Snowbasin will test solar-powered USB charging bars in five of its gondola cabins in partnership with Goal Zero.
Mt. Waterman in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Mountains reopens this weekend with 3 Riblet doubles operating for the first time in five years. The mountain will honor all tickets and passes sold since 2011!
Two years after his 6-year old daughter fell from a chair, a New Jersey man sues Campgaw Mountain and the town/county it’s located in for “careless and reckless” operation of a ski lift.
Sugarloaf just can’t catch a break. A power failure shut down most of its lifts for hours on their first Saturday with snow.
Did you know Doppelmayr operates a zoo with more than 400 animals at its headquarters in Wolfurt?
Speaking of Doppelmayr, their interactive installation map now displays 24 world record-breaking ropeways (click the red button on the bottom left.)
The average detachable chairlift has 108 carriers while the average fixed grip lift has 103. Most people would assume the longest lifts have the most carriers but that’s usually not the case. One of the reasons is longer spacing on detachable chairlifts and gondolas. Also many long fixed-grip lifts get designed with lower hourly capacities and bigger spacing to save money. In fact, only one of the top ten lifts with the most chairs is also among the ten longest. Each of the lifts below has more than 200 chairs and, not surprisingly, all but two are fixed-grips.
Cyclone – Sunrise Park Resort, AZ – 352 Yan triple chairs
West Mountain – Sugarloaf, ME – 280 Borvig double chairs
edited to add later: Town – Park City, UT – 264 CTEC triple chairs
Alpine – Copper Mountain, CA – 218 Yan double chairs
Porcupine– Snowbasin, UT – 212 Stadeli triple chairs
American Flyer – Copper Mountain, CO – 203 Poma quad chairs
What about gondolas? There are a bunch of them that stretch two-plus miles. Even so, no gondolas come close to making this list. The Sunshine Village Gondola has the most cabins in North America with approximately 175 CWA Omegas and the Whistler VillageGondola comes in at number two with 160 Sigma Diamond cabins. The average North American gondola has just 74 cabins.
Now, who can guess which lift has the most towers?
I”ve written a fewtimes about the longest lifts of different types but what about the shortest? The considerable expense of a detachable lift is usually justified for long profiles where speed makes sense. The average detachable lift in this part of the world is over 5,200 feet long while the average fixed grip lift is under 2,800 feet. However, the slow loading speed of a high-speed lift also make sense for beginners and foot passengers regardless of the length of the line. Hence there are plenty of very short detachable lifts that cost millions and take less than two minutes to ride. Below are the ten shortest ones in the US and Canada.
Beaver Creek’s Buckaroo Gondola is among the shortest detachable lifts but makes for a perfect beginner lift.
Below is a list of the top ten steepest lifts in the US and Canada. I calculated these using a ratio of slope length to vertical rise using data from the manufacturers. To give you some perspective, Snowbasin’s tram has the lowest ratio at 1.11 while Whistler’s Peak 2 Peak has the highest ratio at 120. The average lift is 4.65, meaning 4.65 feet of length to rise one vertical foot, on average. Only three of the top ten are chairlifts and only five serve ski-able terrain.
Snowbasin’s Mt. Allen Tram, built for the 2002 Olympics, is the steepest lift in North America.
1,165′ slope length x 1,047′ vertical rise = 1.11 length to vertical ratio
edit: Ski Area Management’s lift construction survey had the incorrect vertical for this lift. It is actually 510′ making the Mt. Allen Tram about half as steep as posted above.
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