Vail Resorts

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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News Roundup: New Controls

Peter Landsman2 Comments
Doppelmayr USA has redesigned all of their controls for 2015.
Doppelmayr USA has redesigned all of their controls for 2015.
  • Apparently Doppelmayr has redesigned their controls for 2015.  A new pedestal pictured above looks like an improvement, especially the speed selector replacing slow/medium/fast buttons.
  • Willard Mountain, NY files for bankruptcy, proving once again it is best to control all of the land your ski resort sits on.  The area has a Borvig and Partek doubles.
  • Saddleback Maine has put the drive terminal for its main lift up for sale on Resort Boneyard for $200k.  Hopefully a new lift is on the way.
  • Vail Resorts voluntarily raises the minimum wage it pays lift operators and other workers to $10 an hour.
  • Lots of improvements coming to Powderhorn in addition to their first detachable lift.
  • Whistler-Blackcomb to test snowmaking as a means to preserve summer skiing on Horstman Glacier, home to the only glacier-anchored lifts in North America.
  • West Mountain, NY is moving forward with making one old lift into two new ones.
  • Singapore opens its second Doppelmayr gondola line with three stations and 8-passenger cabins.

News Roundup: 80 Years

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News Roundup: Reset and Go!

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  • Sugarloaf shuts down 2nd Borvig quad lift.
  • Sugar Mountain, NC to build a base-to-summit Doppelmayr six-pack.
  • Leitner-Poma might have to pay $222k back to the State of Colorado.  This summer doesn’t look to be too busy for them either.
  • Vail Resorts goes to Australia.
  • Lift operator sued after boy hanged from backpack tangled in a chair.
  • The State of Pennsylvania is “not normally in the business of ski-lift construction.”
  • Another child falls from a chair, this time in eastern Canada.  Seems like there have been a lot of similar incidents this winter particularly with children.