- Caledon Ski Club is set to replace its Blue Mountain triple with a new Doppelmayr quad this summer.
- Showdown rope evacuates 87 riders from Payload on a busy Saturday.
- Lutsen ropes down 25 from the Caribou Express and has it back in action within hours.
- The New Hampshire Business Review profiles legendary resort developer Les Otten.
- The privately-held conglomerate behind Leitner Ropeways, Poma, Leitner-Poma of America and Skytrac announces the highest revenue in the company’s history for 2018: €1.02 billion. The group built approximately 100 ropeways around the world last year, up from 75 in 2017.
- The State of Washington is poised to grant $750,000 of public money to Mt. Spokane for the Northwood project.
- Edmonton is one step closer to building an urban gondola.
- The Nordic Valley expansion project is in limbo.
- Vail officially owns two more ski resorts.
- Palm Springs reopens its tramway after storms cause $4 million in damage and lost revenue.
- The Forest Service tentatively approves alternative 4 of the ambitious California Express gondola project.
Palm Springs Tramway
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.
A Giant Tramway from Desert to Mountain
I escaped Jackson Hole’s early snow this weekend and headed southwest, destination tramway number fourteen on my hit list. One I should have gotten to long ago, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway is the king of North American jig-backs with a ridiculous vertical rise of 5,873 feet. That’s second highest in the world, though the German number one was retired in April with a replacement not scheduled to open until December, giving SoCal’s tram the loftiest lift worldwide title for the moment. At 2.5 miles, it’s just 317 feet longer than Jackson’s Big Red but with almost 1,800 more vertical in Chino Canyon. A modest sign points to the tram from a traffic light 670 feet above sea level on the edge of Palm Springs and the access road (Tram Way) and the tramway combine to lift visitors to 8,516 feet on Mt. San Jacinto. Of all the lifts I have ridden, this one rivals the best, both in terms of the core machine and the impressive operation surrounding it.
Francis Crocker, an employee of the California Electric Power Company first envisioned the tram while on vacation to Palm Springs in 1935. It took almost thirty years and a war for his dream to come alive, beginning with the creation of the Mount San Jacinto Winter Park Authority by the California legislature in 1945. Construction began in 1960 and from the day California Governor Pat Brown cut the ribbon in September 1963, the tram was a hit. It would be the first of seven large aerial tramways for VonRoll in the United States.
Instagram Tuesday: Pop
Every Tuesday, we feature our favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNoGIVtATy6/?tagged=cablecar
News Roundup: South America
- The White River National Forest conditionally approves new lifts at Arapahoe Basin including a Beavers chair, Zuma surface lift, replacements for Molly Hogan/Pallavicini and removal of Norway.
- The Science Channel profiles the Palm Springs Tramway, which has the largest vertical rise of any lift in North America.
- Two more American urban gondola ideas pop up: Uptown Gondola in Cincinnati and Honolulu Aerial.
- Austrian ski pass merger creates a ticket valid for a record 925 lifts.
- Dubai will get a gondola to serve a $1.6 billion artificial peninsula called Blue Waters Island.
- China reverse-engineers the Doppelmayr Uni-G, with poor results.
- A consortium led by Poma beats out Doppelmayr in the bidding to build a two-stage urban gondola over water in Guayaquil, Ecuador with a second line in the works.
- South America now makes up 17 percent of Doppelmayr’s global revenue, approximately equal to North America.
- Peru’s President recently visited the ancient fortress of Kuelap, where Poma is 90 percent finished with a new 8-passenger gondola. The only problem? The haul rope hasn’t been installed yet. So crews slung cabins from towers for the Presidential photo-op to make it look closer to being done!
- 2017-18 reopening of The Balsams is an open question.
- Burke Mountain Academy will buy a T-Bar to replace the 1956 Mountain Poma at Vermont’s Burke Mountain in 2017.
- Echo Mountain sells to a 27-year old D.U. grad for $3.8 million.
- Jay Peak Resort seeks loan in “extremely tight cash situation” after $2.5 million payment to Doppelmayr/Garaventa for tram upgrades.
- Montana Snowbowl begins work on TV Mountain expansion, to include a used Riblet from Snowmass.
- The Vancouver Sun reveals Vail courted Whistler Blackcomb for months, will cut season pass prices in half.
This is an open thread. Feel free to leave a comment on anything lift-related.
News Roundup: New Manufacturer?
- Brian Hepler wants to start a ski lift manufacturing business that builds exclusively double chairlifts for Midwestern mountains under the name Sno Technology.
- Skytrac built a custom Skyride in Sacramento this spring that proved extremely popular during the California State Fair.
- The Poma/Sigma-built British Airways i360 observation tower opens tomorrow.
- Whaleback completes a $100,000 capital campaign to install a West Side T-Bar this fall.
- Nicholas Clesceri, VP of Maintenance at the Palm Springs Tramway and owner of NJC Advisers talks tram maintenance, rime ice and urban ropeways.
- The initial section of the first detachable in the Caribbean will open in the first quarter of 2017.
- Check out photos and video of a four-section system with two haul ropes, glass-floor cabins and Leitner Ropeways’ first gondola aligned in the shape of a triangle, set to open this month at a nature park in Spain.
- Two mechanics were airlifted from Bogus Basin Monday after falling from the Showcase lift while performing line work. Please keep them in your thoughts.
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