The new Motherlode under construction July 14, 2015.
In addition to the new Pinecone Gondola, Vail Resorts is doing a major lift shuffle at Park City Mountain this summer. The King Con high speed quad (1993 CTEC) is being replaced with a brand new Doppelmayr six pack. King Con is being refurbished and relocated to replace Motherlode higher up on the hill. More on that in an upcoming post.
Both terminals for the new King Con are largely complete as of this week. The Uni-G model terminals will be dark red and silver to match the new Park City Mountain logo and brand which will be unveiled on July 29th. Rumors are that the word resort will be removed from the PCMR name and the new logo will be a dark red version of the Canyons infinity logo. Most of the existing detachable lifts at Park City have already been painted in the new color scheme.
King Con Six will re-use the CTEC tower tubes from the old high speed quad. New tower heads are being assembled in the base area parking lot. The bottom terminal will have a loading carpet as is standard with all new detachable lifts at Vail Resorts these days. The lift is a top-drive, bottom-tension configuration. Doppelmayr EJ six passenger chairs are already on-site. All three of Park City’s new lifts will have Redaelli haul ropes which have also been delivered.
It’s not hard to figure out where the new gondola goes. This is looking down from the top of Crescent.
I found myself near Park City this week and had to check out all the construction creating Utah’s largest ski resort. It’s one thing to read Vail Resorts’ press releases touting $50 million in improvements but it is quite another to see hundreds of workers scrambling to complete a long list of projects spread over 7,300 acres. This post will focus on what is perhaps the most exciting part – the new Pinecone Gondola that will link Park City to Canyons.
PCMR terminal and Snow Hut Lodge under construction.
The 8,200′ long gondola starts adjacent to Park City’s Silverlode six-pack where a new Snow Hut lodge is also being built. The terminal and first two tower footings have already been poured. From this point, the line crosses over a modest ridge and descends before beginning the climb to Canyons in earnest. There is a break halfway up Pinecone Ridge where the liftline moderates before a steep section to the summit. Most of the holes for the towers in this portion have been dug including the two breakover towers just before the ridge-top mid-station. I was surprised at how sharp the midstation’s angle will be – around 30 degrees.
Park City and Jackson Hole just started building new lifts but trail map illustrator James Niehues is already finishing illustrations for their 2015-16 trail maps. Niehues planned to retire last year but apparently some projects are too good to pass up. There is no question Mr. Niehues is the best in the business and I hope he keeps painting as long as possible.
Jackson Hole’s new Teton lift will open up a handful of new trails in between the Apres Vous and Casper areas this coming winter. Mr. Niehues is repainting the portion of the map that was previously known as The Crags while the rest will remain true to his original 1991 painting.
Jackson Hole’s new map showing the Teton lift pod. Photo Credit: James Niehues
Vail Resorts contracted James to paint an all-new, unified map of Park City Mountain Resort and Canyons Resort which will operate as one from 2015-16. I was surprised and pleased to hear they were going with a painting instead of the awful computer-generated maps that Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Northstar have gone to. Niehues admits he had to get creative with portions of the map to show 37 lifts and 7,300 acres of terrain acres in one view. The final result below is impressive and shows why paintings make more compelling trail maps than satellite photos.
Illustration for the new Park City Mountain Resort. Photo Credit: James Niehues
Yesterday was the last day anyone will ever ski at a place called Canyons Resort. For those who have been living under a rock, most of the land that both resorts sit on has been owned by Talisker Corporation for decades. Most of that time Canyons was operated by American Skiing Company and Park City by Powdr Corporation. In 2013, Vail Resorts came to Utah, signing a long-term deal with Talisker to operate Canyons. Two years earlier, Powdr Corp. had forgotten to renew their lease to the Talisker land that PCMR sits on. Talisker evicted them and after a lengthy legal battle, Powdr Corporation sold Park City Mountain Resort to Vail last September.
Now under a single operator, the two resorts are about to become one. Construction is beginning now on an interconnect gondola that will connect the Flat Iron lift at Canyons with the base of the Silverlode lift at Park City. The Doppelmayr gondola will have an angle station on the ridge that separates the two resorts, from which guests can ski off either side. The gondola will be approximately 7,000 feet long with 27 towers and 60 eight passenger CWA cabins. The Canyons station will be at about 8,400 feet next to White Pine Lake in The Colony. The angle station will be just below 9,000 feet on Pine Cone Ridge with the Park City station a thousand feet lower at Snow Hut Lodge. Vail is also building a six pack, detachable quad and new lodge on the Park City side this summer.
James Niehues paints the new PCMR trail map.
The combined lift stats for the new PCMR are impressive. A single ticket will include 37 aerial lifts including 4 gondolas, 6 six-packs, 9 high speed quads and 18 fixed grip chairs. Nearly 85 percent of the resort’s lifts will be GaraventaCTEC or Doppelmayr. Only 5 Yans will remain in addition to the Red Pine Gondola, one of Utah’s only Poma-built lifts. Combined uphill capacity will be 78,410 skiers per hour. (For comparison Vail’s is just under 55,000.) The total lift length is 29.5 miles with 35,607 feet of vertical rise. There will be 78 loading/unloading stations and 625 lift towers. I tried but failed to calculate an exact number of chairs/gondola cabins but it will be somewhere on the order of 3,000.
It will be interesting to see how thoroughly Vail can merge two large resorts in one summer. I haven’t heard yet whether they plan to keep Park City’s white and red branding or start fresh. Canyons still has lifts painted in their old green color scheme from the ASC days as well as new orange branding. I have to believe it will take a few years to paint every lift and change every trail sign. Regardless, Park City will be a 7,300 acre monster ski resort next year. No word yet on what Big Sky plans to do with its Biggest Skiing in America™ trademark.
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