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Solitude
Finishing Up in the Snow at Solitude
Since I last posted about Solitude’s Summit Express project in September, workers from Solitude and Highlander Lift Services have made a ton of progress, completing 19 towers and the top terminal. Comm-line is being installed and the haul rope is on a spool at the bottom terminal location. I say location because the lift doesn’t actually have a bottom terminal yet. Walking up to the summit today, it’s obvious why the top got priority. Not only is it the drive, the top is also located on a ridge at over 10,000 feet. These guys are lucking out with the weather to be building terminals in November with just inches of snow on the ground instead of feet. The bottom terminal will be at 8,690′ in a more accessible spot and should go up quickly. The biggest components for it are already up there and the operator house is installed.
The Summit Express is a Doppelmayr detachable quad replacing a double chair which was one of the first twenty lifts CTEC built back in 1982. The replacement high speed quad’s lift line is completely new and very steep with a bunch of challenging tower locations. At one point, the lift line crests a ridge and jogs sharply down before continuing up again. This lift reminds me of Peruvian at Snowbird (which is only a few miles away) with some very steep sections alternating with flat ones.
Instagram Tuesday: Doppelmayr New & Old
News Roundup: London’s Gondola
- The non-profit organization that bought Soldier Mountain in Idaho from Bruce Willis wants out after three years. Now the entire ski area is for sale for just $149,000 (that’s the amount the organization owes its bank.) Included are two Stadeli double chairs built in 1970 and 1974. I’ve also heard Soldier has at least one lift from nearby Sun Valley in storage for expansion. The ski area’s master plan includes four new lifts that we may never see.
- Doppelmayr and Skidata think they have perfected gondola loading with the “easy boarding gate.” The system uses multiple ‘pods’ with turnstiles to enter. Flat screen monitors display how many spaces remain in each pod and guests self-select where to go. As gondola cabins enter the loading area, full pods are assigned to cabins with LED lights directing riders. I’m sure it works but why would a ski area want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to do what a $9 an hour lift operator can do?
- 22 towers fly at the Hermitage Club, soon to be home to the only 6-person Doppelmayr bubble lift in North America. Ironically the same helicopter flew towers from the Hermitage Club’s old triple the very next day at West Mountain in New York.
- Lots of new pictures of Sipapu’s new quad chair and an update on their blog.
- Drone footage of Crystal Mountain, Michigan’s “Backyard” expansion with eight new runs served by a used CTEC triple chair.
- Leitner-Poma takes the Facebook plunge. Their counterparts in Europe also have a pretty cool page!
- Peak Resorts, the fourth largest operator of lifts in North America, secures a $15 million line of credit for “resort development and acquisitions.” Might we see a new lift at one of their 13 resorts next summer?
Building Solitude’s Summit Express
It felt like spring at Solitude Mountain Resort, not because of the weather but because the Summit lift replacement project is really just getting underway. The new Doppelmayr detachable quad is in an entirely new alignment that is extremely rugged. There was obviously a ton of blasting and dirt work just to get to this point. Once the Summit Express is complete, Solitude will have four high speed quads and only three fixed-grip lifts left.
Highlander Lift Services is in charge of this project rather than crews from Doppelmayr or Solitude. Most of the tower forms are in but I did not see any concrete in the ground. The top terminal is just a hole and the bottom isn’t much further along. The lift is going to have around 20 towers and only the crossarms and lifting frames have arrived so far. Unfortunately it looks like these guys are going to be building a lift in the snow.
Solitude Construction Update
Deer Valley closed on its purchase of Solitude Mountain Resort in May and announced they would replace the Summit double with a new Doppelmayr detachable quad. The new Summit will be in a new, longer alignment that is easier to access from Apex Express. I checked out the progress last week.
The old lift is completely removed and stored in the Moonbeam parking lot. It looks like the Thiokol double will be used elsewhere (the last lift Solitude removed ended up at Canyons Resort.) Trees are gone from the new lift line and a lot of earth work has been done although nothing has been built yet. Highlander Ski Lift Services appears to be building the new quad. With 13 new lifts projects and counting, Doppelmayr is stretched pretty thin. I did not see any parts for the new lift but I am sure they will be arriving soon.
News Roundup: SkyTrac Gets a Lift
- Pomerelle Mountain near Twin Falls, Idaho announced they will replace their 39-year old SLI double chair with a new SkyTrac triple. This is SkyTrac’s only publicly announced project for this summer. Apparently they have another contract for a lift in Arizona. Leave a comment if you know where.
- Saddleback, Maine has listed their Rangeley lift for sale for $350,000. They had previously listed just the drive terminal for $200k.
- Steamboat’s new master plan including two new six packs approved by Routt County.
- State of Pennsylvania opens bidding for a new quad chairlift at the troubled Laurel Mountain State Park.
- Jackson Hole’s new Sweetwater 8-passenger gondola approved by the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
- Sugarloaf removes the damaged drive terminal for the King Pine lift which rolled back in March to make way for a new Doppelmayr terminal.
- Group wants to reopen Mt. Ascutney in Vermont. It’s tough to run a ski resort with no lifts, however. The mountain’s high speed quad was sold to Crotched Mountain and other lifts went to Pat’s Peak.
- The Pope rides one of Bolivia’s new Doppelmayr urban gondolas. The entire line had to be closed until he finished his ride.
Top Ten Steepest Lifts in North America
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.
1. Mt. Allen Tram, Snowbasin, Utah – 1998 Doppelmayr 15-passenger tramway
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.
2. Mt. Roberts Tram, Juneau, Alaska – 1996 Poma 60-passenger tramway
3,098′ slope length x 1,746′ vertical rise = 1.77 length to vertical ratio
3. Lone Peak Tram, Big Sky Resort, Montana – 1995 Doppelmayr 15-passenger tramway
2,828′ slope length x 1,450′ vertical rise = 1.95 length to vertical ratio
4. Sulphur Mountain Gondola, Banff, Alberta – 1959 Bell 4-passenger bi-cable gondola
4,498′ slope length x 2,292′ vertical rise = 1.96 length to vertical ratio
5. Honeycomb Return, Solitude Mountain Resort, Utah – 2002 Doppelmayr CTEC quad
1,300′ slope length x 655′ vertical rise = 1.98 length to vertical ratio
News Roundup: Planned Openings
- Lifts from two resorts in Vermont arriving to be re-used at West Mountain, New York.
- Solitude Mountain Resort will join Park City and Alta in getting new trail maps painted by James Niehues for 2015-16.
- Reopening planned for another long-lost ski area in Wyoming. The last one to get new life was Sleeping Giant near Cody.
- Mont Blanc’s two new Doppelmayr aerial trams open for business, taking riders up 7,000 vertical feet in ten minutes.
- Up in British Columbia, Jumbo Glacier Resort is dead, Valemount Glacier Destination is not.
- A really, really bad Photoshop job of a gondola proposed to be built in Amsterdam.
- A 2.2 mile gondola project is moving forward in a Malaysian national park despite the objections of environmentalists.
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