- Sunrise Park Resort considers building a combination lift.
- Mont-Sainte-Anne works diligently toward reopening its gondola with a reduced capacity of 30 cabins at first.
- A Vancouver developer scraps a gondola from its plans.
- Ontario’s more than 40 ski areas are ordered to close as part of a multi-week lockdown beginning tomorrow.
- The City of Sioux Falls orders a Skytrac quad for Great Bear Ski Valley.
- Fashion designer Rachel Zoe shares the story of her son falling from a Buttermilk quad chair on social media.
- Another fall at Sundance gets featured on Reddit.
- An 8 year old raises $10,000 to support a struggling nonprofit ski area in North Dakota.
- Snow King Mountain previews its gondola cabins which are being fabricated in France.
- Michigan’s Blackjack and Indianhead are both for sale with a listing price of $3.49 million.
- Blizzard Beach, chairlift and all, will reopen March 7th after a year-long closure.
- A group proposes connecting West Seattle to the regional transit network with a four station gondola.
- Steamboat creates a virtual gondola line powered by text message.
- With Europe’s ski industry struggling particularly hard, MND Group focuses on international markets including North America.
- The reimagined Bousquet Mountain opens with a new triple chair January 1st.
- Mission Ridge’s new summit lift opening later this winter will be called the Wenatchee Express.
- Lake Louise updates its trail map to show the West Bowl expansion, Summit lift and two future lift alignments.
- The New York Times checks in with ski resorts across the country about business during the pandemic.
Sundance
News Roundup: Next Up
- Robert Redford sells Sundance Resort to two private equity firms.
- 49 Degrees North completes the same retrofit as Chair 1 received on Chair 4, which will reopen today.
- Kamiscotia, Ontario rebrands as Mt. Jamieson.
- Kennywood Park removes rides to cut costs including its 1996 CTEC quad (sister park Lake Compounce did the same three years ago.)
- Saddleback is open! The trail map shows replacement Cupsuptic and Sandy lifts coming soon.
- A Utah entrepreneur wants to bring back a tram to Bridal Veil Falls.
- Vail Resorts looks to raise another $500 million from investors.
- Kelly Canyon seeks to replace Stony Mountain and Summit with one triple or quad.
- Sun Valley’s old Dollar double hits the market.
- Ditto for Ragged Mountain’s former Speak Mountain triple.
- Local officials approve Utah Olympic Park’s West Peak expansion and a 17 tower double or triple.
- Magic Mountain expects to have the Black Line Quad operational by MLK weekend.
- Leitner-Poma of America is hiring a Field Service Technician.
- The Burlington Free Press begins a three part series on the Jay Peak fraud case.
- Still no gondola as Mont-Sainte-Anne reopens.
- Two injured guests are airlifted following a chairlift fall at Park City.
- A formal feasibility study is the next step toward a gondola in Long Beach.
- Fatzer ships a new rope to the Sea to Sky Gondola.
News Roundup: Dangling
- Rope evac goes smoothly at Rabbit Hill, Alberta.
- Bridger Bowl’s new Virginia City lift sounds like a go for 2017.
- Leitner’s newest urban gondola system makes the New York Times.
- Sundance Ski Patrol rescues a second child in as many weeks dangling from Ray’s lift, which has four unload ramps.
- The CPTSB is still investigating at Granby Ranch and Quickdraw remains closed.
- Bruno’s lift at Timberline had a rough day today.
- Eaton Mountain won’t open for skiing this winter, but the dream still lives.
- The brand new LST Valar T-Bar at Cannon Mountain also remains closed, apparently due to multiple problems.
- Alpine Meadows and Squaw Valley are doing their best to weather Winter Storm Helena.
- Across the board, North America had a hugely successful holiday week.
- And yet another crazy dangler story from Colorado.
News Roundup: Climbing
- Suicide Six debuts new Leitner-Poma quad chair, Red River opens its new Doppelmayr quad.
- Sundance employees rush a ladder to a chair, climb up and pull a hanging child back up in just minutes. A man at Seven Springs fares worse.
- Two of Canada’s richest families still plan to build $3.5 billion ski resort near Squamish.
- Telluride Mountain Village Gondola turns 20.
- Jay Peak’s tram is back in action.
- The AP runs a story on future urban gondolas in the United States.
- Cannon Mountain’s new LST T-Bar goes down ahead of dedication.
- If you enjoy this blog, Ski Inc. is a must read.
Instagram Tuesday: Final Push
Every Tuesday, we pick our favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
Instagram Tuesday: Election Day
Every Tuesday, we pick our favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
Instagram Tuesday: Solo
Every Tuesday, we pick our favorite Instagram photos from around the lift world.
At Sundance, Doppelmayr Races to Replace Arrowhead Lift in 95 Days
Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort faced a challenge last fall. How could it find enough time to replace an aging lift that brings skiers to the mountain’s summit but also provides access to a hugely popular zip tour? With ski resorts increasingly becoming hubs for summer recreation, this is becoming a more frequent problem. Building a lift typically takes at least four months although there are exceptions. In 2015, Snow King Mountain replaced the heavily-used in both summer and winter Rafferty lift with a Doppelmayr quad in record time – under three months – between closing day of ski season and Independence Day weekend. This fall, Doppelmayr is making a similar push at Sundance to complete the new Arrowhead Quad.
Sundance’s other triple chair, Flathead, is actually ten years older than Arrowhead, which begs the question of why the latter will be modernized first. Built by Lift Engineering in 1985, the old Arrowhead could only download 240 guests per hour which no longer worked for summer operations. Furthermore, Yan used aluminum sheaves (with hubcaps!) on many of its later-model lifts which became prone to cracking. You’ll notice many Yan lifts of Arrowhead’s vintage sport upgraded line gear from Doppelmayr or Poma. Rather than upgrading piecemeal, Sundance announced last December it would replace the entire lift with a brand new quad chair. “With the amount of use Arrowhead Lift sees year-round, this upgrade is exciting to the skiing, snowboarding, ZipTour and summer programs that our guests love so much at Sundance,” director of mountain operations Czar Johnson said in a release announcing the project.
News Roundup: Downtime
- Buttermilk’s Tiehack Express had to be evacuated by rope Wednesday. The high speed quad returned to service Thursday afternoon.
- Montana Snowbowl had a rope evac last week too.
- Sundance will replace the Arrowhead triple with a fixed-grip quad likely built by SkyTrac next summer.
- Lift maintenance worker falls 25 feet at Black Mountain, NH.
- Leitner Ropeways wins a $9.2 million contract to build an 8-passenger pulse gondola in the northern Mexican city of Torreon. Doppelmayr was the only other bidder. Another Leitner project in Ecatepec, Mexico is more than 90% finished.
- Purgatory and Leitner-Poma celebrate the opening of the Legends Express.
- If you aren’t yet tired of seeing Park City’s new gondola, check out this incredible interactive video from Ski Utah. You can pan 360-degrees using your smartphone or tablet with the YouTube app while taking a virtual ride. It also works on a desktop but you have to pan manually using your mouse.
Skytrac Lifts
For most of the last 25 years, there has been no major American lift manufacturer. Sure, Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr/Garaventa have significant manufacturing here but they are indisputably European. Before the early 1990’s, prolific American lift builders like Riblet and Hall built more than 500 lifts each. Then Garaventa bought CTEC in 1992. Riblet built its last lift at Cooper Spur in Oregon in 2002 and closed the next year. The last remaining US manufacturer, Partek, sold to Doppelmayr in 2005. Ski Area Management’s headline at the time was “Then there were two.”
That all changed in 2010 when a group of CTEC veterans started Skytrac in Salt Lake City. One of them was Jan Leonard, the former president of Doppelmayr CTEC who “retired” in 2007. Skytrac’s first major project was a replacement drive terminal for a Hall double at Monarch Mountain in Colorado. In tribute to their first customer, Skytrac named its drive terminal models the Monarch and Monarch XL. Skytrac’s strategy seems to be to build simple and economical lifts that appeal to smaller resorts. All of their lifts feature the Monarch drive/tension terminal with a fixed return. One can’t help but notice the resemblance to CTEC’s lifts.
I couldn’t talk about Skytrac without bringing up their chairs. For some reason they abandoned the classic bail chair for a Euro-style chair. I think they look strange. As someone who operates lifts, I question the practicality of bumping a chair with no bail.
