Leitner

Leitner Introduces Premium Chair

Peter Landsman1 Comment

When Sigma decided to develop a new 3S gondola cabin, they turned to a designer of Ferraris and Maseratis to create Symphony.  Now Leitner is giving its chairs the same treatment with automotive-style upholstered seating.  The new ‘Premium Chair’ combines real leather with heated seats and bubbles for the ultimate in rider comfort.  The chair also has automatic locking footrests for safety.  One of Audi’s design firms created the chair and it is manufactured at Leitner’s plant in Telfs, Austria.  In a press release announcing the new option, Martin Leitner remarked, “The Leitner Premium chair delivers optimum comfort, ergonomics, and elegant design in one luxurious package. ‘Business Class for ski resorts’ sums it up perfectly.”

Leitner's new 'Premium Chair' will debut in Austria next month.
Leitner’s new ‘Premium Chair’ will debut in Austria next month.

Kitzbühel is the launch customer for the new chair, debuting 62 of the 8-passenger version on their new Brunn chairlift this winter.  Brunn is the resort’s eighth Leitner installation and will serve a pod of three new runs.  The lift will also feature a 980-horsepower DirectDrive that Leitner claims will reduce noise and electric consumption by 20 percent versus a standard drive with a gearbox.  Brunn will haul an impressive 3,300 skiers per hour at up to 6.0 m/s.  The lift is 4,790 feet long and rises 1,417 feet with 17 towers.  Kitzbühel’s total investment in the Brunn lift and trails is $22.1 million.

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News Roundup: Panoramabahn

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  • I passed a Doppelmayr drive terminal on I-80 last week.  Now I know where it was going: Sugarloaf.
  • More pictures from Lutsen Mountains of their new gondola.  The old Hall Skycruiser is still standing parallel to her replacement.
  • Haul rope and commline go up at Okemo.
  • North Korea’s Masik Pass ski resort looks to have gotten a base-to-summit gondola this summer based on recent satellite imagery.  Perhaps another counterfeit Doppelmayr?
Creeping on North Korea’s ski lift construction in Google Earth yields a new building at the summit of Masik Pass.  It looks to house a detachable lift terminal with a lift line stretching all the way to the base area with towers and gondola cabins also visible.   The existing summit double is on the lower right.
  • In British Columbia, first Crystal Mountain and now Mt. Baldy will not open this season. Baldy has a T-Bar, Mueller double, and 2007 Leitner-Poma quad that last operated in 2013.
  • SkyTrac load tests at Pomerelle.  One more to go at Arizona Snowbowl.

The New Longest Gondola in Turkey

Peter Landsman1 Comment

It used to be when you boarded the gondola to Silver Mountain in Kellogg, Idaho, a huge sign proclaimed, “Welcome to the World’s Longest Gondola.”  At 16,350 feet, the Silver Mountain Gondola held that title from its opening in 1990 until May 2009.  That’s when Doppelmayr completed the Ba Na Cable Car in the mountains of Vietnam.  A hundred and fifty feet longer than Silver’s gondola and a thousand feet taller, it broke world records for both length and vertical rise.

The Ba Na Cable Car in Vietnam was the world's longest when it opened. Photo credit: Doppelmayr
The Ba Na Cable Car in Vietnam was the world’s longest from when it opened in 2009 until 2014. Photo credit: Doppelmayr

Fast forward a couple years and Leitner has crushed the ropeway length record again with a gondola in Turkey that opened in 2014.  Like the Silver Mountain Gondola, the Bursa-Uludag Gondola connects a city with a ski resort but this one is split into in three sections.  It starts in Bursa (Turkey’s fourth largest city) at only 1,300 feet above sea level and tops out at the Uludag resort town and national park at 6,000 feet.  The combined system is just under 29,000 feet long with a vertical rise of 4,600 feet.  It has 139 Sigma Diamond cabins and 44 towers.  The entire system takes only 22 minutes to ride at 6 m/s, replacing a 35-kilometer drive on a mountain road that took over an hour.

As if the Ba Na Cable Car and Bursa-Uludag Gondola aren’t cool enough, there’s also a 26,000 foot 3S gondola under construction in Vietnam that will relegate Silver Mountain’s gondola to the world’s fourth longest.

News Roundup: Tower Time

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Sugarloaf's oldest lift towers come down. Photo credit: Sugarloaf Mountain Resort
Sugarloaf’s oldest lift towers come down. Photo credit: Sugarloaf Mountain Resort
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Two Big Gondolas Opening South of the Border

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Sigma Diamond cabins in France waiting to be shipped across the pond.  Photo credit: Sigma Cabins

Park City and Lutsen Mountains in Minnesota won’t have the only new gondolas in this part of the world come December.  Leitner Ropeways is in the final stages of building a $72 million gondola system in Ecatepec near Mexico City.  Two connected gondola lines will include seven stations and 184 10-passenger cabins.  They will feature the first Leitner DirectDrives in North America.  DirectDrive technology eliminates the need for a gearbox and associated points of failure.

Map of the two lines and seven stations.
Map of the two lines and seven stations.

The longer of the two lines will have a slope length of 9,577 feet while rising 180 feet in 10.5 minutes.  It will have 20 towers and 108 Sigma Diamond 10-passenger cabins.  The second line will be 5,922 feet long with a slightly larger vertical of 203 feet and ride time of 7.5 minutes.  This one will have 76 cabins and 16 towers.  Both lines will travel at a max speed of 1,181 feet a minute and transport 3,000 riders an hour each way.  With five mid-stations, it would be difficult for cabins to be shared between the two haul ropes.  A fault or stop at any of the seven terminals would halt the entire system which is just one of the reasons it is being split up with cabins turning around in the middle.

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Three New 3S Gondolas Coming Soon

Peter Landsman8 Comments

The 3S Gondola is today’s finest lift technology with large, comfortable cabins quickly moving thousands of people per hour over virtually any terrain.   Doppelmayr and VonRoll pioneered the technology with Poma and Leitner developing their own versions in recent years.  Thirteen of these systems operate worldwide with at least three more in development in settings as diverse as the Swiss Alps and islands of Vietnam.  Here is a summary:

3S Bahn – Zermatt Bergbahnen AG

Klein Matterhorn's first 3S will be the second built by Leitner Ropeways.
Klein Matterhorn’s first 3S will be the second built by Leitner Ropeways.

The world’s highest elevation 3S will open on the Matterhorn in Zermatt for 2018.  It will feature Leitner’s DirectDrive technology and new Sigma Symphony cabins designed by the famous Italian firm Pininfarina.  Its 25 28-passenger cabins will move 2,000 skiers per hour at 7.5 meters per second.  The lift will cover almost 13,000 feet laterally and 3,000 feet vertically in nine minutes.  Zermatt will be the first non-urban 3S gondola for Leitner or Poma. Construction begins next summer.

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News Roundup: The Future in Ankara

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  • Sugarloaf Mountain Resort announces a new director of lifts to oversee maintenance and operations after two high-profile lift accidents.  He’s not exactly a Boyne Resorts outsider.
  • Finally some news from Saddleback; the owners are in negotiations with four potential buyers and this season may or may not happen.  Talk about bad press.
  • Group hoping to reopen the Antelope Butte ski area near Sheridan, Wyoming will make a down payment to the Forest Service within two weeks.  The area has two Riblet double chairs that last operated in 2004.
  • Switzerland sets the maximum blood-alcohol content for a person operating a cable car at 0.05% (the same limit as for drunk driving there.)
  • A national park in South Korea may be getting a $39 million 10-passenger gondola, the country’s 155th ropeway.  South Korea will also be hosting the next Winter Olympics.
  • Parts for the new Ptarmigan lift are on site at Loveland, CO.
  • Mont Cascades in Quebec makes solid progress on replacing their TC double chair with a Doppelmayr quad.

News Roundup: Fire Season

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The Pine Fire near Wrightwood, CA narrowly missed Mountain High Resort earlier this week.
The Pine Fire near Wrightwood, California skirted Mountain High Resort earlier this week.  Photo credit: Stuart Palley.
  • The North Resort at Mountain High narrowly escapes one of California’s many wildfires burning out of control.
  • Leitner-Poma is about to start 3 1/2 months of construction at Sipapu, New Mexico.
  • Next season will not happen at Saddleback, Maine unless the resort can secure $3 million for a new quad lift in the next two weeks.  Or so they say.
  • In central New Hampshire, Waterville Valley continues clearing for the Green Peak expansion while Tenney Mountain prepares to reopen after a decade being closed.
  • Sugarloaf launches their lift safety website that appears it took an intern half an hour to make.
  • Leitner gets into the surfing business with DirectDrive.
  • Poma’s 2014 Reference Book is now online.  Better late than never!
  • Snow King Mountain’s very wealthy investors announce phase 2 expansion with a base-to-summit gondola and major skiing expansion.
Snow King's Rafferty lift opened on July 12th.
Snow King’s new Rafferty lift and alpine slide finally opened on July 12th, about a month behind schedule.

The 3S Gondola

Peter Landsman10 Comments

A “3S” is a detachable gondola with two track ropes and one haul rope.  It combines the speed and stability of a tram with the capacity of a gondola.  Cabins generally hold about 30 passengers.  3S systems can move up to 4,500 passengers per hour at up to 8.5 meters per second.  They can withstand high winds and traverse long spans between towers.  These highly capable lifts are also expensive.  Only 12 3S gondolas have been built.  Perhaps the most famous of them, Whistler’s Peak 2 Peak, cost $51 million!

3S Gondolas are huge machines.
3S Gondolas are huge machines.

The 3S was developed by VonRoll of Switzerland.  The first one to open was the Alpin Express at Saas-Fee in 1991.  A second section opened in 1994.  When Doppelmayr merged with VonRoll in 1996, they inherited the 3S technology.  Doppelmayr built its first 3S in 2002 at Val d’Isere, France.  Called L’Olympique, it accesses the famous ski area of Escape Killy.

Kitzbuhel, Austria opened the 3S Bahn in 2004.  It connects two ski areas across a valley with an 8,200 foot-long unsupported span.  Four years later, Doppelmayr connected Whistler and Blackcomb with the Peak 2 Peak, featuring an even longer unsupported span of 1.88 miles.  Peak 2 Peak’s highest point above ground is an incredible 1,427 feet.  It remains the only 3S gondola outside of Europe.

Whistler-Blackcomb's Peak 2 Peak Gondola.
Whistler-Blackcomb’s Peak 2 Peak Gondola.

Leitner got into the 3S business in 2009 with a system in northern Italy.  The towns of Renon and Ritten were connected by a 2.8 mile-long 3S.  This was the first 3S built outside of a ski resort.  Another urban 3S was built across the Rhine River in Koblenz, Germany in 2010.  This Doppelmayr system moves 3,800 passengers per hour in each direction.  Also in 2010, Doppelmayr built the Gaislachkogl 2 at Solden, Austria.

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