- The Staten Island Economic Development Corporation secures $212,000 to study the feasibility of a gondola connection to Bayonne, New Jersey.
- The Forest Service green lights Alta’s big plans for a new Baldy tram, Flora lift, Wildcat detachable and replacement for Sunnyside.
- The Colony’s master plan now includes two new lifts along Pinecone Ridge at the center of Park City Mountain.
- Copper is selling parts from the Flyer and the Eagle detachables. Must act fast!
- Crested Butte says the three lift Teo 2 expansion, if approved, would likely be built over approximately five years.
- Snow King’s gondola and terrain expansion public process moves along at a glacial pace.
- Mountain Capital Partners, the company behind Arizona Snowbowl, Hesperus Pajarito, Purgatory and Sipapu, will operate Nordic Valley and add it to the Power Pass.
- Doppelmayr breaks ground for its eleventh cable-propelled automated people mover, set to open in 2021.
- Spokane’s paper traces the history of three lifts that have graced Riverfront Park, including a new gondola.
- The Forest Service seeks feedback on Arizona Snowbowl’s chondola proposal.
- An ice storm apparently causes a track rope to jump out of a saddle at Jay Peak, closing the tram and nearby lifts indefinitely.
- As legal wrangling continues, nothing seems out of the ordinary this week at the Hermitage Club except for notices on the clubhouse doors.
Spokane
Lift Profile: Spokane Falls SkyRide

The $2.5 million Spokane Falls SkyRide is one of only a handful of lifts in North America owned by city government. Doppelmayr CTEC built the pulse gondola in 2005 to replace a Riblet version that debuted in 1974. Riders board at the drive station in downtown Spokane’s Riverfront Park. The gondola travels down through the park, across the Spokane River and under a four-lane bridge before turning around. All this happens in only 1,120 feet. It takes 15 minutes to ride round-trip at a painful 150 feet per minute (the design speed is 600 fpm.) The gondola’s turnaround station on the far bank of the river does not have loading/unloading or even an operator. A ticket for the SkyRide costs $7.50 and it operates year-round.

Spokane’s original Riverfront SkyRide, built by Riblet, ran in a similar alignment from 1974 to 2005. (Riblet built over 500 lifts in a shop three miles away.) The Riblet version of the SkyRide had open air cabins but the new one has 15 CWA Omega 6-passenger cabins. Because the cabins are enclosed, the SkyRide shuts down when the temperature exceeds 85 degrees, which happens fifty days a year in Spokane. Last year Doppelmayr developed a plan to retrofit cabins with larger opening windows but so far these have not been installed. Despite this issue, over 70,000 people ride the SkyRide every year.