- In Massachusetts, Bousquet sells to a private investment firm which will be advised by Jon and Jim Schaefer.
- Magic Mountain resumes work on the Black Line Quad project.
- Bravo to many more ski areas offering up ski lifts for graduation ceremonies: Big Bear, Canyon, Copper Mountain, Deer Valley, Giants Ridge, Jackson Hole, Mountain High, Snow Valley and Treetops.
- Nub’s Nob says goodbye to the Blue Chair.
- There will be no summer skiing on Blackcomb Glacier this year.
- A Canadian government decision means no Alaska cruises will sail in 2020 and it will likely be 2021 until Icy Strait Point’s dual gondola system debuts.
- The creator of the Indy Pass argues shared revenue models are the future of ski passes.
- Poma’s 2019 Reference Book is here.
- Doppelmayr begins building Saddleback’s $7 million high speed quad.
- The Aspen Mountain Telemix may happen in 2022.
- Mountain Collective adds a fifth new resort for 2020/21: Sun Peaks, British Columbia.
- Set to become the world’s longest alpine 3S, Jungfrau’s Eiger Express will open early.
- Launching tomorrow: another spectacular 3S which travels 705 feet above the sea in Vietnam. Three more sections will eventually form a 12.1 mile gondola chain.
- Demaclenko creates a fully automated fogging/disinfection solution for moving gondola cabins.
- Construction gets underway on the first bubble chairlift in the Pacific Northwest, which will load and unload inside buildings.
- In Minnesota, both Welch Village and Spirit Mountain pull the plug on summer operations.
- Vail Resorts lost $40 million less than anticipated in March and April and reported a net income of $152.5 million for the quarter ended April 30th.
- Purgatory proposes building a detachable quad chair and four low intermediate trails in an area known as Ice Creek.
- On Mt. Hood, Summit Ski Area seeks a boundary extension to the Timberline border, a first step towards a possible lift link.
- Leitner-Poma President Daren Cole pens a letter addressing challenges facing the ski industry in the age of coronavirus.
- Alterra extends the Ikon Pass deferral option to April 2021 and introduces a credit policy in the event of resort closures next season.
- A new English edition of International Ropeway Review profiles Treeline Cirque at Alpine Meadows and the Express du Village at Bromont.
- Utah’s Department of Transportation narrows its Little Cottonwood Canyon mobility study to gondolas and buses.
- The Snowbird tram will carry only 25 passengers when it reopens June 13th.
- The City of Idaho Springs, Colorado conditionally approves the Mighty Argo Cable Car, a 1.2 mile gondola on the site of a historic mine.
Magic Mountain
News Roundup: Ripple Effect
- Saddleback demolishes the Rangeley double to make room for its upcoming high speed quad.
- Debt-laden Ski Granby Ranch lays off all its employees and won’t issue refunds to guests with canceled vacations.
- The $2.2 trillion phase three stimulus package passed by Congress doesn’t include assistance specifically for ski areas but there is hope phase four might.
- Vail Resorts borrows more than $500 million from existing lines of credit in order to increase its cash position and maintain financial flexibility during the outbreak.
- While many Leitner-Poma staffers work from home, a skeleton crew continues production.
- Even in hard-hit Italy, one major lift customer plans to commence construction as soon as the immediate health danger has passed.
- Many Doppelmayr employees are also working from home and production continues in Wolfurt.
- Aspen Snowmass intends to complete all capital projects as planned this summer including the $10.8 million Big Burn chairlift.
- Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz personally donates $2.5 million to mountain community charities and an employee assistance fund.
- Yet another lift project cancelled by Vail Resorts: replacement of Peachtree at Crested Butte this summer.
- NSAA estimates costs from early closings and lost pass sales will exceed $2 billion in the United States and forecasts capital spending will plunge 50 percent this year.
- Magic Mountain’s Geoff Hatheway offers a small ski area perspective on COVID-19.
- Coronavirus may impact the review timeline for Snow King Mountain’s proposed expansion and other projects on Forest Service lands.
- Katharina Schmitz officially takes the reigns of Doppelmayr USA from Mark Bee, who retired on March 31st.
- Boyne Resorts estimates $22 million in lost revenue as a result of this winter’s abrupt end.
- The Vietnamese developer behind both the world’s longest and tallest 3S gondolas plans another island-hopping 3S in the country’s north.
News Roundup: Stellar
- Doppelmayr begins hiring maintenance staff for the Hard Rock Stadium gondola in Miami.
- Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory says resorts will need to adapt as Ikon Pass sales increase.
- The gondola wasn’t the only lift snafu in Steamboat this week.
- Treeline Cirque is on the map and now open at Alpine Meadows.
- Revelstoke Mountain Resort christens its fifth lift, Stellar.
- The crazy project to build three 3S gondolas at one Chinese resort is coming along.
- The largest investment ever at Stevens Pass is complete but can’t open without more snow.
- Still no construction but Valemount Glacier Resort isn’t dead yet.
- Magic’s Black Line quad may not be finished until February.
- The favorite proposed project of 32,000 Vancouver residents surveyed? A gondola up Burnaby Mountain.
- An avalanche hits and damages a Yan/Skirail fixed quad in France.
News Roundup: Super Cool
- Mt. Rose wants to replace Lakeview and build a two stage detachable Atoma lift instead of two separate alignments shown here.
- Two people survive after their small plane crashes into and is caught by chairlift cables in Italy.
- The Forest Service seeks public comment on issuing a special use permit to Mountain Capital Partners to operate Elk Ridge, Arizona, which closed in 2017.
- The owners of 100 year old Pocono Manor want to build a 1.5 mile chairlift to the upcoming Pocono Springs lifestyle and entertainment complex.
- The New York Times considers whether a planned four station gondola is appropriate in historically holy Jerusalem.
- All three Disney Skyliner lines remain closed following Saturday’s mishap at the Riviera station.
- The replacement for Big Burn at Snowmass may be a six place bubble model.
- Hermitage Club founder Jim Barnes is ordered to pay a member more than $5.4 million for making misrepresentations.
- Crystal Mountain adds 12 gondola cabins with the mountain’s new logo, bringing the Mt. Rainier Gondola to its maximum capacity of 900 passengers per hour.
- Magic Mountain’s new quad may not spin by Christmas but hopefully MLK weekend.
- Environmental review of the New York Capital Gondola project should commence next week.
- Lake Louise’s VonRoll gondola towers finally fly away after 60 years.
- The VonRoll in Oklahoma thrills riders for a 54th year.
- Fatzer fast tracks a new haul rope for the Sea to Sky Gondola.
- The recently opened 3S in Norway successfully toes the line between an urban gondola and ski/tourism lift.
- Vail seeks to buy the Hermitage Club’s snowmaking guns.
- A super cool LST T-Bar on the roof of a waste-to-energy plant opens for skiers in Copenhagen.
- Poma begins constructing a five section urban gondola on the remote Indian Ocean island of Réunion.
- Grouse Mountain acknowledges the Blue Skyride‘s days are numbered and will study replacing it over the coming year.
- Frost Fire, which was unable to spin its brand new Skytrac quad last winter, says it will open this winter.
News Roundup: Dedication
- Stowe rope evacuates 160 people from the Lookout double.
- The New Hampshire Union Leader runs a well-researched story on lift evacuations.
- Doppelmayr Cable Car is the contracted maintenance provider for the Disney Skyliner and is now hiring for multiple positions.
- Two years after the death of Kelly Huber at Granby Ranch, changes are still being considered.
- The new lift to Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park will have a new name when it opens in March: Glenwood Gondola.
- Magic gains approval to build the Black Line quad lift.
- A proposed settlement could see the Hermitage Club parent company give control of the Barnstormer chairlift to the investors who bought it.
- Pajarito reopens one of two chairlifts which became inoperable over a month ago.
- A gondola window falls hundreds of feet and nearly injures a farmer working below in Taiwan.
- The one year old T-Bar at Burke Mountain is now the D-Bar, named in honor of longtime supporter Don Graham. Mr. Graham once saved the mountain from closure, covered years of operating losses and personally financed half of the Mid Burke Express.
News Roundup: For Sale
- In a decision the Durango Herald calls a “bombshell,” the Forest Service proposes granting road access to the controversial Village at Wolf Creek, which would include two new lifts near Wolf Creek Ski Area’s new Meadow quad.
- Magic Mountain’s new Green lift is set to debut this winter but the Black Line Quad may not spin until 2019.
- Tawatinaw Valley, a county-owned ski hill in Alberta with three T-Bars, will go out of business on October 1st due to continued losses.
- The price of steel is up up 33 percent in the United States so far this year and companies like Caterpillar and Polaris are increasing prices as a result.
- The first Doppelmayr/Garaventa lift with D-Line cubic glass enclosures comes together in Switzerland.
- A Yan triple from Squaw Valley hits the market in Idaho (looks like East Broadway, retired in 2012.)
- Loveland’s new high-speed quad gets a name: Chet’s Dream.
- Opening of the Transbay Transit Center tramway in San Francisco slips to September.
- A refurbished Riblet quad from the closed ski resort in Drumheller Valley, Alberta goes up for sale.
- Alterra officially takes the reigns at Solitude.
- Leitner-Poma of America President Rick Spear goes on the MarketScale Transportation Podcast to discuss the ski lift business and growth of urban cable transport.
- With two Mueller lifts in need of work, Mt. Timothy, BC will likely close if it can’t find a buyer.
- Big White’s retired Powder triple is headed to Red Mountain.
- Copper Mountain commits to building its fourth new lift in three years, a Leitner-Poma triple on Tucker Mountain in 2019.
- The Miriam Fire is burning uncomfortably close to White Pass Ski Area.
News Roundup: More Cabins
- A live streaming webcam shows New Hampshire’s largest and fastest gondola going in at Bretton Woods. Some tidbits on the lift from the New Hampshire Tramway Board: line speed will be 6 m/s with 36 cabins and a design capacity of 2,600 using 62 cabins. SkyTrans is taking the retired B double and the gondola’s load test is slated for December 20th.
- Sunrise Park Resort abruptly ends all summer operations.
- In Europe, some pulse gondolas are on the way out.
- As it works to finalize its lease of Mt. Sunapee, Vail Resorts assures New Hampshire residents the company is in for the long haul and doesn’t plan any real estate development at the state-owned mountain.
- A stack up of at least nine cabins on the White urban gondola line in La Paz last Monday is deemed the result of human error. No passengers were on the lift at the time.
- Loveland receives more than 3,000 name suggestions for its upcoming detachable quad and will unveil a winner early next week.
- One of the longest gondolas in Mexico, opened seven months ago in Torreon, has already carried more than 325,000 passengers and will soon get nine additional cabins from Sigma.
- Go inside Poma’s newest French factory.
- Arapahoe Basin and Leitner-Poma commence pouring concrete and digging tower locations for the Beavers lift.
- As Winter Park continues testing digital chairlift advertising, sister resort Steamboat goes old school with bar mounted trail map ads.
- The widow of Loveland mechanic Adam Lee, who died underneath a carpet lift last winter, goes on CBS This Morning to talk about his workers compensation claim being reduced due to a positive marijuana test.
- Magic Mountain submits a permit application/profile for the Black Line Quad and hopes to commence construction next month.
- Copper’s all-new trail map is amazing…
Two New Lifts Are Coming to Magic Mountain
They call it “the road less traveled,” a classic Vermont mountain situated about half way between Stratton and Okemo. Now in its second year of new ownership, Magic Mountain has carved a successful niche offering top quality, affordable skiing despite a competitive landscape. Ski Magic LLC added a new carpet lift and restarted work on a new double chair to service intermediate terrain soon after taking over operations in late 2016. Fresh off a successful 2017-18 season with increased skier visits, investors plan to spend an impressive $1.6 million on key infrastructure this summer including two important new chairlifts.
In addition to completing the Green Chair project by early summer, Magic announced today that a Poma quad chair will replace the Black lift, which dates back to the middle of last century. The 1962 Pohlig double was once converted to a triple with Yan chairs before being turned back into a double in recent years. Today it sports towers from Pohlig, Hall and possibly Poma and the time has finally come to retire it.
The new Black Line quad is a 1986 Poma Alpha model which is being removed from Stratton this month to make way for the Snow Bowl Express. The predecessor will find a new home less than 15 miles away, becoming the workhorse base-to-summit machine at Magic. The incoming Green Chair is also from Stratton, a Borvig removed in 1995 called Betwixed. “When we heard Stratton was replacing their Snow Bowl lift with a new high-speed detachable, four-passenger lift, our investor group jumped on the opportunity to try and purchase their Poma fixed-grip quad”, said Geoff Hatheway, President of Ski Magic. “For our ski community, this lift is a huge upgrade that meets and manages our current and future growth expectations, better fulfills customer desires for quality, reliable lift service at Magic, and sustains our reputation as an area with both minimal lift lines and low on-slope skier density.” He went on to thank Stratton President and COO Bill Nupp for his help securing the lift’s future in Southern Vermont.
Black Line capacity will more than triple from 620 skiers per hour to 2,000 with the new lift unloading slightly higher to service all of Magic’s trails. The 148 chair lift will be over 5,000 feet long with approximately 1,500 feet of vertical rise. Magic’s 1971 Heron-Poma double will stay in the rotation and operate at peak times, meaning the Black quad, Red double, and Green double are all slated for service in the 2018/19 season. With Magic’s plans, at least seven new lifts will debut in Vermont next season, the most since 1995.
News Roundup: One Billion
- Despite competition from the Ikon and Epic passes, Peak Resorts reports sales of its Peak Passes are up 14 percent year over year through 4/30.
- HTI, the parent company of Leitner, Poma, Aguido, MiniMetro, Prinoth and more reports it built 75 ropeways in 2017 and exceeded $1 billion in revenue.
- The Hermitage Club opposes its primary lender’s motion to appoint a receiver and says it has found a financial firm willing to loan $26 million in restructuring capital. A key court hearing is scheduled for one week from today.
- TransLink’s ten year, $8.8 billion vision includes funding for Burnaby Mountain Gondola planning.
- Gondola fever spreads in Edmonton.
- A gondola is being looked at for Idaho Springs, Colorado along I-70.
- SE Group and the White River National Forest test an interactive storyboard as a public engagement tool for Beaver Creek’s McCoy Park Expansion. Comments are due May 29th and a decision is expected in September.
- The Forest Service proposes quickly approving the replacement of Arizona Snowbowl’s Agassiz triple with a 6,100 foot combination lift utilizing gondola cabins between every three or four chairs. Capacity would be only 1,200 passengers per hour.
- Magic Mountain commits to finishing the Green lift and weighs the future of its nearby Pohlig-Hall-Yan contraption.
Instagram Tuesday: Scenes
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
