Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

Loveland (for those not familiar) is a fairly small operation compared to many, and having one busdriver and a bus for the transfer us undoubtedly less expensive than a minimum two operators and a lift. From a mechanic's perspective that lift would be a difficult one in the event of a tower fault as well-- very limited liftline access.

I say that some other lift upgrades that Mountain Creek needs apart from the 6-pack South Peak Express are as follows. I primarily go to South and Bear Peak because I think they are way better for both lifts and trails. Vernon and Granite Peak have some crazy trail crowding, lodge crowding, and parking issues. However the biggest issue there is the lifts. The one detachable which is The Cabriolet requires you to remove equipment and stand. The rest are fixed grips. The fixed grip lifts are stopping constantly because Mountain Creek gets a lot of beginners who cannot get on or off the chair. It is not out of the norm to stop 4 or 5 times in a less than 1,000 foot vertical ride. The lift mazes are a mess and are rarely organized which causes chairs to go up with less than full capacity frequently. The lifties never seem to pull the chair back hard enough which causes some rough loads and even more stops. The chairs do not have any padding which snowballs this problem even more.

Upgrading the Granite Peak Quad to a high speed quad would be great as it would give Mountain Creek 100% high speed lift access. If the South Peak Express was upgraded to a 6-pack, the HSQ could be relocated to Granite Peak to replace that fixed grip quad. The Vernon Triple is by far the worst of all the lifts, but it is easily avoided by taking the cabriolet gondola instead. It is never faster to take the triple than to wait in the line at the cabriolet. This means that since the lift is a backup, it isn't going anywhere and it is essential when the cabriolet goes on wind hold as you can still access the trails. Just putting a load carpet on that would be a cheap solution that would speed the lift up slightly and reduce stops greatly. The Sugar Quad is a beginner lift and is not long enough to be a detachable. A load carpet on this would be great as it would make loading the lift so much easier for beginners.

I still wonder will Town Lift at Park City will be replaced someday? Maybe not.

Reason:

Each year in December, the Santa and his reindeers on Town Lift ride down to the town and cheer kids up. It is beautiful. I love it.

http://www.parkcitym...x.html/event156


https://www.youtube....h?v=xuZmOajSGBw
This post has been edited by Skiing#1: 29 December 2014 - 03:21 PM

would there be any bennefit from upgrading it?

Not about replaced lifts, but just some lifts that I would like to see, but most of them probably won't happen.
1.Tucker Mountain- Already discussed, awesome proposed lift at Copper whenever it gets there :)
2. Mongolia Bowls HSQ- A lift would be really nice for the Mongolia Bowls at Vail, so you don't have to ski back to Orient every time. A low capacity HSQ from the bottom of the bowls to the top, maybe serving Siberia too if a new catwalk was created. It would reduce crowding on Orient and eliminate the painfully slow poma lift in and catwalk out of that area.
3. Peak 7 Summit Lift- From around the top of the Independence Superchair and to the top of Peak 7 at Breck, it could be used to ski The Dunes, Peak 7 Bowl and Whale's Tail by avoiding T-Bar and Imperial. Will most likely never happen, but would be one awesome lift
4. Independence Superchair replacement- This lift gets so crowded because of the Peak 6 crowds, whatever they can do to reduce lines would be awesome. I avoid that lift completely as much as I can, but I have to take it when coming down from Peak 6, maybe a full capacity 6 pack with loading carpet would help or even an 8 pack, but will most likely not happen as well.
5. Windows Lift- This would be great to access an area of terrain that is currently very hard to get to at Keystone, and make it easier to get back to the bowls without having to take Mozart or the Outpost Gondola. Is on master plan
6. Challenger HSQ- Challenger at Mary Jane is a really long old double that serves some of best tree skiing on the mountain, a HSQ replacement, even if it wouldn't be full capacity, would make it easier to get over there and lessen lines on Super Gauge, which can reach epic proportions on weekends.
7. Zephyr Chondola- Winter Park is planning to replace Zephyr with a six pack, why not a chondola? They already run gondola cabins at night and could have a 1:5 ratio of cabins to chairs like Centennial at Beaver Creek does so it would feel more like a chair. Either way, this lift should be replaced, lines can be long on weekends but you can avoid them using Gemini/Arrow to Eskimo.

Most of those are crazy and will never happen but any thoughts?

They already have turned up the speed of the Independence SuperChair a bit to shorten the ride time. Adding more chairs would work, but then you'd have to add the carpet in to alleviate mis-loads.

A lift into the Peak 7 bowl will almost certainly never happen because of the high winds that occur above timberline (I know this from my experience with the winds on the section of the Kensho SuperChair above tower 14; and the winds on Imperial are also very strong).

Backbowlsbilly, on 24 January 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

You always have the option of taking the gondola over to Peak 8 base.


If it hasn't been said earlier, then I sometimes say that the Northwoods Express at Vail needs to be replaced with a high speed six pack. I say that since it gets a lot of congestion, especially at the end of the day when everyone's returning to the Front Side from Blue Sky Basin since, when you come from the Teacup Express, your choices for getting back to the base are the Northwoods Express lift to an actual run or a long traverse. While I can see why the Avanti Express lift will be the lift getting upgraded to a high speed six pack next year, I sometimes think the upgrade should have been done to the Northwoods Express lift instead.
This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 25 January 2015 - 11:52 PM

sounds like an 8 person gondola might be more benneficial if it's as bad as you are saying it is..

DonaldMReif, on 25 January 2015 - 10:55 PM, said:

I know you can take the gondola, but it can be crowded too. Also, from the top of Teacup you could ski down Sun Up Bowl to Chair 5 then Chair 5 to PHQ, lines can be bad but probably better than Chair 11. You could also ski down to Chair 10 which is never crowded or take the catwalks all the way down to Gondola One all from the top of Teacup, but those catwalks are really long. You're right that Peak 7 is super windy, but the terrain in Peak 7 Bowl is awesome which is why I brought it up, probably never going to happen. :)

On a side note, can you relocate a tram like you can a lift? I bring this up because I think a tram would be perfect to replace The Wall lift at Kirkwood since other resorts like Snowbird and Jackson Hole use trams to access their steep terrain, and Vail has talked about removing the Heavenly Tram before so I was thinking if it was possible to relocate a tram (which would be quite a feat, I can imagine if it is even possible) then that would be the place to do it.

When's VR talked of dismantling the Heavenly tram?

Backbowlsbilly, on 26 January 2015 - 03:15 PM, said:

I'm not a fan of trams, I take the chairs whenever possible. As far as Snowbird goes, it would be rather difficult to run a chair on the tram's liftline. The line is near the tree clump skier's left of the massive cliff.
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This post has been edited by SkiDaBird: 26 January 2015 - 04:30 PM

Sorry guys I should have put this in there the first time, via a 2007 Heavenly Master Plan by VR. (http://www.fs.usda.g...prdb5413285.pdf)

"In California, the aerial tram will be replaced with a detachable lift as planned, however, it will extend further to
land near the proposed Powderbowl Lodge site near the top of the Powderbowl Express lift. It will be a two-way
lift that is capable of downloading."

I can see how taking Peruvian would be much faster than the tram, but I only went to Snowbird once so I was giddy to lap that thing being a Colorado tourist, where we don't have any trams like that to speak of. You are completely right about a lift up the tram line too, no way would that work.

The tram at Snowbird isn't going anywhere, it's their biggest marketing selling point and they've done some upgrades of late

Sounds like Heavenly's tram is in a very badly situated location, I gather.

Backbowlsbilly, on 24 January 2015 - 06:24 PM, said:

Even I've thought a Mongolia Express would be kind of nice if Vail implemented it. I imagine it starting somewhere around the point where the China Spur from Blue Sky Basin crosses over the creek and ending near the top of the Mongolia Platter. I would consider that such a Mongolia Express high speed quad should supplement the Platter, and the platter stays intact. Of course, I think that my idea that the Northwoods Express lift should be upgraded to a high speed six pack would be a more pressing issue.

Quote

Well, digitally altering Breck with Photoshop and renaming it so that it's located in the kingdom that Frozen takes place in never was more fun. My solution to the Independence SuperChair crowds was to use Photoshop to build a triple chairlift on Peak 7 running the lower half of Wirepatch, ending just above where the Peak 6 Parkway crosses Wirepatch. Of course, in the same Alt Reality resort, I also ended up replacing Lift 5 and the T-Bar with fixed grip quads, and upgraded Lift 6 and Lift E to high speed quads as well:

Quote

The Keystone Master Plan also calls for adding a triple chairlift to Independence Bowl and a high speed quad to Bergman Bowl, the upgrading of Wayback and Argentine to high speed quads, and the addition of a platter lift in the Outback.

floridaskier, on 27 January 2015 - 08:02 AM, said:

I didn't express what I meant to at all. What I meant was that at Snowbird, Jackson, Big Sky etc. the Trams exist because a chairlift cannot run on the liftline. Obviously they are huge for marketing, although the Snowbird one has a reputation for smelling like feet, which it occasionally does. The point I was trying to communicate was that the old Heavenly tram should not be installed to replace any existing chair.
Sorry for any confusion.

Sunnyside at Mary Jane (at Winter Park needs to be upgraded to detachable quad bad. Always lines and it is slowed or stopped for misloads more than it runs. The current c t e c triple should be moved to replace Pony express extended near the top of Iron Horse with a Midway unload at the top of the current Pony express. A fast triple with a loading carpet similar to Supreme lift at Alta would be nice to replace Challenger one day.
This post has been edited by boardski: 01 February 2015 - 06:09 PM

Does Panoramic have as many mis-loads as Sunnyside does?

Pano usually runs efficiently with stops and slows about average for a detachable six pack serving intermediate terrain. Sunnyside has become so horrible I actually try to avoid it. The issue is usually at its worst when Pano is closed as it sometimes is due to high wind.

I heard that there was a plan to upgrade the Zephyr Express to a 6-pack or Chondola then use Zephyr to replace Sunnyside and Sunnyside to replace Looking Glass.