- Yellowstone Club and Homewood developer Discovery Land Company plans to revive the former Stagecoach ski area near Steamboat as a private ski and golf resort. A local realtor says Stagecoach Mountain Ranch has a Doppelmayr gondola on order.
- Loon Mountain rekindles plans to build a pulse gondola from RiverWalk Resort in Lincoln to the base of South Peak in 2025.
- MND’s upcoming product launch appears to be lift related.
- Hesperus, Colorado will remain closed next season.
- Nordic Valley will refurbish, not replace Apollo.
- Red River retires the outgoing Copper Chair early due to a mechanical issue.
- A paraglider in Austria dies after flying into a moving gondola. Two passengers in the gondola cabin were slightly injured.
- Mad River Glen details plans for Skytrac to add a mid-station to Sunnyside this summer.
- Mt. Bachelor installs a new electric motor on Northwest Express, allowing it to run full speed for the first time since January.
- A small forest fire briefly closes Timberline’s Jeff Flood Express.
- Parks Canada says no again to a Banff-Mt. Norquay gondola.
- White Hills, Newfoundland rope evacuates the Powder Line Express due to a mechanical issue.
- Powderhorn reopens the Flat Top Flyer after a 17 day unplanned closure.
- The Los Angeles City Council will vote today on a motion to halt approval of the Dodger Stadium Gondola.
- Arapahoe Basin moves to paid peak parking, may alter Ikon Pass access for next season.
- Sugarloaf load tests the newly shortened West Mountain double.
- Norway Mountain, Michigan begins selling season passes for reopening next season after seven years closed.
- FirstGroup, a large private operator of public transit, will take over operation of the London Cable Car.
Mt. Bachelor
News Roundup: Legoland Gondola
- Nordic Valley should know by March whether Apollo can be repaired or must be replaced. Bridger also remains out of service.
- Wasatch Peaks Ranch resolves its dispute with residents, can resume construction.
- Alterra closes a $3+ billion fundraising round with proceeds going to “building out existing properties plus possible property acquisitions.”
- At Mt. Bachelor, Northwest Express loses its electric motor, will run on diesel at reduced speed for much of the season.
- Big White’s Black Forest Express suffers a similar issue but is back on electric.
- A fan video shows construction has begun on a new Leitner-Poma gondola at Legoland New York.
- Gore Mountain plans to replace all 73 cabins on the Northwoods Gondola with new Sigma cabins at a cost of $3,055,977.
- Heavenly admits responsibility for leaving a guest stranded overnight on a gondola last week.
- A French tram where empty cabins crashed into the stations in 2021 will reopen next year with all new cabins and other upgrades.
- An unseated passenger incident at Mammoth makes global news.
- Politicians fight against a gondola in Los Angeles.
- The New Yorker runs a long-form story on Jay Peak’s EB-5 debacle.
- Bloomberg chronicles Vail Resorts’ trials and tribulations in the Northeast.
- Multiple lifts suffer down time at Park City.
- Roland Bartholet will depart as CEO of Bartholet this month but remain on the board.
News Roundup: Ten Figures
- Mont Sutton, Quebec becomes the latest resort to announce a loading conveyor addition this season.
- Mt. Bachelor says the new Skyliner Express is on track to open in December despite some shipping delays.
- Sunlight releases a fresh master plan with a series of lift upgrades and additions.
- Vail Resorts plans to wrap gondolas at multiple resorts with messages of diversity and inclusion.
- Breckenridge offers old Five chairs for sale.
- Park City says new, heavier cabins will require Red Pine Gondola towers to be reinforced, acknowledges the Sigma cabins list 2 degrees when empty.
- Aspen Mountain’s new Pandora’s lift will now be called Hero’s.
- Ikon Pass resorts invest over one billion dollars in improvements for this season.
- The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania names a new operator for closed Denton Hill.
- Multiple factors contributed to the deadly collision between a gondola cabin and drill rig at Tremblant this summer.
News Roundup: Reimagining
- The Canyons Village Management Association budgets $8 million for a Cabriolet replacement and $9.24 million toward a new gondola on the Canyons side of Park City Mountain.
- The Summit at Snoqualmie adds more chairs to Armstrong Express at Alpental.
- Mt. Bachelor offers Skyliner Express chairs for sale.
- Keystone releases an all new trail map showing the Bergman expansion.
- New owners of Holiday Mountain, New York will host a stakeholder meeting tomorrow to outline rebuilding plans.
- The Whistler Blackcomb Peak 2 Peak Gondola may open late for the summer due to an issue related to ice buildup.
- A former employee who fell 30 feet from a Riblet double without a safety bar while downloading accuses Stevens Pass of negligently operating an old, unsafe chairlift.
- Colorado reports a record 14.8 million skier visits.
- New Hampshire also reports strong results from last season.
- Vail Resorts says season pass sales are trending up 6 percent in units and 11 percent in dollars for next season.
- Le Massif will operate two of its longest lifts for a unique night time sound and light show this summer.
- Highland Mountain Bike Park to close its chairlift for a week to replace the communications line.
- Snowmass receives approval to replace Coney Glade with a realigned and extended detachable quad in 2024.
- Five years after closing, Deer Mountain, South Dakota will reopen as a private club.
News Roundup: La Fenster
- The 66th and final new lift of the season opens at Belle Neige, Quebec and is named for two Holocaust survivors who founded the ski area.
- Les Otten continues to pursue financing for The Balsams redevelopment.
- Wachusett will invest $1.3 million to overhaul the Minuteman Express this summer.
- A bill with $25 million for Cannon tram replacement advances in the New Hampshire Senate.
- Sun Peaks closes the Morrisey Express for three days and will close it again next week due to a power supply issue.
- Locals express frustration with Vail Resorts’ operation at Snow Creek.
- Mt. Abram’s Wayback Machine will be down all weekend due to an unspecified mechanical problem.
- Ditto for Snoqualmie’s Pacific Crest quad.
- Mt. Bachelor will operate a modified footprint in May due to construction of the new Skyliner six pack.
News Roundup: Changing Hands
- Vancouver’s transit authority begins the station design process for the Burnaby Mountain Gondola.
- Three Park City residents who own Pacific Group Resorts expect to close on Jay Peak next month.
- Burke Mountain may also soon be sold.
- Arapahoe Basin creates a podcast episode all about Lenawee Express construction.
- A Basin also explains why a big drop in skier visits is a good thing.
- Energy prices where many of the world’s lifts are operated and manufactured could spike eight fold this winter.
- Eaglecrest’s new gondola arrives in Alaska.
- Sugar Bowl joins the Mountain Collective.
- Hunter Mountain will sell chairs from the Z Lift next week.
- A thousand page report outlines negligence and poor management leading to deaths of 14 people on an Italian tramway last year.
- Dry Hill, New York gets new owners.
- The top station building for a 125 passenger aerial tramway partially burns in Switzerland.
- The Forest Service seeks public comments on Copper Mountain’s proposed Timberline six pack.
- The General Manager of Whitecap Mountains, Wisconsin assumes full ownership.
- A new neighborhood adjacent to Mayflower Mountain Resort will feature its own chairlift.
- Mt. Bachelor’s new Skyliner six pack will be D-Line.
- Loveland and Lookout Pass fly lift towers into place.
- British Columbia determines a volunteer ski patroller injured in a chairlift de-ropement is eligible for worker’s compensation.
- Leitner wins a four station urban gondola contract in Colombia.
- Here are some official and unofficial updates on the Palisades Tahoe Base-to-Base Gondola.
- Also an update on Thunder from Jackson Hole:
News Roundup: Teaser
- Copper Mountain proposes replacing the Timberline Express although a representative says there’s no timeline or model selected yet.
- An empty cabin falls from a gondola in South America.
- Palisades Tahoe tells the story of declining to purchase the White Wolf property for $400,000 and now paying the landowner rent where much of the Base to Base Gondola runs.
- A new book about prolific lift builder Hans Burkhart will be released this fall.
- The Highlands, Michigan teases something faster, quieter and warmer coming soon.
- Plattekill says the lightning-damaged Northface Express will be repaired before ski season.
- Someone allegedly gets left on the Icy Strait Point gondola system, is offloaded unharmed.
- Doppelmayr will build the new Skyliner Express at Mt. Bachelor.
- Big White offers the rare opportunity to own a gondola cabin as Lara’s Gondola transitions to all Sigma cabins.
- Idaho surpasses 2 million skier visits for the first time.
- Shawnee Peak, Maine reverts back to Pleasant Mountain.
- On the second anniversary of the second cable cut, Sea to Sky Gondola doubles the reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect to CA$500,000. Police also release a video of the incident and photo of the saboteur.
- Sea to Sky also sues the company that installed a security system between the two vandalism incidents, alleging it did not work reliably and allowed the cable to be cut the second time.
- Maine conditionally approves redevelopment of the ski area on Big Moose Mountain.
- Mayflower reaches 300 acres of ski run cleared, still plans lift service in late 2024.
- Lift mechanics at Nordic Valley put out a fire which may have been intentionally set.
- The newest lift in Tennessee will be called the Horizon Skyride and open soon.
- Indy Pass sales are up 52 percent in units and 67 percent in dollars over 2021-22 with more resorts to be added in the coming weeks.
Mt. Bachelor to Replace Idled Skyliner Express
The second six place chairlift in Oregon will debut for the 2023-24 ski season, Mt. Bachelor and parent company Powdr announced today. The larger detachable will increase capacity by 50 percent from the current Skyliner Express, which debuted in 1989 and has remained out of service this season due to technical issues. Mt. Bachelor and Doppelmayr will repair the aging high speed quad for the coming 2022-23 season before replacement begins a year from now.
“Since Skyliner went out of service the team and I, together with Powdr have been working parallel paths, first to try to get the lift repaired for the current season and second to either replace or repair the Skyliner lift in time for next winter,” noted President and General Manager John McCleod in a blog post. “As it turns out, we are going to do both,” he continued. “If there had been any way that we could have replaced Skyliner with a six-pack over the coming summer we would have done it, however by the time we began talking to lift manufacturers in January their production and installation schedules were fully committed for 2022.” The Lift Blog 2022 project count stands at 56 with 35 of those being new detachable lifts across North America.
Exact specifications for the new Skyliner are yet to be determined but it will become the largest lift investment in Mt. Bachelor’s history. A manufacturer was not publicly announced and Mt. Bachelor did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that.
News Roundup: First Chair
- Park City Mountain Resort tells elected leaders that visitation and lift wait times are flat compared to previous seasons.
- Sugarbush borrows parts from the Slide Brook Express to keep Super Bravo going. A blog post discusses lift staffing/lift maintenance and hints at future lift replacements.
- Waterville Valley shows off the first chair for its upcoming bubble lift.
- The hard work continues to repair immense damage at Sierra at Tahoe.
- Closed New York ski area Toggenburg is put up for sale.
- An unfortunate viral video shows a fight between security and Blue Mountain guests in the Orchard Express loading area over masks.
- Mt. Bachelor says the Skyliner Express will miss the entire season.
- Two Black Hawk helicopters crash land near the base of Snowbird’s Mineral Basin Express; no injuries reported.
- Despite an alleged $4.5 million theft, backers of the Mighty Argo Cable Car look to begin tower foundations as soon as this winter.
- Vancouver’s transit agency posts a Burnaby Mountain Gondola roadmap.
- A child is injured in a fall from a Camden Snow Bowl chairlift.
News Roundup: Consolidation
- Doppelmayr USA’s Katharina Schmitz joins the Ski Utah podcast to talk lift technology, next year’s projects and more.
- According to Forest Service documents, Alta plans to replace Sunnyside and Albion this summer with a single six place chairlift.
- Sierra at Tahoe President John Rice takes SAM podcast listeners through the harrowing Caldor Fire disaster and recovery effort.
- White Pine, Wyoming is sold to new owners.
- Kimberley announces the Northstar Express will be inoperable for the entire season following last month’s fire.
- Vail Resorts says Stevens Pass faces its most acute staffing problems, replaces the General Manager the same day as a Seattle Times front page story comes out.
- Nine people successfully catch a child who fell from a chair at Mt. Washington.
- Big White seeks more parking at the Black Forest base in advance of two planned lift installations.
- Steamboat repairs the Sunshine Express; Storm Peak Express lives up to its name.
- Mt. Bachelor will be without the Skyliner Express for an indefinite period.
- Keystone closes the River Run Gondola for three days of maintenance (now back open).
- Redevelopment of the Meadows parking lot at Steamboat could include replacing the Wildhorse Gondola with a higher capacity detachable.
- BigRock Mountain’s quad chair fundraising gets off to a strong start.
- Vail Resorts and Park City ski patrollers reach a tentative contract agreement, likely avoiding a strike.
- Despite the headlines, Vail Resorts’ skier visits are actually down from the last two seasons as of January 2nd. Ski school, dining and retail/rental revenue are all up from last year but still down significantly from pre-Covid 2019-20.
Lift Blog 
