- After just three weeks being open, the Disney Skyliner flies its one millionth guest.
- The new Park City trail map shows exactly where Over and Out goes.
- Poma inaugurates a lift full of superlatives in South Korea: the longest span between towers (4,000 feet) and tallest concrete tower (492 feet) for a monocable gondola.
- The Boston Seaport Gondola project is officially dead.
- Timberline Four Seasons Resort is scheduled to be auctioned November 19th.
- Aspen Skiing Company will try again for approval of the Ajax Pandora expansion.
- With an expansion coming, a dispute arises between Idaho and Montana over how much of Lookout Pass Ski Area each can lay claim to.
- The Forest Service approves Timberline Lodge’s request to replace Pucci with a high speed quad.
- In what could be a preview of an eventual lift sale, Alterra, Vail Resorts and Seven Springs all bid to buy the Hermitage Club’s snowmaking guns (Vail won.)
- The latest Pomalink newsletter previews Téléo, the first 3S urban gondola in France.
- Tampa Bay will study gondola transportation.
- Park City elected leaders discuss the same topic.
- Grafton SkyTour is now open.
- Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers visits Granite Peak to see how lifts are inspected and learn about a proposed expansion.
- The Sea to Sky Gondola replacement haul rope is spliced.
- A guy BASE jumps off a tram tower in Germany.
- The urban gondola promoter in Edmonton unveils its first proposed station location.
- The new Gould Academy T-Bar at Sunday River will be open to the public whenever four or more major chairlifts go on hold.
- The name of Manning Park Resort’s new Doppelmayr quad is Bear.
- Steamboat’s new gondola completes acceptance tests.
- The Swiss gondola which lost a cabin on October 20th reopens.
Poma
News Roundup: Win-Win
- A bill introduced in Congress would allow National Forests to use some of the fees collected from ski resorts to be used to expedite permitting for improvement projects.
- Poma will break ground on its first urban 3S in July.
- Lookout Pass intends to buy a second Skytrac quad for the Eagle Peak Expansion and relocate Chair 1.
- In addition to its Lake replacement project, Owl’s Head decides to also remove the Panorama double without a direct replacement.
- Breckenridge proposes building an infill chairlift on Peak 7 to improve skier circulation.
- Local electeds vote in support of an urban gondola to Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby Mountain campus.
- Retired Riblet double chairs bring in $146,000 for nonprofit organizations surrounding Schweitzer Mountain Resort.
- Towers supporting the world’s first eight passenger monocable gondola are history.
- This video shows how the Disney Skyliner’s innovative loading works. Every 9th gondola goes to a second turnaround, stopping about 50 seconds for unloading and another 1:10 for loading before rejoining the moving line. Pretty slick!
- The Hermitage Club files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing more than 200 creditors. A company called Restructured Opportunity Investors could lend the club up to $1.75 million for restructuring if approved by a bankruptcy court.
- Berkshire Bank wants the Hermitage receiver to stay on the job while a different bankruptcy court considers whether to initiate a Chapter 7 liquidation, which at least 187 club members now support.
- At Smugglers’ Notch, hundreds of trout take a spin up Sterling to their new home in Vermont’s highest pond.
- A Dutch-American joint venture proposes building an indoor snow park on a Northern Virginia landfill serviced by a two stage gondola.
- It sure looks like the Skyline Express is moving as part of the Brooks/Daisy replacement project at Stevens Pass.
- The haul rope is up on the Bretton Woods Skyway.
- Construction is well underway on Jackson Hole’s 10th chairlift.
News Roundup: Master Plans
- Sunrise Park Resort will develop a master plan to address infrastructure challenges and might build a chondola.
- Leitner submits the lowest bid for Mexico City’s upcoming Cablebus gondola system.
- Three months since it was rope evacuated, SeaWorld San Diego’s Bayside Skyride remains closed.
- The Indy Pass is up to 24 resorts.
- Leitner supplied 43 ropeway systems last year, 77 percent of which were detachable and 80 percent of which carry more than four passengers per carrier.
- Doppelmayr has a new WIR issue and the 2019 yearbook is out.
- Timberline’s bankruptcy filing will prevent a scheduled receivership hearing from taking place.
- The new Oakland A’s ballpark, which includes a gondola component, receives one key approval.
- Poma’s 2018 Reference Book is also out along with a new Pomalink highlighting Copper’s new combination lift.
- The largest Hermitage Club creditor is seeking an August auction.
- One of the biggest lost ski areas in Colorado, Cuchara, is now publicly owned with a master plan for two new chairlifts.
- Omega V may not yet be in the United States but miniature versions are already available.
- Ski resort employees are among the most likely to be injured on the job in the United States, behind only nursing home workers and motor home manufacturing employees.
- Cascade Mountain’s North Wall lift is for sale.
- White Pass’ old platter is still up for grabs.
- The Forest Service releases its environmental assessment of Whitefish Mountain Resort’s Hellroaring Basin project.
News Roundup: Atria
- Poma’s largest single lift contract ever is worth more than $110 million for a six station, 100 cabin 3S system in China.
- Whitecap Mountains still wants to build its first new lift since 1991 but doesn’t yet have funding.
- A 70 year old woman is okay after falling from Whistler’s new Emerald 6 Express last Saturday.
- Doppelmayr will introduce two new products at Interalpin: a new 3S cabin called Atria and something called Smart Ropeway.
- Mi Teleférico crosses the 200,000,000 passenger mark and is on track to transport more than 40 million by gondola this year.
- A feasibility study will look at whether Teton Pass could reopen as private company, nonprofit or co-op.
- West Mountain confirms a Partek quad will replace its last classic chairlift.
- Casper, Wyoming is unlikely to put six figures towards a Hogadon quad chairlift after all.
- The Glenwood Gondola reopens today with all 44 cabins.
- The Hermitage Club founder’s wife files for bankruptcy and lists $8.5 million in debt related to the closed ski resort.
- Mount St. Louis Moonstone’s Louis Express is up for sale.
- Arapahoe Basin is in talks with the Mountain Collective and others about possibly joining a multi-resort pass on a limited basis.
- A judge will consider whether to place Timberline Resort into receivership next Thursday.
News Roundup: More Cabins
- A live streaming webcam shows New Hampshire’s largest and fastest gondola going in at Bretton Woods. Some tidbits on the lift from the New Hampshire Tramway Board: line speed will be 6 m/s with 36 cabins and a design capacity of 2,600 using 62 cabins. SkyTrans is taking the retired B double and the gondola’s load test is slated for December 20th.
- Sunrise Park Resort abruptly ends all summer operations.
- In Europe, some pulse gondolas are on the way out.
- As it works to finalize its lease of Mt. Sunapee, Vail Resorts assures New Hampshire residents the company is in for the long haul and doesn’t plan any real estate development at the state-owned mountain.
- A stack up of at least nine cabins on the White urban gondola line in La Paz last Monday is deemed the result of human error. No passengers were on the lift at the time.
- Loveland receives more than 3,000 name suggestions for its upcoming detachable quad and will unveil a winner early next week.
- One of the longest gondolas in Mexico, opened seven months ago in Torreon, has already carried more than 325,000 passengers and will soon get nine additional cabins from Sigma.
- Go inside Poma’s newest French factory.
- Arapahoe Basin and Leitner-Poma commence pouring concrete and digging tower locations for the Beavers lift.
- As Winter Park continues testing digital chairlift advertising, sister resort Steamboat goes old school with bar mounted trail map ads.
- The widow of Loveland mechanic Adam Lee, who died underneath a carpet lift last winter, goes on CBS This Morning to talk about his workers compensation claim being reduced due to a positive marijuana test.
- Magic Mountain submits a permit application/profile for the Black Line Quad and hopes to commence construction next month.
- Copper’s all-new trail map is amazing…
Poma Releases 2017 Reference Book
The latest edition of the annual Poma Reference Book is out and features pictures, statistics and diagrams from projects the storied French manufacturer completed last year. Poma has now built more than 8,000 lifts in 80 countries and many of the newest gondolas and detachable chairlifts were built in Asia last year. One of them was among the first gondolas to utilize Sigma’s new Diamond Evo cabins with sliding doors in China. Other projects were realized as far away from France as Inner Mongolia, Vietnam and Myanmar. Another notable installation was a 10-passenger reversible tramway with double LPA grips in Ecuador.
Unfortunately not quite all of Leitner-Poma of America’s U.S. and Canadian projects were included in the book but there are some excellent images of three new six-packs built for Vail Resorts in Colorado as well as the supremely unique quad at Alta, Utah. As you scroll through the pages, note how many of Poma’s detachable lifts built outside North America in 2017 feature Direct Drive. LPOA plans to bring the innovative technology to Colorado for the first time in 2018.
Two New Lifts Are Coming to Magic Mountain
They call it “the road less traveled,” a classic Vermont mountain situated about half way between Stratton and Okemo. Now in its second year of new ownership, Magic Mountain has carved a successful niche offering top quality, affordable skiing despite a competitive landscape. Ski Magic LLC added a new carpet lift and restarted work on a new double chair to service intermediate terrain soon after taking over operations in late 2016. Fresh off a successful 2017-18 season with increased skier visits, investors plan to spend an impressive $1.6 million on key infrastructure this summer including two important new chairlifts.
In addition to completing the Green Chair project by early summer, Magic announced today that a Poma quad chair will replace the Black lift, which dates back to the middle of last century. The 1962 Pohlig double was once converted to a triple with Yan chairs before being turned back into a double in recent years. Today it sports towers from Pohlig, Hall and possibly Poma and the time has finally come to retire it.
The new Black Line quad is a 1986 Poma Alpha model which is being removed from Stratton this month to make way for the Snow Bowl Express. The predecessor will find a new home less than 15 miles away, becoming the workhorse base-to-summit machine at Magic. The incoming Green Chair is also from Stratton, a Borvig removed in 1995 called Betwixed. “When we heard Stratton was replacing their Snow Bowl lift with a new high-speed detachable, four-passenger lift, our investor group jumped on the opportunity to try and purchase their Poma fixed-grip quad”, said Geoff Hatheway, President of Ski Magic. “For our ski community, this lift is a huge upgrade that meets and manages our current and future growth expectations, better fulfills customer desires for quality, reliable lift service at Magic, and sustains our reputation as an area with both minimal lift lines and low on-slope skier density.” He went on to thank Stratton President and COO Bill Nupp for his help securing the lift’s future in Southern Vermont.
Black Line capacity will more than triple from 620 skiers per hour to 2,000 with the new lift unloading slightly higher to service all of Magic’s trails. The 148 chair lift will be over 5,000 feet long with approximately 1,500 feet of vertical rise. Magic’s 1971 Heron-Poma double will stay in the rotation and operate at peak times, meaning the Black quad, Red double, and Green double are all slated for service in the 2018/19 season. With Magic’s plans, at least seven new lifts will debut in Vermont next season, the most since 1995.
News Roundup: One Billion
- Despite competition from the Ikon and Epic passes, Peak Resorts reports sales of its Peak Passes are up 14 percent year over year through 4/30.
- HTI, the parent company of Leitner, Poma, Aguido, MiniMetro, Prinoth and more reports it built 75 ropeways in 2017 and exceeded $1 billion in revenue.
- The Hermitage Club opposes its primary lender’s motion to appoint a receiver and says it has found a financial firm willing to loan $26 million in restructuring capital. A key court hearing is scheduled for one week from today.
- TransLink’s ten year, $8.8 billion vision includes funding for Burnaby Mountain Gondola planning.
- Gondola fever spreads in Edmonton.
- A gondola is being looked at for Idaho Springs, Colorado along I-70.
- SE Group and the White River National Forest test an interactive storyboard as a public engagement tool for Beaver Creek’s McCoy Park Expansion. Comments are due May 29th and a decision is expected in September.
- The Forest Service proposes quickly approving the replacement of Arizona Snowbowl’s Agassiz triple with a 6,100 foot combination lift utilizing gondola cabins between every three or four chairs. Capacity would be only 1,200 passengers per hour.
- Magic Mountain commits to finishing the Green lift and weighs the future of its nearby Pohlig-Hall-Yan contraption.
News Roundup: Connected
- See for yourself is how Aspen parks its gondolas for the offseason.
- The supremely-talented James Niehues is painting an all-new map of Copper Mountain to debut next winter along with two new lifts.
- This month’s Poma Link spotlights good stuff from Europe…a new brand platform, details on Diamond Evo cabins and new sheave liners coming in 2019.
- The Leitner Ropeways 2017 annual report is packed full of photographs and drawings for 32 new lifts the company completed last year.
- The world’s tallest tubular lift tower goes up in La Paz at 194 feet!
- A man who said he was stuck on a Gore Mountain chairlift the night of April Fool’s Day is charged with making false statements.
- Two hackers say they were able to access the Doppelmayr Connect control system for an Austrian gondola in March, raising cyber security concerns. Doppelmayr says the issue has been fixed and no riders were ever at risk.
- The first Skyliner station is going up in Florida and it’s a monster that appears to have two separate turnarounds. A sea of lift parts is also on site at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
- Leitner unveils cabins clad with Swarovski crystals for the new Matterhorn 3S.
- Berkshire Bank pays propane, electric and tax bills to keep the heat on and prevent a tax sale as it asks a judge to allow a receiver to take over operations at the Hermitage Club.
- Doppelmayr names a new managing director set to take over later this year.
- LST combines wireless operator controls, 3D cameras, RFID tags and LED lighting to encourage safety bar usage and increase loading safety.
- The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management approve Sun Valley’s Cold Springs Canyon project.
- Big Sky teases an updated rendering of Ramcharger 8 and the first photo from the factory.
- I’ll end this week’s roundup with some interesting thoughts on recent ski resort sales and valuations from Mike Krongel.
News Roundup: On the Block
- Alterra’s David Perry says significant capital is likely be spent at Steamboat in 2018 and 2019 with phase two of the gondola rebuild and other big projects on the table.
- A Denver TV reporter heads to Texas for a two-part interview with the husband of Kelly Huber, the woman killed during a lift malfunction last year at Granby Ranch.
- Two loaded chairs collide at Owl’s Head, Quebec after the Green Chair was pressed into rare operation amid downtime on a neighboring high-speed quad. The 1972 Heron-Poma is the former Big Hitch lift from Stagecoach, Colorado.
- China Peak’s owner wishes he still had the $900,000 he spent to build a new lift last summer that can’t open with no snow.
- The new Peak triple was rope evac’d at Pats Peak last Monday, apparently due to a gearbox issue.
- Poma dedicates its newest factory in France.
- Disney Skyliner’s first tower is up and it’s tapered in the cool Wolfurt style.
- Ian Cumming, founder of Powdr and majority owner of Snowbird, dies at age 77.
- Granite Gorge’s chairlift opens for the season after a gearbox issue and other problems.
- Ariel Quiros officially settles with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $82 million, paving the way for the sale of Jay Peak and Burke Mountain.
- The world’s longest lift is open!
- Killington formally applies to replace the South Ridge triple with a quad chair, manufacturer unknown. The sample profile confusingly shows a Poma Alpha drive and Doppelmayr Eclipse return terminal.
- Teton Pass, Montana won’t reopen under current ownership and is up for sale.
- Skier visits have declined 30 percent in South Korea over the last five years and there are several lost ski resorts in the Olympic region.
- The Sawtooth National Forest tentatively approves Sun Valley’s project to replace the Cold Springs lift with a longer high-speed quad as soon as this summer.
- A chairlift will be studied studied for one of Alabama’s most popular state parks.
- Alterra names Mammoth veteran Rusty Gregory as the company’s first CEO.
