Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

Do you know how long the span will be over Fitz Valley. How long will it take?

Google Earth said around 4500 m on the ground, so maybe 4000 m at 7 m/s or around 8 min? complete guess

I think the ride time is about 10 mins and the span approx. 3500m

sweet!

I will need to definately come up and meet up with you and get some pictures. :)

Its gonna be the first one in North America right? Is that span like the longest around?

Yes it will be the first one. The only other resort to have a similar lift is Squaw Valley, the funitel.

Now the question is, what are you guys going to do with the luxury cabin that CWA gives away for free?

Bill, on Sep 19 2005, 05:49 PM, said:

Please, do!

Alright, here is just a guess of where the lift will run. I have no idea where the actual towers will be located so that could drastically change the location of that green line.

 wb.jpg (214.98K)
Number of downloads: 135

SkiBachelor, on Sep 19 2005, 10:23 PM, said:

I believe one cabin will have a glass floor. The lift will have 2 towers each side, the tallest is nearly 300 feet high. The inside towers are higher up the sides of the hill than Cam has them. This is the first lift of its type in NA (europe has 2 the same bilt recently) If you ride the Village express, the new lift, and Solar/Wizard, its the longest ride in the world of its type (I'm told). I'm sure there will be a press release coming out soon with all the marketing stuff.

Wow! Its gonna be called the Village Express? Thats kind of odd cause it doesnt go to either villages...

This looks a bit weird but I'm rushing off to work.

I think Rob is referring to the Village Express being the Whistler Village gondola. Basically if you take up Wizard, Solar and then the new lift over to Whistler and then take the Village gondola down, it's the longest ride. However, it's kind of pointless if you do that. That would take about an hour to do.

Although it is a cool lift, am I the only one that doesn't think it adds much to the skiing of BC/Whistler?

The new lift doesn't add any new runs. It allows get from one peak to the other more quickly, but you could travel back and forth via the base and enjoy an additional long run.

You really have to ski Whistler Blackcomb to get an overall idea of how this lift would be beneficial to the resort.

Whistler and Blackcomb offer totally different conditions than what you might think. If you start out skiing at Blackcomb and it's nothing but ice chunks (it was that way when I was there) you could ride the new lift all the way over to Whistler instead of having to transfer mountain using the Excalibur and Village gondolas which takes about 30 to 40 minutes. So you have basically lost 20 minutes of skiing time or more instead of just using the transfer lift. Plus you have to remember that Whistler Blackcomb also has the biggest consistant vertical in North America so if it's snowing up at the top, it could be raining at the bottom and who likes to ski in rain and the snow is usually worse down there.

However, I'm not sure how popular this lift will be the first few years, but it will make the whole mountain hopping process a lot easier, especially if you only want to make a few runs over on one mountain and this system has worked over in Europe.

SkiBachelor, on Sep 20 2005, 01:49 PM, said:

I know what you mean by the rain (I've seen that first hand at Whistler) but it still seems like a ton of money for a transfer lift.

Think of it like this. If you are at the top of the Gondola (Village) at Whistler and wanted to go catch some skiing up on Blackcombs upper glaciers, you would have to ski down (or download) to the village and ride up the mountain over at Blackcomb. This is be a quick and easy switch to get you over to Blackcomb to ski the Glaciers. It will save you mucho time.

I wonder if they are going to use it and the village gon for glacier skiing now instead of Wiz/Solar.

But W-B just built that new mountain bike course over on Blackomb so Wizard will have to be going during the summer. And if Wizard is going, it seems cheaper to run Solar Coaster than the new lift.

I am sure the new lift will be open in the summer for sightseeing, it will be quite an impressive ride.