed chairlift on land owned by Troy Caldwell. It seems to me Mr. Caldwell could win some hearts and minds by removing these obsolete eyesores now that a state-of-the-art gondola will traverse nearly the same alignment. But it’s his land and the fate of the private ski area dream remains to be seen.
A third station with a slight angle change will also sit on the White Wolf property. The public won’t be able to get out here but there’s a possibility Caldwell and future nearby homeowners might. For the rest of us, cabins will simply decelerate, turn and take off again for the final jaunt over the Alpine Meadows parking lots to the base of Leitner-Poma sister machine Treeline Cirque. All told, the 16 minute ride from base to base will include a 1,700 vertical foot rise and then thousand foot descent. With views of the Granite Chief Wilderness and Lake Tahoe, this gondola will be as much about the journey as the destination.
Skiing down the lift line it becomes clear this gondola will also be a fair weather activity. You can bet as storms roll across the Sierra the lift’s more than 100 cabins will be tucked safely inside a parking structure at Alpine Meadows. There’s just no way the Base to Base will spin in high winds. But when mother nature cooperates, Palisades Tahoe will ski seamlessly as the third largest resort in North America.
While much work remains, Alterra says the gondola will be ready to go in November for the start of the 2022-23 season.
Alterra Announces $344 Million Capital Plan for 2022
Alterra Mountain Company today affirmed plans to open big new lifts in 2022 and more next year as it increases investment across its 14 resorts. This year’s $344 million plan includes $93 million in increased capacity and terrain expansion, $91 million for skier services upgrades, and $16 million in guest experience technology with a focus on Palisades Tahoe, Steamboat, Crystal Mountain, Mammoth Mountain and Deer Valley.
At Palisades Tahoe, the $65 million Base-to-Base Gondola will be completed this summer after two seasons of construction. The Leitner-Poma gondola will connect the two mountains of the resort for the first time, giving skiers and riders access to a combined 6,000 acres of terrain and making Palisades the third largest resort in North America. The 16 minute gondola ride will take skiers and riders between The Village at Palisades Tahoe and Alpine Lodge, reducing road congestion in the region and making it easier to enjoy both mountains in a single day. It is the first gondola of its kind in North America, with four terminals connecting two base areas via a climb of nearly 2,000 vertical feet.
Winter 2022-23 will also see phase two of Steamboat’s Full Steam Ahead redevelopment completed with $90 million of investment to include the relocation of the lower terminal of the Christie Peak Express and the first leg of the Wild Blue Gondola, which will take guests to the new Greenhorn Ranch learning center at mid-mountain.
Wild Blue will become the longest gondola in North America and the fastest 10-person gondola in the country. With the lower leg opening in 2022-23, and the upper leg opening in 2023-24, the state-of-the-art Doppelmayr D-Line gondola will feed skiers/riders through a newly created mid-station adjacent to Bashor Bowl with the final destination of Sunshine Peak. It will feature the first Omega V cabins in the United States. At a total length of 3.16 miles, the new gondola will increase the out of base capacity from 6,000 people per hour to 10,000 people per hour, getting skiers from bottom to top in 13 minutes. The recently re-graded Rough Rider/Bashor Basin area will be home to Greenhorn Ranch, an area dedicated to beginner skiers and riders. It will feature progressive terrain-based learning and a dedicated chairlift.
For winter 2023-24, 650 acres of advanced terrain will open on Pioneer Ridge, making Steamboat the second largest ski resort in Colorado. This expert, gladed terrain will be serviced by a new detachable chairlift.
At Washington’s Crystal Mountain, $100 million will be spent over the next five years. The largest investment ever made at Crystal will focus on greater access, more space and significantly enhanced skier services. Work will begin this spring with $25 million for additional parking and a new 25,000 square foot skier services facility called Mountain Commons. No lift projects were announced but Crystal Mountain President Frank DeBerry has made no secret his wish list includes a replacement for the Rainier Express, a new gondola to the summit and relocation of the current Mt. Rainier Gondola to Campbell Basin.
At Mammoth Mountain, summer 2022 will see ground and infrastructure work to facilitate the replacement of the Canyon Express at Canyon Lodge and Broadway Express at Main Lodge. Doppelmayr initially planned to build these lifts in 2020 before the Coronavirus pandemic postponed the project. The new high-speed six packs are planned to finally debut in winter 2023-24.
New for winter 2022-23 at Deer Valley, the Burns Express chairlift will debut at the Wide West learning area. This high speed chairlift will connect the Snow Park base area to Little Baldy Mountain, offering ski school access to more beginner teaching terrain and providing an additional option for skiers to navigate out of the main arrival area. The $6 million investment to improve the learning area on Wide West will also include enhancements to the existing Snowflake chairlift, installing and reconfiguring surface lifts and grading beginner terrain.
“This historic investment is clear evidence of our commitment to deliver a premier guest experience at our North American destinations and our engagement towards the long-term future of our mountains,” said Rusty Gregory, CEO of Alterra Mountain Company. “More than ever, we continue to infuse meaningful capital into projects that will transform our base areas while significantly improving our physical and digital on-mountain offerings to ensure that our guests experience the best of the mountains.”
Some previously-approved projects were absent from Alterra’s latest announcement, namely the Red Dog replacement at Palisades, Timber expansion at Tremblant and Pioneer Express upgrade at Winter Park.
News Roundup: Bounty
- Sandia Peak won’t open for skiing this season due to weather and staffing challenges.
- A snowboarder falls from Vail Mountain’s Avanti Express.
- The mall where Big Snow American Dream operates faces mounting financial problems.
- Kimberley offers a CA$100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the Northstar Express arsonist.
- Castle Mountain loans Kimberley another passenger snow cat and Leitner-Poma prioritizes repairs in its production schedule.
- The Bode Miller Ski Academy at Granby Ranch will include a high speed surface lift for race training.
- Elk Mountain rope evacuates for the second time in a week, this time the C double.
- The same day, nearby Montage Mountain rope evacuates the Long Haul triple.
- Also last Sunday: 150 people evac’d from the double chair at Song Mountain.
- A Colorado mountain will join the Indy Pass for the first time next week.
- Tamarack removes a North Bowl lift from its expansion proposal, hopes to begin the NEPA process soon for its proposed gondola, south expansion lifts and Wildwood Express extension.
- The reincarnated Big Squaw would include a six person chairlift and new T-Bar.
- Outside Magazine talks with numerous Vail Resorts employees about operational challenges.
- Town of Vail leaders discuss the situation at the namesake company.
- A Sea to Sky-style gondola is planned for interior British Columbia.
- Sunshine Village posts some fascinating stats about its very unique gondola.
- Four men plead not guilty to felony vandalism charges following last month’s incident at the San Diego Zoo.
- Soldier Mountain closes for the weekend due to unspecified lift issues.
- Alaska’s first gondola system is complete and will open to the public in April.
- Cannonsburg laments contractor and supply chain delays which have kept its triple chair from operating this season.
- Aspen Skiing Company raises its minimum wage to $20 per hour, effective the day after tomorrow.
- Argentinian actress Vero Lozano breaks an ankle falling from height off an Aspen chairlift.
- The South Korean resort where a detachable quad rolled back on January 22nd won’t reopen any of its lifts this winter.
- Multiple parties file objections to Purgatory’s Ice Creek expansion approval.
- The State of New Hampshire will host a public meeting next week regarding the future of the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway.
Cascade Mountain to Add New Quad
Popular Wisconsin destination Cascade Mountain will replace its Mogul Monster triple this summer with a brand new Leitner-Poma quad. The outgoing lift is a 1987 Borvig utilizing towers from the mountain’s original chairlift first opened 60 years ago today.
“This offseason, we’ll be replacing our current Mogul Monster triple passenger lift with a brand-new fixed grip quadruple passenger chairlift,” Cascade Mountain said in an anniversary announcement. “Looking a lot like our B-Dub lift, this quad will help us improve our uphill capacity and clear up a little more congestion in the base area compared to the current Mogul Monster Lift. We’d like to thank both our customer base and staff for your continued support over the last 60 years and to the next 60+ to come!”
Celebrating a Year of Resilience
As clocks roll over to 2022, 42 new lifts stand tall across North America. Lift manufacturer and resort employees accomplished a lot – operating through the pandemic and adding 13 more lifts than the year before despite supply chain bottlenecks and record low unemployment. Nearly all pandemic-postponed projects from 2020 were completed thanks to skiers, mountain bikers and sightseers flocking outside this year.
The 2021 lift class ranges from used T-Bars to the East’s first eight place chairlift and three new gondolas. Vail Resorts purchased the most new lifts of any single customer with seven projects across five mountains. Okemo moved a bubble detachable quad from Jackson Gore to the summit and added a six pack in its place. At Beaver Creek, a high alpine expansion will soon debut with two new quad chairs. Just as Vail’s construction projects entered the home stretch in September, the company shocked the industry and announced 19 new lifts would be built across its network in 2022. That number grew even further this month with the addition of two more projects in Pennsylvania as part of the Epic Lift Upgrade.
Boyne Resorts moved forward with two signature Doppelmayr D-Line lifts at Loon Mountain and Big Sky Resort. Boyne also worked to open a new peak at Sunday River dubbed Merrill Hill, serviced by a Sunday River Red triple chair. Seeing how smoothly its pandemic-postponed projects went, Boyne went ahead and announced three 2022 lifts early for Boyne Mountain, Loon Mountain and Sunday River.
No new lifts debuted at Alterra mountains this year but the growing company’s pause won’t last long. Leitner-Poma completed the towers and terminal foundations for the Base-to-Base Gondola, which will be one of the most unique lifts in America when complete next year at Palisades Tahoe. The project includes four stations, three haul ropes, more than 30 towers and a cabin storage facility. Alterra also has grand plans for new lifts at Steamboat including North America’s longest gondola.
This year’s projects were dispersed all across the US and Canada with particular strength in the traditional Rocky Mountain and Northeast markets.
2021 saw a roughly even split between fixed and detachable lifts with both increasing from last year. Gondolas took a slight pandemic pause again but will be back in a big way next year with Palisades Tahoe, Steamboat, Whistler all planning large installations. No resorts built aerial tramways in 2021 but two new surface lifts debuted.
Fifteen years ago, around half of new lifts were for expansions while the other half replaced older ropeways. The share of replacement equipment has only grown, making up nearly three quarters of all projects this year. We said goodbye to many lifts from defunct manufacturers in 2021 with 12 Halls, 6 Borvigs and 3 Heron-Pomas being retired this year.
The detachable business split right down the middle with Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr each completing eight lifts. Things will get interesting next year when MND Ropeways completes its first US detachable at Waterville Valley in partnership with Swiss manufacturer Bartholet. The last time three firms competed in the detachable space Amazon only sold books.
The fixed grip side of the business also split roughly evenly with Skytrac edging out Doppelmayr. Skytrac fabricated eight complete lifts plus two retrofit Monarch drive terminals, the most projects ever in one year for the company. Doppelmayr’s Alpenstar model continued to be popular with seven installations.
We saw the ski industry recover faster from the pandemic than other segments of the travel and tourism world. Only two installations were at places other than ski areas in 2020 and 2021, both gondolas at the Icy Strait Pont cruise port in Southeast Alaska.
The percentage of lifts installed used remained low this year with just seven reinstallations. Most customers opted for brand new machines from four different manufacturers.
Doppelmayr won the total project count with 18 installations while the Leitner-Poma/Skytrac duo installed 16. Partek completed a new quad chair at Trollhaugen, Wisconsin after a on-off year with no projects in 2020.
Projects in 2021 were incredibly diverse, from the tiniest platter at a new Club Med in Quebec to Big Sky’s Swift Current 6, the longest D-Line chairlift in the world. The below chart shows Leitner-Poma and Skytrac roughly split their business of large lifts and small lifts while Doppelmayr covered the entire gamut of Vertical Transport Feet per Hour under one roof.
The lift companies enjoyed a great year and so did Lift Blog. A record 617,000 people visited this website in 2021 and viewed 3.6 million pages. Next year I should finally finish visiting every US ski area, a milestone I’ve been chasing since I was four years old. There’s so much to look forward to in the lift world in 2022 and I hope you follow along as I do my best to cover it all. Happy New Year!
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