Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
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Mi Teleferico
News Roundup: Pulse
- New owners of Alpine Mountain, PA say they can only afford to keep one chairlift and plan to sell two others.
- Mi Teleférico’s upcoming Purple and Orange UNI-G stations look super cool.
- Dismantled skyride at Western Fair in London, Ontario may go to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
- Ski Blandford is insolvent and may close.
- Doppelmayr USA is hiring construction laborers for Beaver Creek, Copper and Snowbasin projects; Leitner-Poma of America needs help at Breck, Keystone and Vail.
- A mile-long gondola will connect Jerusalem’s New and Old cities beginning in 2021. The Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy site attracts 130,000 visitors every week.
- Poma lands $100 million design-build-operate-maintain contract for phase one of urban gondola system in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
- Sunday River’s stricken Spruce triple went to Lost Valley.
- Stoneham’s Chinook T-Bar is going to Troll, BC.
- A new double chair will replace Pallavicini soon at Arapahoe Basin.
- Facing another six-figure landslide repair, Howelsen Hill looks toward new chairlift.
Instagram Tuesday: Drone
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
News Roundup: Replacements
- Suit filed against Ski Liberty by family of boy who dangled from a chair for seven minutes after mis-loading.
- Mi Teleférico’s four gondola lines transported 194,971 passengers last Wednesday, an impressive single day record.
- Squaw|Alpine now wants an extension of permit for replacing Hot Wheels.
- Doppelmayr remembers past CEO Artur Doppelmayr, who died May 12th.
- Apparently the Utah Olympic Park is adding two new chairlifts this summer, although I am still trying to confirm.
- Steamboat’s gondola rebuild is taking longer than expected and reopening has been pushed back two weeks to July 15th.
- Vail Resorts will re-use chairs and towers from Keystone’s Montezuma Express in building the new Red Buffalo Express at Beaver Creek.
- Saddleback Mountain Foundation needs $11.2 million to purchase Maine’s third largest ski area, including $3.2 million to replace the Rangeley lift with a fixed-grip quad. So far, the group has only raised a fraction of that amount.
- Sunday River’s new Spruce Peak triple will be a Doppelmayr Tristar, Boyne Resorts’ fourth.
- Schweitzer works toward $6-8 million Snow Ghost replacement.
- “It is not rocket science about lift geometry,” Aspen Council member says in frustration re: Lift 1A. “There is enough expertise in this community to know where a lift goes.”
- Mont Ripley offers $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of arsonist(s) who damaged lift.
- Longtime Whistler Blackcomb COO and Peak 2 Peak visionary Dave Brownlie is leaving to pursue new opportunities just seven months into Vail ownership.
Instagram Tuesday: Pulling
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
News Roundup: Progress
- NPR devotes almost six minutes of airtime to Mexico City’s innovative new gondola.
- Ski Areas of New York members to host six free lift maintenance trainings this summer across the state.
- Jay Peak made $9 million this year, Burke Mountain lost almost $2 million and $4.9 million in tram upgrades are underway with completion scheduled for next month. Follow along with Moving Parts|A Tram Story.
- Unfortunate winch cable accident sends Peruvian chair to the ground at Snowbird.
- Friends of Squaw Mountain, Maine get ~$2.4 million quote from Skytrac to replace a base-to-summit Stadeli double, which has not operated since 2004.
- Follow this thread for sweet construction photos from the world’s largest urban gondola network.
- Crews load test the new Gatlinburg Sky Lift. Cool to see non-galvanized EJ chairs with wood slats! Anakeesta’s lift is not far behind.
- Noting plans to “definitively enter the US market,” LST Ropeways is hiring a design engineer.
- New York State Fair gondola may not happen.
- Blacktail Mountain is for sale for $3.5 million.
- Brian Jorgenson tells Skytrac why lift installation is his favorite kind of flying.
- Here are the full specs for Leitner’s new station and Sigma’s new Diamond Evo cabin.
- Apex Mountain Resort sells to new ownership group eyeing capital investments.
- New D-Line six-pack in Ischgl will cost a whopping $13.1 million.
- Leitner Ropeways publishes 2016 Annual Report (Leitner-Poma of America installations are featured in a separate Poma Reference Book.)
Instagram Tuesday: Load Test
Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
News Roundup: Interalpin
- Revelstoke homeowners aren’t happy lift development has stalled for almost ten years now. The resort’s response identifies master plan lifts 1 and 11 as the highest priorities but notes construction of them is subject to market demand.
- In an interview, new Crystal Mountain owner John Kircher says he wants to build a second gondola to Campbell Basin.
- NY State Fair gondola continues to be targeted as an example of government waste.
- Whaleback’s T-Bar project is a go. The lift came from Plattekill, NY and will be installed by SkyTrans.
- New Gatlinburg Sky Lift looks to be almost finished.
- Poma reaches agreement to build new gondolas in Vietnam with the first next-generation Sigma Diamond EVO cabins introduced yesterday at Interalpin. The new cabins offer more natural light and feature doors that slide rather than opening out.
- Move over D-Line: the new Leitner Station is here.
- LST gets another detachable contract.
- Leitner launches urban gondola in Berlin.
- Skier visits at Vail Resorts were down 2.8 percent this season but lift ticket revenue increased 7.4 percent.
- Mi Teleférico opens $1.5 million Operations Control Center with 22 people monitoring 1,300 surveillance cameras on 66 screens and lightning detection system for four gondola lines.
- Purgatory will add a mid-station to its Needles triple this summer.
News Roundup: Inaugural
- The Aspen Times dives deep into lifty life.
- President of Peru inaugurates long Poma gondola to an ancient fortress.
- Mi Teleférico’s $75 million Blue line moved 41,000 passengers on opening day Friday.
- Mt. Lemmon’s main chairlift has been closed all season following tree damage from an early-season storm.
- Galaxy at Heavenly and High Country at Waterville Valley also see extended downtime.
- Emirates Air Line to close for annual week of maintenance.
- The most powerful man in skiing isn’t sold on bubble chairs (plus many other insights from Vail Resorts.)
- Whistler Blackcomb, Jackson Hole and Big Sky make CNN’s most extreme lifts.
- New Zealand’s first chondola on track to open this year.
- Permit filed Monday shows another probable station for rumored five-stage Disney World gondola system (updated potential alignment here.)
- Doppelmayr gets underway building the new Gatlinburg Sky Lift; aggressive timeline shoots for late April opening. Leitner-Poma is building a chondola across the street.
- Two-stage gondola in one of the world’s oldest cities looking more likely.
- Two skiers injured in fall after tree hits their gondola cabin.
- 130 rope evacuated after Italian chairlift de-ropes in crazy winds.
- Snowbasin and Sugarbush join the Mountain Collective, former member Whistler-Blackcomb goes Epic with Stowe to follow.
- Bogus Basin plans to replace Morning Star…in 2020.
Going Blue: Fourth Gondola Line to Launch Friday in La Paz
The world’s largest urban gondola network leaps forward this week with the addition of the Línea Azul (Blue Line) in the Bolivian twin cities of La Paz and El Alto. Since debuting with just one line in May 2014, the state-owned Mi Teleférico (My Cable Car) system has now transported more than 75 million passengers on its Green, Yellow, and Red gondolas. In 2015, My Cable Car committed $450 million to build six additional lines through 2020, and it ordered two more last year. Mi Teleférico has quickly become one of Doppelmayr’s largest customers, exclusively utilizing the Austrian company’s ten-passenger monocable detachable gondola technology.
Construction commenced on Línea Azul in late May 2015 with cable pulling (by drone!) wrapping in September 2016. The first cabin launched later that month with Bolivian President Evo Morales taking the inaugural ride in November. After three more months of terminal buildout and system testing, the Blue line’s five stations are ready for show time. Línea Azul is La Paz’s longest to date, with 208 CWA Omega IV-10-LWI cabins that will cover an impressive 32,700 feet per revolution beginning March 3rd, just 645 days after groundbreaking.
Like the Red, Yellow and Green lines, the Blue line is actually two lifts with two separate haul ropes and two drive systems with cabins transferring between them. Nearly all of the Mi Teleférico network will be built this way, with multiple haul rope loops forming single “lines” with two to five stations each (most have either three or four.) Multi-stage gondolas operating with this principle in North America include Whistler Village and Excalibur at Whistler Blackcomb, Panorama at Mammoth and Revelation at Revelstoke Mountain Resort.
