This lift is one of many Riblet fixed quads at the Boyne Michigan resorts.Final two towers and the top terminal.Lift line.Lower line.The bottom terminal.Lift overview.Loading area and counterweight pit.
The Heron lifts Victor and Top Notch can be seen clearly at 12:25 and 16:06 in the video, respectively. It looks to me like Victor was as low to the ground as Top Notch was. The video also shows the McLouth Quad a couple of times for those of us who are Vault Drive Riblet fans.
You can tell this lift is a relocation because it has bullwheel unloading, unlike the other Riblets quads installed on the Mountain. I also think this lift will be replaced by the current Meadows quad when that lift is replaced.
This was the old McClouth 4; it was moved when the 6 place was installed circa 1990. Express and Victor 2 were removed and decommissioned as part of this reconfiguration.
It looks to me like the Mountain has been operating this lift quite a bit this winter. I’m not sure why.
It might almost be like a decade since I last rode it; I tend to visit Jan or Feb midweek and one can pretty much lap the Mountain Express or Meadows lifts and not worry too much about it.
I still believe (although I have no insider info) that the Meadows lift could become a high speed install and the current Doppelmayr lift on Meadows could become the replacement for this Riblet running up Victor.
Everett Kircher wrote in his autobiography that the land south of where the original base set up (Clock Tower Lodge etc) was not originally for sale when the Mountain opened. He would have liked the runout for Victor to be a bit longer, and the Heron double and now this quad would have been longer as a result.
This might be kind of an outlandish idea, but would it make sense for Boyne to leave the Meadows quad as is and upgrade this to a detachable six instead? All of the Meadows terrain can be lapped using Victor chair via the Boynehof pass trail (cutting off a small amount of runout at the bottom of Meadows). It also gives them two detachables for early and late season, as the Victor run is always one of the first to open and last to close every year. This still gives them the third detachable to better distribute crowds, but saves them from spending millions more to replace the 15 year old Meadows (and likely move it here).
Looking purely at length probably not, but a lot more goes into it, I think the only alignments that justify detachables in the entire lower peninsula based on length alone are D8 and the two at Highlands (and even these are a stretch). Skiers tend to concentrate on high speed lifts, leading to an inbalance in terrain usage when there’s only one or two detaches at a resort with 9 lifts (this was a big reason Nubs chose not to make the Green lift high speed, to keep people spread out). At Boyne specifically, you typically see lots of crowding on Mountain Express and Disciples while Meadows and especially Victor go underutilized. building a third high speed that covers this terrain spreads people out better to this side of the mountain and reduces crowds on the Mountain Express in the process, whereas replacing a quad with a quad is, honestly, a barely/not noticable change to the average weekend vacationer and won’t really affect the dynamics of the resort that much.
Victor, Meadows, and Superbowl go underutilized as the Mountain has prioritzed its northern expansion at Disciples over the more ‘classic’ slopes to the south of Hemlock, as well as the 1980s era Superbowl expansion. Don’t blame the skiers, blame the resort. At one time in the 1980s and 1990s, you had two lifts up Superbowl, plus Top Notch, Thunder, Meadows, and Victor. Yes, all the old junk is gone and the new lifts adequately cover the terrain, but the center of the action at the Mountain moved north. [Of course, the only good run on Disciples is Mr Moll and Ramshead was ruined by turning it into a terrain park, but that’s, like, just my opinion.]
There’s not a lot of room at the top of either Meadows or Victor for a large high-speed detach terminal, and you’d have to flatten out the top of Aurora to make Meadows truly skiable from the top of Victor. The latter is probably easy with some earthmoving equipment, but the former would require changing the top of Victor a bit. Meadows would probably be easier to do, but the more I think of it, Victor might be possible. Only downside is that Victor gets choppy quite a bit and making it even easier to ski would mean more ruts in the snow!
No, there are a few other mountains with Riblet or Borvig quads with centerpole chairs althought they are mostly in the midwest. Boyne sure has many of them thought!
Lift Blog 
This chair was relocated from somewhere, as the original Victor Chair was a double with lattice style towers.
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Here’s a video of it (at 11:58).
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The Heron lifts Victor and Top Notch can be seen clearly at 12:25 and 16:06 in the video, respectively. It looks to me like Victor was as low to the ground as Top Notch was. The video also shows the McLouth Quad a couple of times for those of us who are Vault Drive Riblet fans.
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It also looks like the Meadows Quad has the Riblet carriers already in 1985. How long did the original chairs last after 1964?
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You can tell this lift is a relocation because it has bullwheel unloading, unlike the other Riblets quads installed on the Mountain. I also think this lift will be replaced by the current Meadows quad when that lift is replaced.
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This was the old McClouth 4; it was moved when the 6 place was installed circa 1990. Express and Victor 2 were removed and decommissioned as part of this reconfiguration.
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It looks to me like the Mountain has been operating this lift quite a bit this winter. I’m not sure why.
It might almost be like a decade since I last rode it; I tend to visit Jan or Feb midweek and one can pretty much lap the Mountain Express or Meadows lifts and not worry too much about it.
I still believe (although I have no insider info) that the Meadows lift could become a high speed install and the current Doppelmayr lift on Meadows could become the replacement for this Riblet running up Victor.
Everett Kircher wrote in his autobiography that the land south of where the original base set up (Clock Tower Lodge etc) was not originally for sale when the Mountain opened. He would have liked the runout for Victor to be a bit longer, and the Heron double and now this quad would have been longer as a result.
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This might be kind of an outlandish idea, but would it make sense for Boyne to leave the Meadows quad as is and upgrade this to a detachable six instead? All of the Meadows terrain can be lapped using Victor chair via the Boynehof pass trail (cutting off a small amount of runout at the bottom of Meadows). It also gives them two detachables for early and late season, as the Victor run is always one of the first to open and last to close every year. This still gives them the third detachable to better distribute crowds, but saves them from spending millions more to replace the 15 year old Meadows (and likely move it here).
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I would be cool with that, but is the Victor alignment really long enough for a detach lift?
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Looking purely at length probably not, but a lot more goes into it, I think the only alignments that justify detachables in the entire lower peninsula based on length alone are D8 and the two at Highlands (and even these are a stretch). Skiers tend to concentrate on high speed lifts, leading to an inbalance in terrain usage when there’s only one or two detaches at a resort with 9 lifts (this was a big reason Nubs chose not to make the Green lift high speed, to keep people spread out). At Boyne specifically, you typically see lots of crowding on Mountain Express and Disciples while Meadows and especially Victor go underutilized. building a third high speed that covers this terrain spreads people out better to this side of the mountain and reduces crowds on the Mountain Express in the process, whereas replacing a quad with a quad is, honestly, a barely/not noticable change to the average weekend vacationer and won’t really affect the dynamics of the resort that much.
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Victor, Meadows, and Superbowl go underutilized as the Mountain has prioritzed its northern expansion at Disciples over the more ‘classic’ slopes to the south of Hemlock, as well as the 1980s era Superbowl expansion. Don’t blame the skiers, blame the resort. At one time in the 1980s and 1990s, you had two lifts up Superbowl, plus Top Notch, Thunder, Meadows, and Victor. Yes, all the old junk is gone and the new lifts adequately cover the terrain, but the center of the action at the Mountain moved north. [Of course, the only good run on Disciples is Mr Moll and Ramshead was ruined by turning it into a terrain park, but that’s, like, just my opinion.]
There’s not a lot of room at the top of either Meadows or Victor for a large high-speed detach terminal, and you’d have to flatten out the top of Aurora to make Meadows truly skiable from the top of Victor. The latter is probably easy with some earthmoving equipment, but the former would require changing the top of Victor a bit. Meadows would probably be easier to do, but the more I think of it, Victor might be possible. Only downside is that Victor gets choppy quite a bit and making it even easier to ski would mean more ruts in the snow!
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is Boyne the only mountain to have a center post Riblet quad?
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No, there are a few other mountains with Riblet or Borvig quads with centerpole chairs althought they are mostly in the midwest. Boyne sure has many of them thought!
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