Every Tuesday, I feature my favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
Soelden
News Roundup: Behind the Scenes
- If anyone’s curious what the pilot who flies your lift towers does in the winter, here’s your answer.
- Austrian skier falls from lift, through car windshield.
- Anakeesta will open the world’s first fixed-grip chondola this summer.
- The Wintry Mix Podcast‘s two latest episodes are worthy listens.
- Skytrac introduces phased lift replacement program.
- Doppelmayr stops work on urban gondola in Venezuela, inks more orders from China and Bolivia.
- Vail-Stowe rumors fly. The Street says no deal, yet.
- Child falls from lift at Ski Sundown. Another drops 26 feet from the Purgatory Village Express.
- CNBC profiles North Korea’s Masikryong ski resort, which has five lifts but apparently no snowplows.
- Gondola eyed to link downtown Boulder with the University Hill neighborhood.
- Ford’s 90-second Super Bowl commercial features a (broken) Hall double.
- Group seeks investors to fund ambitious reopening and expansion of Fortress Mountain, AB with multiple detachable quads.
- Another lift to be replaced with a carpet.
Soelden Announces Record-Breaking Giggijochbahn
Soelden, Austria unveiled its record-breaking gondola today called Giggijochbahn, to open next winter with the ability to carry 4,500 passengers per hour. The ropeway will feature Doppelmayr’s next-generation D-Line components and two modern terminal buildings, one featuring panoramic images of the Alps and the other showing off ropeway technology behind real glass. The top terminal will have parking for most of the lift’s 134 CWA Omega IV-10-D cabins. Innsbruck architect Johann Obermoser designed the stations in collaboration with Soelden and Doppelmayr.
This will be an impressive system by any measure with 3,022 feet of vertical rise and an 8,688-foot slope length. Travelling at the record-breaking speed of 6.5 m/s (1,280 fpm) the ride will take just 8.87 minutes. The fastest monocable gondolas in the world currently top out at 1,212 fpm. The Giggijochbahn will have 26 towers and a 62 mm haul rope driven by a ~2,180 HP electric motor. The biggest innovation will be the capacity – reaching 4,500 passengers per hour, per direction. I believe 3,600 is the current capacity record for a monocable gondola, a record shared between many lifts including the 10-passenger Gondola One at Vail and the 15-passenger Village Gondola at Mammoth.
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