Timberline Four Seasons

News Roundup: Alterra

Peter Landsman20 Comments
  • Neighbors aren’t happy about light and noise from Woodward Park City, though the new area was able to turn down the start alarm on the Hot Laps chairlift.
  • Mt. Baldy in Thunder Bay, Ontario plans to buy a new quad chair for next season.
  • The City of Durango considers whether building a new chairlift at Chapman Hill makes sense at an increasingly marginal elevation for natural snow.
  • Spout Springs will remain closed this season and is still for sale.
  • Mexico City begins work on Cablebús Line 2, a Leitner system with 7 stations, 308 cabins and 59 towers.  (Line 1 is Doppelmayr and already under construction.)
  • Seven people are injured and a gas station destroyed when a gondola haul rope being installed in Medellín, Colombia lets loose.
  • Alterra closes on Sugarbush and Win Smith transitions from owner to employee.
  • A French paraglider is lucky to survive being caught in a platter lift‘s haul rope.
  • To address crowding concerns, Crystal Mountain eliminates walk up lift ticket sales on weekends and holidays, effective immediately.  The resort will also no longer offer group discounts, gift card ticket redemptions or rental/ticket packages on weekends and holidays.
  • New York State opens its newest gondola in Lake Placid, called the SkyRide.
  • Geyser Holdings offers $4 million for the Hermitage Club and Boyne Resorts separately bids $3.6 million for the Barnstormer lift.  An auction could be held next month.
  • Skytrac’s Hilltrac people movers now feature Sigma cabins.
  • Montana Snowbowl opens its Snow Park expansion for the first time.
  • The owners of Perfect North Slopes plan to build at least one new top-to-bottom lift at newly-acquired Timberline, West Virginia this summer.
  • The State of Maine postpones a decision on a loan guarantee related to the sale of Saddleback Mountain.
  • A creditor claiming to be owed $62 million files to foreclose on Granby Ranch.
  • Edmonton urban gondola backers release robust ridership projections.
  • A gondola from Boise to Bogus Basin would be too long and cost too much to be practical.

 

Timberline Sold to Perfect North Slopes

Peter Landsman7 Comments

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The largest closed ski area in the Mid-Atlantic will reopen for the 2020-21 ski season pending the successful closing of a deal announced today.  Chip Perfect, President and CEO of Indiana’s Perfect North Slopes, was the second highest bidder for West Virginia’s Timberline Four Seasons Resort with a bid of $2.12 million.  The top bidder at the bankruptcy auction, First Asset Holding, accepted a $30,000 payment to transfer the winning bid to the Indiana ski area.  Mr. Perfect was elected to the Indiana Senate in 2014 and once served as President of the Midwest Ski Areas Association.  Like Timberline, Perfect North Slopes opened in the 1980s and relies on snowmaking to deliver a quality skiing experience.  The Indiana mountain is highly respected with a 40 year history of sustained capital investment.

Timberline Four Seasons closed in the middle of last season and filed for bankruptcy protection on April 30th, listing $2.8 million in liabilities.  The thousand foot tall mountain’s three Borvig and Heron-Poma fixed-grip lifts are in varying states of repair.  A 2016 tower failure which injured nine people was blamed on Timberline’s failure to address a known issue identified by Borvig shortly after construction.

A fresh start will be welcome in Davis, West Virginia, which is also home to state-owned Canaan Valley Resort.  “We are excited to bring our extensive ski area operation experience to the Timberline property,” said Chip Perfect, speaking for his new management group.  “The property has great potential, a stunning West Virginia setting and some fabulous terrain and ski runs.”  West Virginia is currently down to four operating ski areas and the planned return of a fifth is fantastic news.  “Having Perfect North Slopes operating Timberline is great news for skiers and snowboarders and great news for West Virginia’s ski industry,” said Joe Stevens, director of the West Virginia Ski Areas Association. “It’s a top-notch, reputable organization that’s done an outstanding job at developing its ski area in southeastern Indiana, and I look forward to working with them to grow their West Virginia ski operation.”

News Roundup: That Was Fast

Peter Landsman10 Comments
  • After just three weeks being open, the Disney Skyliner flies its one millionth guest.
  • The new Park City trail map shows exactly where Over and Out goes.
  • Poma inaugurates a lift full of superlatives in South Korea: the longest span between towers (4,000 feet) and tallest concrete tower (492 feet) for a monocable gondola.
  • The Boston Seaport Gondola project is officially dead.
  • Timberline Four Seasons Resort is scheduled to be auctioned November 19th.
  • Aspen Skiing Company will try again for approval of the Ajax Pandora expansion.
  • With an expansion coming, a dispute arises between Idaho and Montana over how much of Lookout Pass Ski Area each can lay claim to.
  • The Forest Service approves Timberline Lodge’s request to replace Pucci with a high speed quad.
  • In what could be a preview of an eventual lift sale, Alterra, Vail Resorts and Seven Springs all bid to buy the Hermitage Club’s snowmaking guns (Vail won.)
  • The latest Pomalink newsletter previews Téléo, the first 3S urban gondola in France.
  • Tampa Bay will study gondola transportation.
  • Park City elected leaders discuss the same topic.
  • Grafton SkyTour is now open.
  • Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers visits Granite Peak to see how lifts are inspected and learn about a proposed expansion.
  • The Sea to Sky Gondola replacement haul rope is spliced.
  • A guy BASE jumps off a tram tower in Germany.
  • The urban gondola promoter in Edmonton unveils its first proposed station location.
  • The new Gould Academy T-Bar at Sunday River will be open to the public whenever four or more major chairlifts go on hold.
  • The name of Manning Park Resort’s new Doppelmayr quad is Bear.
  • Steamboat’s new gondola completes acceptance tests.
  • The Swiss gondola which lost a cabin on October 20th reopens.

News Roundup: Powerhouse

Peter Landsman4 Comments

News Roundup: Changing of the Guard

Peter Landsman5 Comments

News Roundup: Companies

Peter Landsman5 Comments
  • All of a sudden, the Aspen Lift One project finds itself in jeopardy.
  • The City of Branson ends its exclusive agreement with a would-be gondola developer after years of false starts.
  • Two companies bid to replace the Barrows double at Howelsen Hill in 2020 or 2021.
  • Disney Skyliner attendants will start at $12 an hour.
  • Competing resorts comment on the New Hampshire Vail acquisitions as Attitash touts major lift maintenance investments.
  • A jury decides Wachusett Mountain should pay $3.3 million to the family of a child who was injured in a 30 foot fall from the Polar Express in 2015.
  • The Placer County Board of Supervisors unanimously approves the California Express gondola project.
  • Utah Olympic Park breaks ground on the first phase of its major expansion with a second new lift to follow in two to five years.
  • A study concludes Teton Pass, Montana would need to attract 15,000 visitors annually to reopen as a viable resort.
  • Big changes are coming to the EB-5 visa program, which some ski areas have used to pay for big ticket improvements in the past.
  • Timberline’s owners hire an investment bank to sell the ski area.
  • Berkshire Bank and others slam the latest Hermitage restructuring plan.
  • TransLink gets serious about building a 3S in metro Vancouver.

News Roundup: Privatization

Peter Landsman12 Comments

News Roundup: Auction

Peter Landsman7 Comments

 

News Roundup: Master Plans

Peter Landsman14 Comments

News Roundup: More Towers

Peter Landsman17 Comments
  • MND Group subsidiary LST will build its third US ropeway this summer, a T-Bar replacing this Hall one in McCall, Idaho.
  • Copper confirms the new American Flyer will get more towers to “support and optimize” the lift.
  • This incredible timelapse of the longest lift in the world gets a lot of attention on Reddit.
  • US skiers and snowboarders came out 59.1 million times this season, a nearly 11 percent increase over 2017-18 and the fourth best participation ever.
  • The National Ski Areas Association launches a charitable foundation to grant money to resort employees to attend conferences such as LMS and RMLA.
  • West Virginia’s closed Timberline Four Seasons Resort files for bankruptcy.
  • A Vermont sheriff can no longer find Hermitage Club founder Jim Barnes to serve him with legal papers related to the ski resort’s closure.
  • In Serbia, Poma will realize the longest gondola in the world at 5.6 miles in two sections.
  • The year round, high speed quad-served bike park experiment in New Zealand gets a $3.3 million government bailout to keep operating.
  • If you want a retired Steamboat Gondola cabin, Sunshine Polishing is acquiring 105 of them.
  • Bogus Basin’s old Riblet chairs are selling for an average price of $1,775 apiece.