Vail Resorts

One Park City and What’s Next for America’s Largest Resort

Peter Landsman9 Comments

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Vail Resorts’ $50 million endeavor to connect Utah’s two largest resorts last summer was one of the biggest infrastructure investments at a U.S. resort since American Skiing Company created The Canyons in 1997.  That summer twenty years ago, ASC bought so many lifts for The Canyons (8!) they had to split the order between three lift manufacturers to get them all done in time for the 1997-98 season. It’s hard to even imagine that happening today. Still, Vail did manage to build a two-stage gondola, add a six-pack, move a detachable quad, construct a mid-mountain lodge and re-brand an entire company over the last eight months.  I got to check out the results this week.

Park City Mountain is now the undisputed largest ski resort in America with 37 lifts and 300+ trails spread across 7,300 acres (it’s worth noting that Big Sky Resort still owns, and seems to have no problem using, the Biggest Skiing in America® trademark.)  The first thing I noticed is Vail did its best to remove all references to Powdr’s old Park City logo and the Canyons name, replacing them with the red infinity branding.  Despite these efforts, everyone still seems to call the northern half of the complex Canyons, or perhaps worse, The Canyons. Thousands of signs were changed over the summer and every employee got a new uniform. Most of the lifts were painted red although a few remain in black and orange.

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The new Park City has 37 lifts moving 78,000 skiers per hour across 11 square miles.
The flagship of “One Park City” is the Quicksilver Gondola and neighboring Miners Camp lodge. Vail Resorts took the design they used for the Tamarack Lodge at Heavenly and Zephyr Lodge at Northstar and brought it east, demonstrating how the company excels at standardizing everything across its resorts. (Pepsi, never Coke, and safety bars on every chair at every mountain are other examples.)

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Vail Resorts Acquires Wilmot Mountain

Peter Landsman1 Comment

trailmapToday, Vail Resorts announced its acquisition of Wilmot Mountain near Chicago, adding to the company’s portfolio of regional resorts in the Midwest.  Vail bought Mt. Brighton near Detroit and Afton Alps near Minnesota’s Twin Cities back in 2012.  The addition of Wilmot brings Vail up to twelve resorts in Colorado, California, Michigan, Nevada, Utah and Australia. The company will announce specific improvements in March, but today’s release mentions bringing state-of-the-art lifts to Wilmot Mountain.  The ski area currently operates eight chairlifts – four doubles, three triples and a quad – built by Riblet, Hall and Borvig in the 1960s and 70s.  This is Vail Resorts’ fifth new ski area in three years and it will be interesting to see where they go next.

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News Roundup: 115.4 mph

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  • Mt. Hood Meadows updates skiers on the windstorm that sent two hundred-foot hemlock trees onto the Shooting Star Express the night of November 17th.
  • Vail Resorts announces $100 million in capital improvements across its mountains for 2016/17 including replacement of the last major fixed-grip lift on Vail Mountain.  The new Sun Up Lift #17 will be a detachable quad, manufacturer unknown.
  • SkyTrac splices the Humphrey’s Peak Quad at Arizona Snowbowl.
  • The latest from Sugarloaf on the new King Pine.  An apparent Doppelmayr delay will push opening until late-December. Luckily (or unluckily) there’s no snow anyways.
  • Utah’s new ski resort, Cherry Peak, announces a December 21st debut with two lifts.
  • Doppelmayr’s 10th  3S gondola, the Penkenbahn, is ready to go.
  • A nonprofit ski area in Ontario that’s been unable to operate its quad chair since 2011 due to a 2006 Doppelmayr service bulletin hopes to crowdfund $80,000 for repairs.
  • West Mountain celebrates their new lift with fireworks rather than skiing and already has the drive terminal up for another new-used lift next summer.

What $50 Million Looks Like at Park City

Peter Landsman3 Comments

Tomorrow will mark 11 months since Vail Resorts announced their massive $50 million project to connect Park City Mountain Resort with Canyons to create the largest ski resort in the country.  A significant chunk of that investment went to Doppelmayr USA to build two new detachable lifts and relocate another.  All three projects are nearly finished before there’s even much natural snow on the ground.  In addition to the three new lifts, Park City built a huge new restaurant called Miner’s Camp, added significant snowmaking and did a lot of painting & re-branding.

The Quicksilver Gondola is a month away from uniting Canyons with Park City.

When I visited today the new King Con six-pack was spinning and the Motherlode Express was also finished with chairs on the line.  Crews were pulling com-line at the Quicksilver Gondola and finishing up the angle station.  Check out pictures of all three projects below.  Park City is making snow on both sides of the mountain under sunny skies this weekend and all three new lifts are scheduled to open by the holidays.

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Finishing Three Lifts at Once in Park City

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Finally the relocated King Con got some new paint for its new home.
Finally the relocated King Con got some new paint.  Haul rope is on too.

Doppelmayr is on a roll at Park City with haul ropes spliced and tensioned for the new King Con Express and Motherlode Express lifts.  In case you’ve been living under a rock, King Con is a brand new Uni-G model six pack with a loading carpet while Motherlode is a recycled Garaventa CTEC detachable quad moved from the King Con line.  Both are nearly finished 50 days before opening day.

King Con Express with a new haul rope and freshly-painted tower tubes.
King Con Express with a brand haul rope and freshly-painted tower tubes.

Over at the Quicksilver Gondola, which connects Park City to the former Canyons Resort, the drive terminal is getting a loading platform and what looks like a small cabin maintenance building.  A bunch more cabins have arrived from Switzerland; the highest number I saw on a gondola was 61.  The angle station is going up now with a crane setting bullwheels today.  This station is going to be massive and I imagine the large tire sections will follow this week.

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Top of King Con with the new gondola in the distance.

In other news, Payday Express, the last of Park City’s detachables with white paint received its new red and silver paint job last week along with Flat Iron next to the new gondola.  Just about every lift at the combined resort has been painted this summer with the exception of a few fixed-grip lifts on the Park City side.  Check out more pictures of the construction after the jump.

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Checking Out Vail’s New Lift 2

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New towers with old tower tubes.

Vail Resorts is in the midst of a major program at its four Colorado resorts to replace first-generation detachable quads with new six packs and gondolas.  Up for a refresh this summer is Chair 2 at Vail, the Avanti Express.  The 1989 detachable quad is being replaced with a Doppelmayr six-pack.  This follows the replacement of the Vista Bahn with a Leitner-Poma 10-passenger gondola and the Mountaintop Express with a Doppelmayr six-pack last summer.  Vail has been saving parts from these lifts to keep others of the same vintage going.  Lifts 7, 8, 11 and 21 are the only 1980s detachables left at Vail and will likely be replaced in the next few years.  Northwoods and Game Creek are the oldest two lifts of any kind left at Vail, dating back to 1985.

The bottom terminal will have a loading carpet.
The bottom terminal will have a loading carpet.

The new 2 is in the same alignment as the old and re-uses its tower tubes.  New, wider crossarms were flown into place a few weeks ago with the exception of towers 24 and 25 at the summit.  Concrete work for both terminals is finished except for the loading carpet pit at the bottom terminal.  Steel for the terminals has been delivered.  New chairs are staged at the summit and the haul rope spool sits at tower 9.

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Middle portion of the line with the haul rope ready to go.

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Vail Resorts to Add Lift Wait Times to EpicMix

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The EpicMix app will show lift wait times in minutes for major lifts at Vail's four Colorado resorts.
The EpicMix app will show lift wait times in minutes for major lifts at Vail’s four Colorado resorts.

Last week, Vail Resorts announced their EpicMix mobile app will provide guests with live lift wait times for 55 lifts at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone starting this winter.  Vail Resorts will use their app to track guests through lift lines to provide a crowd-sourced estimate called EpicMix Time.  The technology is currently being tested at the company’s Perisher resort in Australia.  Vail compares the system to Google’s Waze app, which crowd sources traffic and accident information for Google Maps.  The company plans to expand the technology in future years to all its resorts and other places where guests have to wait in line such as restaurants and rental shops.

Vail's Gondola One can move an impressive 3,600 skiers per hour but sometimes even that isn't enough.
Vail’s Gondola One can move an impressive 3,600 skiers per hour but sometimes even that isn’t enough.

Other resorts have tried to provide lift waiting times in the past.  For years, Whistler-Blackcomb has had lights on its lift status signs that indicate whether a lift line is less than 5 minutes, 5-15 minutes, or more than 15 minutes.  I suspect Whistler’s system is powered by lift operators calling a dispatcher which is a less than perfect solution.  Vail’s technology will be much more accurate and timely.

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Six Companies That Operate 589 Ski Lifts

Peter Landsman5 Comments

Like many industries, much of the ski business is controlled by a handful of large companies. There are six such businesses in the Americas that operate more than 50 lifts each.  Their combined 589 lifts account for one fifth of all the lifts in North America and almost a third of the VTFH (vertical transport feet per hour.)  The top three operators are, as you would expect, Vail Resorts, Boyne Resorts and Intrawest.  But there are others including Mammoth Mountain, LLC which operates 55 lifts at four different ski areas in California and Powdr Corporation which has 68 lifts in five states.

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Vail Resorts doesn’t just own lots of lifts; the lifts they operate are bigger, newer and faster than average.  This winter, the company will operate 15 gondolas and tramways, 75 detachable chairlifts and 83 fixed grip chairlifts.  These numbers for Vail Resorts do not even include the lifts at Perisher, the company’s newest acquisition in Australia.  If you put each lift at each of Vail’s resorts end to end, the total length would be 115 miles.  The average lift owned by Vail Resorts is 21.5 years old, six years newer than the national average.  56 percent of Vail’s lifts were built by Doppelmayr and CTEC, 14 percent by Leitner-Poma.  Vail accounts for 11.4% of all the vertical transport capacity on the continent, with a total VTFH of 353 million!

Number of lifts for the six biggest operators and total life length in miles.
Number of lifts for the six biggest operators and total lift length in miles.

The second biggest resort operator is privately-owned Boyne Resorts, which has 126 lifts at 11 mountains.  Boyne doesn’t actually own most of the properties it operates; instead holding long-term leases through CNL Lifestyle Properties.  The lifts Boyne operates are older and smaller than Vail’s.  They include 30 detachable chairlifts and 85 fixed-grip chairs.   Doppelmayr and CTEC built 45 percent of Boyne’s lifts, followed by Riblet at 20 percent.  Boyne accounts for 5.3 percent of the total VTFH in North America or 162 million.

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Vail Resorts Unveils Park City’s New Brand

Peter Landsman1 Comment
Park City Mountain's new trail map!
Park City’s new trail map!

At an event this afternoon, Vail Resorts officially launched the brand for America’s new largest ski resort.   The new Park City logo combines the Canyons infinity symbol with a new Park City red color and the tagline “There is Only One.”  This is not terribly surprising from a company whose flagship resort is branded “Like Nothing on Earth.”  CanyonsResort.com now redirects to the new Park City website, which ironically is the old Canyons site.  No doubt the new logo and colors look sharp and will serve them well for years to come.  Many of the lifts have already been repainted in the new red and silver color scheme in preparation for this winter.

The new Park City logo takes inspirations from the now retired Canyons logo.
The new Park City logo takes inspirations from the now retired Canyons logo.

Also unveiled today was a new trail map painted by James Niehues.  The working name for the new gondola (Pinecone Gondola) has been scrapped in favor of Quicksilver Gondola in an ode to Park City’s mining heritage.  I liked the Pinecone name; it was chosen for the ridge the gondola crosses but I imagine Vail was worried about confusion with the existing Red Pine Gondola.  Quicksilver fits well with the mining names already in use at Park City such as Silverlode, Bonanza, Motherlode and Payday.  The new lodge at the base of the Quicksilver Gondola will be called Miner’s Camp.  Although it has mostly disappeared, the Canyons name lives on as the northern base area has been renamed Canyons Village.

McConkey's six pack in the process of being repainted into the new Park City red and silver color scheme.
McConkey’s six pack in the process of being repainted into the new Park City red and silver color scheme.

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Park City’s New King Con Six

Peter Landsman1 Comment
The new Motherlode under construction July 14, 2015.
The new Motherlode under construction July 14, 2015.

In addition to the new Pinecone Gondola, Vail Resorts is doing a major lift shuffle at Park City Mountain this summer.  The King Con high speed quad (1993 CTEC) is being replaced with a brand new Doppelmayr six pack.  King Con is being refurbished and relocated to replace Motherlode higher up on the hill.  More on that in an upcoming post.

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Both terminals for the new King Con are largely complete as of this week.  The Uni-G model terminals will be dark red and silver to match the new Park City Mountain logo and brand which will be unveiled on July 29th.  Rumors are that the word resort will be removed from the PCMR name and the new logo will be a dark red version of the Canyons infinity logo.  Most of the existing detachable lifts at Park City have already been painted in the new color scheme.

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King Con Six will re-use the CTEC tower tubes from the old high speed quad.  New tower heads are being assembled in the base area parking lot.  The bottom terminal will have a loading carpet as is standard with all new detachable lifts at Vail Resorts these days.  The lift is a top-drive, bottom-tension configuration.  Doppelmayr EJ six passenger chairs are already on-site.  All three of Park City’s new lifts will have Redaelli haul ropes which have also been delivered.

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