Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

Well, here's the initial report on my trip.

Because the wind had closed all but one of the lifts at Brian Head on Monday, we headed to a different ski area. This ski area had gotten a foot of new snow and got another few inches throught the day. Anyone want to guess where this was?

I will get some pictures of the lifts at all of the ski areas that I went to uploaded on here very soon. The first two days were the Arizona Snowbowl and Eagle Point. Overall, I had a great time!

Arizona Snowbowl Pictures

Agassiz Lift Pictures, working their way up from bottom to top including the mid-unloading station.

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Sunset Lift Pictures

And, at the bottom, kind of an overview of the whole place, also taken at the bottom of Sunset.

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Hart Prairie Lift Pictures

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Finally, I have the rest of the Arizona Snowbowl pictures!

Aspen Meadows Lift:

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This lift was new to the Snowbowl this year, and is the start of their big expansion and snowmaking plans.

Little Spruce Carpet Lift:

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These pictures complete the pictures of lifts that I have of the Arizona Snowbowl. Of course you may use any of them on the website if you want to.

I will be leaving for Winter Park, Colorado early tomorrow morning because we still have two days on 4 by 40 Passes that we bought before we went to Steamboat in February. I may take some pictures of lifts there that are not in the gallery here.

I will get Eagle Point pictures up sometime soon, after I get back. I also have some of the other ski area that we went to, where we skiied in a foot of new snow.

Eagle Point Pictures:

First, the Monarch Triple Chair, a Poma triple that goes to the very top of the ski area.

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They did repaint all of the lifts, I think, but the paint was a little too thin and you could see right through it in many places, especially on the towers. I thought that this was a little weird. They did put nice green pads on the chairs, and this matches the color of the logo. I kind of got the impression that Eagle Point is trying to be the Deer Valley of Southern Utah. The ski area and lodges are fixed up really nicely for the most part.

Skyline Double Chairlift

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Looks like you had Eagle Point all to yourself!
Dino

Lift Dinosaur, on 19 April 2011 - 08:26 AM, said:

Yes we certainly did, just as Elk Meadows was known for no crowds, Eagle Point didn't really have any either.

When we talked to the cashier in the store, she indicated that they were probably breaking even this year, which I think is pretty good. She said that the owners figured that it would operate at a loss for three years.

Eagle Point certainly does have an advantage over Brian Head since I don't think that it ever had a wind delay this year. It doesn't have snowmaking, though, but in a year like this year when the resorts of the Southwest didn't get their average snowfall, Eagle Point was far enough north that it did pretty well, even getting over a 100 inch base depth. It is just a shame that Brian Head lost most of their trees, but when people find out about Eagle Point, I think more people will go there. They do have an expansion in the works, which would add maybe 150-200 more vertical feet to the bottom. If you look on Google Earth, you will see that the runs have already been cut. A lift maintenance or operations manager indicated that it would probably happen soon.

We ate lunch at the Outpost Grill, which is in the lower lodge / village area. It was a very nice sit-down restaurant, with pretty reasonable prices. I think that they had only one other table with people in it, though.

Here are some more pictures:

The Lookout Quad Chairlift:

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This post has been edited by missouriskier: 19 April 2011 - 07:10 PM

Canyonside Double Chair:

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I do still have one more lift to do that I have pictures of: The old Heron-Poma double which is original to the resort. It is just sitting there without any chairs or lift shacks, other that that everything seemed to be there.

The Canyonside lift looks like it has twice as many chairs on it as most lifts of its type have. Does it really have as many chairs on it as it looks? If so, how slow does it run? Is the entire mountain connected or is there still a gap in lift service between the two mountains? Looks like an interesting place. Do they have decent advanced and expert terrain? Thanks for the pictures.

boardski, on 22 April 2011 - 07:36 PM, said:

Some of those pictures were taken with the camera zoomed in, which I think makes it look like it has closer chair spacing than it really does. I don't think that it ran too slow, (Probably at least 400-450 fpm, maybe Emax would know, I know he was up there some working on lifts when they first opened) but Canyonside is a pretty short lift, so really it doesn't matter.

No, the mountain is still disconnected, but they have two shuttle buses that they run until everyone is back up to the upper lot who needs to be. Unless you are a season passholder, you have to park at the upper lodge. All the rentals and lessons are up in the upper lodge as well. We skied the upper mountain in the morning and then skied down through the tunnel, ate lunch, and then skied the lower mountain.

The advanced and expert terrain is pretty decent, but it doesn't get enough traffic to get moguls to form, and most of it wasn't groomed. The big problem was that it had snowed 8 wet and heavy inches a few days before we were there. This new snow then froze but had been skied on some so it made for very choppy and difficult skiing on the ungroomed runs. They did have four groomed black runs, though, and they were very good because it had snowed a couple inches after they had groomed them the night before.

EDIT: The advanced terrain does have one downside, though: About half of it is not accessible from the top of the quad without a long hike, beacuse the double doesn't run anymore. To solve this problem, Eagle Point has a four passenger utility vehicle that they put rubber tracks on, and they pull a sled with it. You can either ride on on the sled or get pulled by your pole by putting the strap over a piece of metal on the sled.

Here is a picture of the utility vehicle...

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...and the sled.

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Here is one of the main advanced runs that you must ride the utility vehicle to get to.

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Me at the top of that run. It was probably some of the hardest skiing that I have ever done, just because of the crust and wet heavy snow underneath it.

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Also, I should add that the advanced runs have a steep, consistent pitch for 400-900 vertical feet, depending on the run.
This post has been edited by missouriskier: 23 April 2011 - 08:34 AM

Thanks for the info, sounds like an interesting place. Do you know if they have any plans to get the Heron lift running again or connect the lower and the upper mountains with a lift?

boardski, on 23 April 2011 - 05:45 PM, said:

The Heron lift from what I've heard has a few factors running against it. Beyond the fact that the chairs have been scrapped perhaps, I'm sure new grips, and I know a new haul rope are necessary for it to run again (last I heard they were kicking around having someone take the rope down). With these costs they may just figure it's better to build a new lift, perhaps one that is higher capacity, or even more handily bullwheel loading and unloading, and not a vault drive.

A lift between the two basis was mentioned as a pulse Gondola or something. I would think that'd be a good way of going about things, but to be honest unless they can get more skier visits, any of those new lifts will be hard to financially justify. I got a chance to ski it back in January and it's a nice resort, that I really hope has a lot of success in the future, but the utter lack of skiers that were up there on a Friday with beautiful conditions (it was much like spring skiing oddly enough, soft bumps, blue sky, warm) worried me as to how they're going to make the whole thing fly financially.

Best of luck to them, and thanks for posting those pictures.

boardski, on 23 April 2011 - 05:45 PM, said:

As for the old Heron double, I don't know, but I would think that it will be removed and scrapped. The summit of it will, however, be served by whatever lift they decide to put in to serve the expansion runs on the far lower end of the ski area, which is down the canyon, or to the west. I didn't get more time to ask, but I think it would just be fixed-grip. It certainly wouldn't need to be a high-speed for capacity reasons. It would be a fairly long lift, however, probably longer than anything that they currently have.

And, yes, it certainly would help to connect the mountains with a lift. I would think that would be the second lift that they would install, after the expansion. It could easily be a fixed-grip just going up along the right side of the tunnel trail (as you are looking up).

I will post more pictures of the old Heron lift soon, and then it's on to the last ski area of my trip.

Here is a picture taken from the quad chairlift looking up the tunnel trail which shows where the two mountains could be connected by a lift.

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Here are my pictures of the old Heron-Poma double chairlift:

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Here are pictures of Chair 1 at the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort. This is where we skied after driving down from Parowan where Brian Head was mostly closed due to high winds. We ate lunch and then skied for a great half-day in 12 inches of powder. We also got to our hotel in Las Vegas sooner then if we had skied at Brian Head. Still it would have been nice to go to Brian Head, but this wasn't bad skiing at all.

I think that it is a 1995 CTEC Triple (I'm not 100% sure on the year).

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I will add Chair 2 pictures later on.

missouriskier, on 10 May 2011 - 02:50 PM, said:

1993

I finally got time to upload the pictures of Chair 2 at the Las Vegas ski area.

I think it is a Hall, right?

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I also have some pictures of the Arizona Snowbowl that I took in the summer of 2009 on another computer that I will get uploaded soon hopefully.