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Avanti Express (#2):

Vail's newest chairlift opened November 20th, 2015. The Avanti Express lift is a Doppelmayr high speed six pack, and Vail's second high speed six pack overall. Built to replace an aging Doppelmayr high speed quad that operated on this alignment from 1989 to 2015, the lift has an approximate vertical rise of 1,446 feet and an approximate horizontal length of 6,588 feet. The lift has 26 towers and 139 chairs.




Bottom Terminal:

Like its sister lift the Mountaintop Express lift, as well as almost every new six pack that Vail Resorts has had built at their ski areas (save for the Kensho SuperChair), the Avanti Express lift has a loading carpet. The major difference though is that the Avanti Express lift has inline loading instead of 90 degree loading.

For comparison, the original lift had 25 towers and 167 chairs. The additional tower comes in the form of a second hold-down at the bottom terminal:

The Lift Line:

Whereas the Mountaintop Express lift used entirely new infrastructure, in part because it follows a slightly different alignment from the quad it replaced, the Avanti Express lift reuses old infrastructure. In fact, the Avanti Express lift is a lot like the new King Con six pack at Park City: a high speed six pack that replaced a high speed quad, and reuses the tower tubes from that old quad.

All but four of the Avanti Express lift's tower tubes are recycled from the original quad. The exceptions are the new hold-down towers at the bottom, and towers 25 and 26 at the top. In order to maintain the profile of the original lift, most of the towers have short extensions on them, since the new sheaves are mounted below the crossarms while the original sheaves were mounted above or in-line with the crossarms.

Because of this, most of the towers appear to have a bulge in them:

Tower 5 (tower 4 on the quad):


Tower 23 (tower 21 on quad):


Tower 24 (tower 22 on quad):


There isn't a noticeable bulge on tower 9, though. That would be because what is tower 9 on the current lift was tower 7A on the quad. The different design for where the tube met the crossarm is because tower 7A was added to the original lift a few years after it was built:

New Towers:

As mentioned before, the towers that received all new tubes are towers 25 and 26, which correspond to what originally were towers 23 and 24 on the quad:



Midline Combi and Hold-down towers:

The new lift has the same number of combi towers as the original: two, and they're in the exact same spots - tower 12 (originally tower 10) and tower 18 (originally tower 16):

Tower 12:


Tower 18:


The original lift had an intermediate hold-down assembly at tower 11, where the lift crosses over Lion's Way (the cat track you use to reach the Avanti Express lift from Mid-Vail). The new lift does the same thing, only it's now tower 13:

Top Terminal:

In contrast to the Mountaintop Express lift, the Avanti Express lift's chair parking rail is at the top terminal, and configured the same way as the original lift.

A typical chair from the new lift:


The lift line just past tower 11:


A distant view of the upper terminal from the Wildwood Express lift:


A view down the lift line from near the top:

Game Creek Flyer:

I know it's probably not relevant, but the Avanti Express lift was one of three construction projects done at Vail over the summer of 2015. The other two projects are tied to Adventure Ridge: a new alpine roller coaster called the Forest Flyer, located at Eagle's Nest to the west of the Pride Express lift, and a new canopy zipline tour in Game Creek Bowl.

While neither is open yet, I did manage to get a few pictures of the infrastructure for the canopy tour, such as this structure next to the Game Creek Express lift's upper terminal, which I believe to be the starting point, given the staircase:

This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 26 November 2015 - 07:35 PM

Good info and photos, thanks for sharing. I like how more and more resorts are reusing parts that can be reused and proven reliable and safe. How many of the old Doppie HSQs are left at Vail? I kinda liked the old generic terminals that the old HSQs used. Don't know why.

Also a question- Why chair rail parking at the top instead of the bottom? Wouldn't the top be exposed to harsher weather which means more work for the crews to get the chairs ready?

Vail dose their chair work in the summer and doesn't remove chairs at night, so weather is not an issue nor is getting a crew to the top to put them on. The service building that the grips are taken to for inspection and rebuilding is over at the top of 4 so being at the top is closer to that shop.
This post has been edited by vons: 28 November 2015 - 08:23 AM

Not knowing the mountain at all, but a reason for parking at the top on other lifts is to avoid vandalism.

That makes sense... but wasn't the top of high noon burned down a few years ago?

RibStaThiok, on 27 November 2015 - 11:37 PM, said:

I believe there are 4 left (Game Creek, Born Free, Northwoods, and Orient) but Vail is replacing those old Dopp CLD-260's pretty fast so I would guess that those won't be there for much longer. Sticking in the Vail Valley, Beaver Creek still has Arrowbahn which I think will be there a long time since Arrowhead has very little skier traffic and Beaver Creek doesn't seem to have any desire to replace it. I like those old terminals too, especially since you can see the grips moving through the terminal on the chain since the whole thing is so open.

NHskier13, on 29 November 2015 - 07:33 AM, said:

The original triple chairlift lost its upper terminal to the Earth Liberation Front activists that torched the original Two Elk Lodge in 1998.

Here are two different videos I made of the lift:
https://www.youtube....h?v=BT1L2m3iXJM

https://www.youtube....h?v=yXbqtP-TiqQ

Aside from Yans, I can only think of one quad that was replaced by another lift of similar capacity (Mt Bachelor). Every other one that I can recall has been a six replacement for a quad (or a gondola in few cases).

Forest Flyer:

I was up in Vail with my sister about a week ago. I got to take some photos of Vail's new roller coaster, opening this summer. It's located at Eagle's Nest, west of the Pride Express lift, adjacent to Simba. Based on what I've seen, the Forest Flyer coaster will work similar to the Glenwood Caverns coaster - you load at the top, ride down the hill, then are hauled back up the hill at the end of the ride.

sbwhidbey, on 30 November 2015 - 08:46 PM, said:

Ajax @ Aspen is a 2003 Poma HSQ. It replaced an older Poma HSQ from 1986.

Fourrunner @ Stowe is a 2011 Doppelmayr HSQ. It replaced an older Doppelmayr HSQ, also from 1986.

Aside from those, the most common scenarios are:

FGQ-HSQ: Mountaineer @ Deer Valley, Ruby @ Deer Valley, Skye Peak @ Killington, Solitude @ Okemo, South Face @ Okemo, Sun Bowl @ Sunapee, Superchief @ Belleayre.

HSQ-6-pack: Kaatskill Flyer @ Hunter, Sunburst @ Okemo, Avanti @ Vail, Mountaintop @ Vail, Quicksilver @ Breckenridge, Colorado @ Breckenridge, Tombstone @ The Canyons (now Park City), King Con @ Park City, Silverlode @ Park City.

There are also some more unusual scenarios

HSQ-Gondola: Gondola One @ Vail.

HS3-HSQ: Adirondack Express @ Gore.

Quote

Original four runner had longer chair spacing and something like 1500 p/h whereas the new one was full cap

That is correct. Old Fourrunner went to scrap with some parts going to Mohawk, CT to build the Arrowhead triple. Looks like Original Avanti also went to scrap from the looks of the jagged pieces of sheet metal from the terminals in a couple earlier pictures. Of course the towers stayed, but the rest was trashed.