Park City
News Roundup: Washout
- Teams from Mt. Hood Meadows have repaired and re-opened the Shooting Star Express that was damaged by falling trees over Thanksgiving. Now the storm recovery turns to the Mt. Hood Express, which received ten feet of snow in one week.
- White Pass has more snow than it did at anytime last winter but no one can get there. Crews have been working around the clock to repair washouts that cut off the resort from both sides of the Cascades Dec. 9th. The ski area will re-open Wednesday.
- The Berry family says it’s close to a deal to sell Saddleback to a new owner that hopes to open by late January. Passholders can get a refund or gift card now.
- Aspen’s 1971 SLI double on Shadow Mountain will be replaced with a detachable quad or gondola in 2016 or ’17. The top terminal will move 200 feet to the southwest resulting in a slope length of 3,600′ with 1,390′ vertical and a capacity of 1,200 skiers per hour.
- Park City and Canyons are now one thanks to the Quicksilver Gondola but judging by snow conditions it’s going to be awhile before you can ski between the two.
- James Coleman opens new quad chairs at Purgatory (Leitner-Poma) and Arizona Snowbowl (SkyTrac) with more new lifts on the way.
- Doppelmayr secures $27 million European government loan for research and development in Austria.
- Cherry Peak Resort opens today! It’s the first all-new ski facility in North America since Tamarack debuted back in 2004.
Instagram Tuesday: Big Span
Park City Launches Quicksilver Gondola Cabins
What $50 Million Looks Like at Park City
Tomorrow will mark 11 months since Vail Resorts announced their massive $50 million project to connect Park City Mountain Resort with Canyons to create the largest ski resort in the country. A significant chunk of that investment went to Doppelmayr USA to build two new detachable lifts and relocate another. All three projects are nearly finished before there’s even much natural snow on the ground. In addition to the three new lifts, Park City built a huge new restaurant called Miner’s Camp, added significant snowmaking and did a lot of painting & re-branding.
When I visited today the new King Con six-pack was spinning and the Motherlode Express was also finished with chairs on the line. Crews were pulling com-line at the Quicksilver Gondola and finishing up the angle station. Check out pictures of all three projects below. Park City is making snow on both sides of the mountain under sunny skies this weekend and all three new lifts are scheduled to open by the holidays.
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News Roundup: Pulling Rope
- Pomerelle’s new SkyTrac triple gets a name: E-Z Rider. Unfortunately 15 lifts already have the exact same name! Where’s the creativity?
- Speaking of questionable lift names, Summit Express towers are in at Solitude as are Sunshine Quad towers at Okemo.
- Lutsen’s new gondola is a beauty.
- The Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest approves replacements of two Riblet doubles at Stevens Pass. Kehr’s chair will be a replaced by a fixed-grip triple and Brooks by a shorter fixed-grip quad. Stevens saved the old Jupiter quad (a 1993 CTEC removed in 2013) presumably for one of these locations. The Forest Service also approved construction of a new rope tow!
- “On paper it works, in reality we’ll see,” says FIS race director Markus Waldner of the rush to finish the South Korean ski resort that will host FIS races this February and the 2018 Olympic Downhill. Doppelmayr has reportedly sent extra workers in hopes of completing the lift system by January 10th.
- Take a ride on the hottest chair in Canada.
- You can buy a complete Borvig double chair right now with your credit card for only $65,000. (For anyone curious it’s from Hidden Valley, NJ which is re-opening this winter with two new Partek lifts.)
- Whistler-Blackcomb is not a fan of the proposed Garibaldi at Squamish resort along the Sea to Sky Highway and 30 minutes closer to Vancouver than Whistler. Some background: the same developer invested $200 million to bail out Revelstoke Mountain Resort in 2008 and owns an NHL team. The master plan for Garibaldi has 18 lifts including a gondola, two six packs and four high speed quads. I put this proposal in the same category as Jumbo Glacier and Saddle Mountain.
- Ski Cooper near Leadville, CO wants to build a new T-bar with a pod of 5 trails but not for 3-4 years.
Instagram Tuesday: Catwalks
Finishing Three Lifts at Once in Park City
Doppelmayr is on a roll at Park City with haul ropes spliced and tensioned for the new King Con Express and Motherlode Express lifts. In case you’ve been living under a rock, King Con is a brand new Uni-G model six pack with a loading carpet while Motherlode is a recycled Garaventa CTEC detachable quad moved from the King Con line. Both are nearly finished 50 days before opening day.
Over at the Quicksilver Gondola, which connects Park City to the former Canyons Resort, the drive terminal is getting a loading platform and what looks like a small cabin maintenance building. A bunch more cabins have arrived from Switzerland; the highest number I saw on a gondola was 61. The angle station is going up now with a crane setting bullwheels today. This station is going to be massive and I imagine the large tire sections will follow this week.
In other news, Payday Express, the last of Park City’s detachables with white paint received its new red and silver paint job last week along with Flat Iron next to the new gondola. Just about every lift at the combined resort has been painted this summer with the exception of a few fixed-grip lifts on the Park City side. Check out more pictures of the construction after the jump.
Park City King Con Express September Update
Like the Quicksilver Gondola, Park City’s new King Con Express is just about ready for a haul rope. Both terminals are nearly complete and all the towers have been ready to go since August. The chairs are still down in the base area waiting to be assembled. As far as I can tell, grips and operator houses have not been delivered yet. I’m guessing Park City is getting the pre-fabricated CTEC-style houses for both King Con and the Gondola.
Cabins and Towers for Park City’s Quicksilver Gondola
The most anticipated new lift of the year is starting to look like the really big gondola that it is. The drive terminal for Park City’s Quicksilver Gondola is largely complete and all 27 towers were set last weekend. Doppelmayr opted to use the same K-Max heli they’ve been using for other projects even though gondola towers are huge. The biggest towers – 23 and 24 – were actually set by crane. In fact, a two-mile long road was built just to access T21-23 on the edge of Thaynes Canyon.
The towers that were flown were split into in as many as six pieces because of the limited capability of the K-Max at 9,000 feet. At least two towers have 16-sheave trains that must weigh a ton. Some towers were flown without catwalks and railings just to make weight. I was surprised Doppelmayr did not use a heavy-lift helicopter like the Chinook but I’m sure it all came down to price and what was available.
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