- Plans for a 3S gondola servicing Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles move ahead.
- A new gondola system ridership record is set: 406,459 passengers in a single day.
- Killington joins the bubble club with Snowdon Six Express.
- Fatzer says it has donated more than 180 miles of wire rope leftover from ropeways to build 600 bridges in developing countries.
- Ramcharger 8 flies tomorrow at Big Sky Resort.
- Accidents knock two gondolas out of commission at the same Austrian ski resort in the span of a week. One due to a fire and the other a pileup of cabins. The latter one is already back in service.
- Doppelmayr USA taps former New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority head Ted Blazer to lead the company’s urban ropeway push.
- Copper Mountain hopes to have the new American Flyer bubble lift operational by Christmas.
- There might be some news regarding the shuttered Hermitage Club early next week.
- Big White’s Powder 2.0 opens today.
- So does the big Blackcomb Gondola.
- More than 150 guests are evacuated from the Blue chairlift at Mt. Hood Meadows after multiple systems fail.
- Peak Resorts releases quarterly financial results including strong season pass sales figures.
- Timerline Four Seasons Resort keeps pushing back its opening day, now scheduled for December 21st. Yesterday its managing partner was arrested and charged with failing to remit hotel taxes.
- Work carriers are spotted traversing Walt Disney World.
Mi Teleferico
News Roundup: Adding More
- The Forest Service tentatively approves Vail’s Golden Peak T-Bar project.
- US Representative from New York Patrick Maloney dreams up a gondola across the Hudson.
- Red Mountain seeks approval to build the Topping Creek lift.
- Apple Mountain, Michigan is no longer a ski area.
- The first rope evac of the season goes to Super Bee at Copper.
- Gore Mountain solicits bids to replace Sunway and High Peaks with fixed grip quads. That brings the Olympic Regional Development Authority to five potential lift projects for 2019!
- The Aspen City Council considers Aspen Mountain’s Telemix project again.
- The Jackson Town Council rejects Snow King Mountain’s proposed gondola alignment.
- Doppelmayr apologizes for a delay completing the new Blackcomb Gondola. The new Catskinner and Emerald Express lifts open Thursday and the gondola will be finished by December 14th.
- Calgary voters say no to hosting the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
- The world’s largest urban gondola network now transports 250,000 passengers every weekday with the most popular line doing a million passengers every 19 days.
- Alterra’s Ikon Pass now includes three resorts in New Zealand; Vail adds Les 3 Vallées, France and Skirama Dolomiti in Italy to the Epic Pass.
- Following a lift failure and other struggles, the owners of Timberline, West Virginia seek to recapitalize and restructure the business.
- Remember Gudauri, the Georgian ski resort which made global headlines last winter? It’s fixing the quad that rolled back and adding six more lifts.
- The Hermitage Club receiver will retain a single lift mechanic to maintain five chairlifts in mothballed status over the winter.
- The longest Skytrac to date is ready for winter in Washington State.
- Killington puts new Sigma cabins on the K-1 Gondola a few at a time.
- The Ramcharger 8 haul rope is spliced and chairs are in place at the summit of Andesite Mountain.
- Ski Blandford is officially back in business minus one chairlift.
News Roundup: Decisions, Decisions
- With approvals inked, Steamboat considers whether to build a second gondola or the Pioneer Ridge expansion first.
- The Kohlmaisbahn in Saalbach, Austria becomes the first gondola spotted with Omega V cabins.
- The Hermitage may miss Christmas.
- Catch a glimpse of the new Winter Park gondola cabins. Killington too!
- The eight urban gondolas in La Paz transported a 318,532 riders last Wednesday – a crazy new single day record.
- Thanks to community support, Antelope Butte is poised to reopen with two chairlifts.
- After having its summer camp shut down by the state of New Hampshire, Granite Gorge likely won’t open for downhill skiing this winter.
- The ex-Gore Mountain employee who claimed he was left on a lift overnight last winter is convicted of making a false statement to police and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
- Mont Gleason, Quebec will build a fixed grip quad with loading carpet next summer.
- The Iron Mountain Tramway in Glenwood Springs is carrying its final riders next Sunday as Leitner-Poma mobilizes to build an improved gondola this winter.
- Thanks to Jared Emerson for taking me around the newest North American lift by LST Ropeways at Waterville Valley. She’s a beauty!
News Roundup: Next Generation
- The above $52 million masterpiece and highest-ever 3S opens for business in the shadow of the Matterhorn.
- The Leitner-Poma Group’s sixth tricable gondola is set to carry commuters between three stations in Toulouse, France from 2020 and will cost $94.5 million to build.
- Alterra closes on its purchase of Crystal Mountain.
- A lift operator and his employer, Killingon/Pico, are sued following a loading mishap.
- An eighth urban gondola line opens in La Paz and carries 72,740 riders on its first day.
- CWA teases Omega V, the next evolution of the world’s best selling gondola cabin. While we wait to see what it looks like, check out hundreds of CWA designs from the past 75 years.
- The Palm Springs Tram gets a new 13,500′ x 45 mm upper haul rope from Fatzer. Thanks Kirk D. for the photos.
- Horseshoe Resort’s retired 1989 Doppelmayr detachable quad hits the used market.
- Whistler Blackcomb’s 2018-19 trail map shows what $52 million worth of new lifts looks like.
- Read up on Sun Peaks’ new Orient quad here.
- Lone Mountain Land Company eyes two more lifts on the Spanish Peaks side of Big Sky Resort and nine in Moonlight Basin.
- Revelstoke’s newspaper looks into rumors of a gondola project on Mt. Begbie.
- The City of Los Angeles will study two Hollywood gondola ideas.
- Another Disney Skyliner station is nearly finished with tons of windows.
- Windham names its new lift Westside Six. I stopped by last week to check out the progress.
News Roundup: Not Cool
- Beaver Creek relocates an entire Birds of Prey Express tower, foundation and all, eight inches due to ground movement.
- Someone made off with a chair from Aspen’s Bell Mountain lift. After a public plea from SkiCo, it returns within hours.
- Franklin County, Maine wants an electric utility to contribute $100,000 to support Saddleback redevelopment as part of a mitigation package for a $950 million power line project.
- Cockaigne, NY will open this winter for the first time in seven following an investment of $6.2 million, demonstrating it takes a boatload of cash to reopen a lapsed ski resort.
- The always awesome French lift website Remontées Mécaniques reports on two remarkable new lifts in Asia: the Fansipan Legend 3S and Wynn Palace Skycab.
- Two late additions to the 2018 new lift roster: Boreal, California and Vallée du Parc, Quebec, which are both adding Doppelmayr fixed quads this fall.
- La Paz subway in the sky gondolas number 15 and 16 open September 26th.
- An intriguing podcast claims more Disney Skyliner lines are envisioned to Disney Springs, Blizzard Beach, Animal Kingdom Lodge, All Star Resort and Coronado Springs.
- Anyone recognize this skyride at the New Mexico State Fair? It had to come from somewhere.
- Pre-Vail Whistler Blackcomb COO and father of Peak 2 Peak Dave Brownlie is tapped to lead the next chapter at Revelstoke.
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…
News Roundup: Gondolas on Gondolas
- Snow King Mountain formally requests approval for a new $8 million gondola which would load along Snow King Avenue in the Town of Jackson, part of a $26 million improvement plan.
- The new Oakland Zoo gondola went down for a bit on Friday and just about every major news outlet in the Bay Area covered it.
- The SilverStar Gondola wasn’t the only new lift to open in Canada last week.
- Sadly, the gondola emoji has been the single least used on Twitter for 76 days.
- Elk Ridge, Arizona is back on the market, indicating the announced sale to Mountain Capital Partners may have fallen through.
- La Paz opens its seventh urban gondola just 366 days after groundbreaking. The Mi Teleférico system has now carried 135 million commuters since the first lines opened in 2014.
- Timberline Lodge confirms it’s eyeing a gondola or chairlift connection from Summit Ski Area, which it bought last week.
- Winter Park is getting the most money for improvements of all the Alterra mountains this year – $26.2 million. More than half of it is going to Leitner-Poma for the big Zephyr Gondola.
- James Coleman explains his ambitious dream to create another Snowbasin out of Nordic Valley.
- Episode 5 of Ski Area Management’s podcast, focusing on risk management, covers lots of lift ground: the Squaw Valley tram accident, a grip slip incident, and challenges Pats Peak faced after buying the Lake Compounce Skyride.
- One Hermitage Club lawsuit yields a $1.5 million judgement against the ski area and another one is filed.
- For the second time in recent memory, a falling cigarette is believed to have started a fire under a lift at Heavenly.
- The State of Massachusetts seeks a new operator for Blue Hills Ski Area.
- A private management company passes on operating Ski Cape Smokey, a nonprofit mountain in Nova Scotia with a broken main chairlift.
- Hunter Mountain is making quick work of the Hunter North expansion.
- Is Peak Resorts spending too much money on capital improvements such as new lifts?
“Ever since the company went public in 2014 it has taken advantage of its improved access to capital to finance large infrastructure projects that may have led to growth in visitation and revenues, but haven’t resulted in better earnings or cash flows.”
News Roundup: Last Call
- No ticket, no card. You can now ride lifts using only your phone at Sunshine Village.
- Berkshire East owners buy Catamount with summer business and upgrading aging infrastructure on the agenda.
- U.S. skier visits decline 2.8 percent for 2017-18 with the Midwest and Southeast up year-over-year, the Northeast flat and the Rockies, Pacific Northwest and Southwest regions down.
- New lift construction is nonetheless pacing 25 percent ahead of last year and 43 points above this date in 2016.
- Quebec area Val Neigette closes for good with its Doppelmayr quad chairlift headed to an unknown Ontario mountain to cover outstanding debt.
- Mi Teleférico is apparently in talks to build dozens more urban gondolas in La Paz between 2020 and 2030.
- The Balsams project faces a key state vote on May 21st.
- Add Nashville to the list of US cities considering public transport gondolas.
- Boyne Resorts closes on its purchase of seven mountain resorts, bringing its owned and operated portfolio to ten across North America.
- Jackson, Wyoming stakeholders mostly agree to site a new gondola in a public park at the base of Snow King Mountain.
- Loveland will hold a lottery for season passholders to win purchase rights for Lift 1 chairs.
- The final last chair for the Norway lift at A-Basin is Sunday.
News Roundup: Connected
- See for yourself is how Aspen parks its gondolas for the offseason.
- The supremely-talented James Niehues is painting an all-new map of Copper Mountain to debut next winter along with two new lifts.
- This month’s Poma Link spotlights good stuff from Europe…a new brand platform, details on Diamond Evo cabins and new sheave liners coming in 2019.
- The Leitner Ropeways 2017 annual report is packed full of photographs and drawings for 32 new lifts the company completed last year.
- The world’s tallest tubular lift tower goes up in La Paz at 194 feet!
- A man who said he was stuck on a Gore Mountain chairlift the night of April Fool’s Day is charged with making false statements.
- Two hackers say they were able to access the Doppelmayr Connect control system for an Austrian gondola in March, raising cyber security concerns. Doppelmayr says the issue has been fixed and no riders were ever at risk.
- The first Skyliner station is going up in Florida and it’s a monster that appears to have two separate turnarounds. A sea of lift parts is also on site at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
- Leitner unveils cabins clad with Swarovski crystals for the new Matterhorn 3S.
- Berkshire Bank pays propane, electric and tax bills to keep the heat on and prevent a tax sale as it asks a judge to allow a receiver to take over operations at the Hermitage Club.
- Doppelmayr names a new managing director set to take over later this year.
- LST combines wireless operator controls, 3D cameras, RFID tags and LED lighting to encourage safety bar usage and increase loading safety.
- The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management approve Sun Valley’s Cold Springs Canyon project.
- Big Sky teases an updated rendering of Ramcharger 8 and the first photo from the factory.
- I’ll end this week’s roundup with some interesting thoughts on recent ski resort sales and valuations from Mike Krongel.
La Paz Debuts Sixth & Seventh Urban Gondolas

Under blue sky at 12,000 feet, the President of Bolivia pressed start at high noon yesterday for Línea Blanca, the newest gondola in the world’s urban ropeway capital. Surprising thousands gathered for the occasion, President Evo Morales then proceeded to inaugurate the first section of the Sky Blue line, initially slated to open later this year.
The day was momentous as seven color-coded gondola lines now stretch contiguously throughout La Paz and El Alto with no significant gaps between them. From this weekend, Mi Teleférico (My Cable Car) includes approximately 140,000 feet of haul rope, 962 gondola cabins, 168 towers and 26 stations. The scale is almost unbelievable and there are still four more lines in development!
Built by Doppelmayr like most of Mi Teleférico, the White line services four stations with 131 10-passenger cabins. It’s capable of transporting 3,000 passengers each hour on a 13 minute trip between the Sky Blue (Celeste) and Orange (Naranja) lines. The initial section of Celeste was once planned to be part of a four-section White line which was later split to serve additional neighborhoods and prevent any one line from becoming too congested. Like most of the world’s largest gondola system, I’m pretty sure the White Line is made up of two separate haul rope loops and vault drive systems with cabins that rotate through both.