27 replies to this topic

[DonaldMReif]

Vail opened the Mountaintop Express lift this last Wednesday. It is their first high speed six pack. The new Doppelmayr lift has a ride time of just under five minutes. It has 15 towers and 92 chairs (for comparison, the original lift had 16 towers and 113 chairs) and utilizes the Agmatic grip of Beaver Creek's newest high speed quads. The bottom terminal is about 90 feet east of the original high speed quad's bottom terminal, but the upper terminal is in the same location as the original. The lift also has a unique loading carpet to maximize the efficiency of loading and unloading, minimizing stops and slows caused by misloads. You can see that the bottom terminal has a protruding section at the loading area, as downhill chairs actually make a small s-turn before turning around to reach the loading line. The photos below were taken on November 28th, Thanksgiving Day, during just the lift's second day of operation.


Bottom terminal:







A view of the loading carpet. As you can see, the chair does not pluck you off the carpet like some European lifts or the South Ridge quad at Okemo (a fixed grip quad with a carpet) do. Rather, the red bars of the gates open, you lean and glide onto the carpet, which pulls you forward to the yellow line, which is still made of snow:



Here's a view of the chair parking rail. The original high speed quad did not have a parking rail at the bottom. Rather, it had its at the top of the lift on the uphill side of the terminal. All of the other remaining Doppelmayr high speed quads (the Northwoods Express, Avanti Express, Born Free Express, Game Creek Express, and Orient Express lifts) also have their storage rails in the same location. The Mountaintop Express, although Doppelmayr, does not use that design :

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 03 December 2013 - 07:11 AM

[DonaldMReif]

The Lower Lift Line:

[DonaldMReif]

The original high speed quad had a depression tower assembly for tower 6. On the high speed six pack, there are two combi towers - tower 5 and tower 6. Tower 6 is about near where the original lift's tower 7 was located. There are 15 towers and 92 chairs on the current lift, so there is one tower fewer than before.


Tower 5:


Between towers 5 and 6:




Tower 6:

[DonaldMReif]

Approaching the Cliff:

[DonaldMReif]

Cliff Crossing:

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 30 November 2013 - 02:10 PM

[DonaldMReif]

Upper Lift Line (Tower 9-13):

This part is unchanged in terms of where the towers are, but it feels different because the chairs run clockwise instead of anticlockwise:

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 30 November 2013 - 02:13 PM

[DonaldMReif]

Unloading:

Tower 14:


Tower 15:


Entering the upper terminal:


Close up of the unloading ramp:

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 30 November 2013 - 02:06 PM

[DonaldMReif]

The upper terminal is obviously fitted with a normal unloading ramp. You can also see that the terminal appears to have been raised a little bit to give a slightly steeper unload ramp than the original quad.

As viewed from near the High Noon Express lift's terminal:


Two closer views:





And that concludes our photo tour.

[DonaldMReif]

On a side note, the area around Mid-Vail has seen significant changes, especially in the last 3 years.

This panorama was taken by http://www.ski-epic.com author Brian Wilson in 2007 from the Meadows Ridge at the top of South Look Ma, looking down into Mid-Vail:



Here's my own view, taken in 2013, from not the exact same location but from a short distance away:



You can see several distances:

1. The only chairlift to stay the same in both pictures is the Wildwood Express lift. The Vista Bahn Express is present in the 2007 photo. In the 2013 photo, you have Gondola One in the same location. Meanwhile, the Mountaintop Express lift is a high speed quad in the 2007 photo and a high speed six pack in the 2013 photo.

2. You can see how the movement of the new Mountaintop Express lift's terminal 90 feet east from the original lift's location puts a pretty big open space between it and the Wildwood Express lift.

3. The Tenth Mountain Restaurant built in 2011 is not in the 2007 panorama.

4. Mid-Vail has received a fresh coat of paint. In 2007, it was painted white. In the second photo, it is painted beige.

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 29 November 2013 - 03:39 PM

[floridaskier]

Still surprised L-P let themselves get outbid on this project, after building Vail's last 8 new detaches. Was it just about price, or were they not entirely happy with the new gondola or chair 5?

Do we think the S-turn in the bottom terminal is to accommodate the loading carpet, or something with tensioning, or the parking rail, or something else?

[DonaldMReif]

Here's a ride video I made of the lift:


This video shows off how the queue lines are reconfigured. As can be viewed in the two views from Meadows, the position of the lift terminal coupled with the presence of the Wildwood Express lift and its queues affected how the Mountaintop Express lift's queues were configured.

On the original lift, there were two queues: the west queue maze for people who had just ate at Mid-Vail or were coming off the Mid-Vail Express or Over Easy trails, which started next to the north queue for the Wildwood Express lift (which was for those same people). There was a second queue on the downhill side of the lift's terminal for people coming off the trails to the east of the lift (Expresso, Swingsville, Christmas).

On the new lift, the bottom terminal was moved east about 90 feet from the original location, "resulting in a lift maze configuration that will decrease cross-traffic of skiers and snowboarders in the surrounding area." To elaborate, the north Mountaintop Express queue stays unchanged, but the second queue starts next to the Wildwood Express lift's other queue entrance, meaning that if you are lapping trails east of the Mountaintop Express, to get in line, you go under the lift, then you make the tight gooseneck turn you had previously done to enter the south Wildwood Express queue. This means you can also ski off Meadows or the South Look Ma mogul face and not cross under the Wildwood Express to get in line for the new lift. The video shows me using the south queue. You can see that in this queue, Vail was decent enough to put up colored directional banners to distinguish the two lift queues apart. You can also see a big open space next to the singles queue where the bottom terminal originally was located. The upper terminal on the Mountaintop Express is for the most part unchanged, although as described by the original blog announcement, "underwent minor adjustments to accommodate a more efficient circulation of skiers and snowboarders."

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 14 January 2014 - 06:28 AM

[liftmech]

floridaskier, on 29 November 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

Still surprised L-P let themselves get outbid on this project, after building Vail's last 8 new detaches. Was it just about price, or were they not entirely happy with the new gondola or chair 5?

Do we think the S-turn in the bottom terminal is to accommodate the loading carpet, or something with tensioning, or the parking rail, or something else?

For the first, only Vail knows for sure.
For the second, it wouldn't have anything to do with the tensioning. The parking rail can be placed anywhere. The only thing I can think of is that loading carpet-- the jog in the terminal makes the straightaway in the centre of the contour a couple of tyres longer rather than picking passengers up on the curve.

[DonaldMReif]

Here are some other photos of the lift:

View coming off Swingsville:


View of the lift as it looks when you offload the Northwoods Express lift:


Looking down the lift from the top:


View up the lift line from the bottom:

[DonaldMReif]

Alternate views of towers 5 and 6.

Tower 5:


Tower 6:



Here's a nice close-up of the chair:


Lower lift line:

[DonaldMReif]

Additional lift line photos:





The chair number plates, if you notice, use the Doppelmayr logo instead of number plates that have the Vail logo on them (the way the other Doppelmayr high speed quads have them configured).

[DonaldMReif]

Views down the lift line from the top:





Side view of the upper terminal:


View of the lift from the Wildwood Express:

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 02 December 2013 - 07:34 AM

[DonaldMReif]

View of the detachable grip:


Two lift line views:

[DonaldMReif]

Another view of tower 2;


Here are some views of the Mountaintop Express from the Avanti Express lift:





A view from Eagle's Nest Ridge, with the Avanti Express in the foreground and the Mountaintop Express in the background. This one has unintentionally become dated as of 2015, now that the Avanti Express lift is getting upgraded to a high speed six pack for the 2015-2016 season:

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 21 March 2015 - 01:25 PM

[skierdude9450]

Wow lots of great photos. Awesome to see the new #4 in action, thanks for sharing!

[DonaldMReif]

Update:

Vail has done some modifications to the queue, reconfiguring the singles lines to merge before the "Please form groups of six" station. Also, I think by having a long straight segment between the line merge point and the gates, they don't have too many slows or stops for misloads.

Here's a better view of the carpet belt and gates:


Also, a new sticker has been added to tower 12. It reads "Which way are you going? Discuss plans before unloading", and ostensibly suggests that you make note of which way you want to go when you unload, so as to not cause a misunload because you are on the inside of the chair and wan to go to the left down Christmas while the guys on the outside of the chair want to go right to Ramshorn:




Not a new lift, per say, but Vail has added safety bar maps to the High Noon Express lift this year. Whereas the safety bar maps on the Mountaintop Express lift show the Front Side, the High Noon Express lift's maps show just the Back Bowls and Blue Sky Basin. Interestingly, because it is a Leitner-Poma lift, the High Noon Express is the first lift at Vail to feature the safety bar maps that is not a Doppelmayr lift: