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New Lifts for Vail Resorts This Summer

From Vail's 10Q released this morning - http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchF...9&Type=HTML

The Company currently anticipates it will spend $90 million to $95 million of Resort capital expenditures for calendar 2007 excluding projects arising from real estate activities noted above. Included in these annual capital expenditures are approximately $38 million to $40 million which are necessary to maintain the appearance and level of service appropriate to the Company’s Resort operations. This capital investment will allow the Company to maintain its high quality standards and make incremental discretionary improvements at the Company’s five ski resorts and throughout its hotels. Highlights of the proposed discretionary expenditures include a new Beaver Creek children’s ski school gondola and a related ski school building at the top of the new gondola; replacement and realignment of two chairlifts with high-speed chairlifts at Vail; a new high-speed chairlift at Heavenly; an expanded spa at The Keystone Lodge; and upgrades to the central reservations, marketing database and e-commerce booking systems, among other projects. The Company currently plans to utilize cash flow from operations and cash on hand to provide the cash necessary to execute its capital plan.

I assume that the Heavenly lift is the Nevada Woods Chair and the Beaver Creek Gondola is the Chair 1 replacement. Any speculation on which chairs Vail is replacing? I hope they are replacing Chair 5 and 10.

New Lifts for Vail Resorts This Summer

From Vail's 10Q released this morning - http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchF...9&Type=HTML

The Company currently anticipates it will spend $90 million to $95 million of Resort capital expenditures for calendar 2007 excluding projects arising from real estate activities noted above. Included in these annual capital expenditures are approximately $38 million to $40 million which are necessary to maintain the appearance and level of service appropriate to the Company’s Resort operations. This capital investment will allow the Company to maintain its high quality standards and make incremental discretionary improvements at the Company’s five ski resorts and throughout its hotels. Highlights of the proposed discretionary expenditures include a new Beaver Creek children’s ski school gondola and a related ski school building at the top of the new gondola; replacement and realignment of two chairlifts with high-speed chairlifts at Vail; a new high-speed chairlift at Heavenly; an expanded spa at The Keystone Lodge; and upgrades to the central reservations, marketing database and e-commerce booking systems, among other projects. The Company currently plans to utilize cash flow from operations and cash on hand to provide the cash necessary to execute its capital plan.

I assume that the Heavenly lift is the Nevada Woods Chair and the Beaver Creek Gondola is the Chair 1 replacement. Any speculation on which chairs Vail is replacing? I hope they are replacing Chair 5 and 10.

Vail is replacing Chairs 10 & 14.

From the Q2 Press Release - http://biz.yahoo.com...m044.html?.v=82

Resort discretionary capital is expected to be in the range of $52 million and $55 million with expected projects including a new Beaver Creek children's ski school gondola and a related ski school building at the top of the new gondola, replacement and realignment of Chair 10 and Chair 14 at Vail Mountain with high-speed chairlifts, a new high-speed chairlift at Heavenly, an expanded spa at The Keystone Lodge and upgrades to the central reservations, marketing database and e-commerce booking systems, among other projects.

Since it appears that Doppelmayr CTEC is having a very big summer this year, does anyone know if it will have the crew to install all these new lifts?

After last year's incident with Wolf Creek and Doppelmayr CTEC, it makes me wonder.

Outback, I presume you will be having a very big summer!

I'm sad to see chair 10 go. It will really change the highline area. I'm also quite suprised to see chairs 10 and 14 go before 17 and 5 which actually do get busy.

SkiBachelor, on Mar 14 2007, 10:24 PM, said:

ALot of time the manufactor will let it be known around the resort they are installing at, that the are needing a crew, skilled / and un skilled.
The summer i worked for them, there were 5 of us winter season people from DV building lifts at PCMR, and only one PCMR employee.
Be ready to work your tail off, walking up and down the mtn all summer. By summers end, you'll be ready to ski that first full day of winter.
What happened last year at Wolf Creek?

Wolf Creek was pissed about the delay and posted Jan Leonard's phone number on its home page and asking people to call him up ask when the lift would be finished.

the lift was running by mid november though, that's not that late

Actually it was load tested on December 3rd and 4th, and opened on December 8th.

so what was the schduled opening date? Customers just don't understand when a product they ordered has probelms.
Be it weather, production, transportation issuse, the list goes on and on. I wonder how many people called Jan. I doubt it was enough to make a differance. If Ctec couldn't get the parts or the steel to make the parts, that's not his fault, it's either the manufactor of the steel, or possiby the trucking company ran into problems.

I think the reason was not the parts, but the crew to install it.

This one's official:

This summer CYPRESS MOUNTAIN will continue with the construction of the Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding Venues for the 2010 WINTER OLYMPIC Games. Next Winter Season we will be opening a new TERRAIN AREA with 9 NEW RUNS for HIGH LEVEL INTERMEDIATE/EXPERT SKIERS and SNOWBOARDERS which will be accessed by a newly located QUAD CHAIR lift.

Huge news for Skiers and Riders is that Sunrise Quad Chair will be replaced with a HIGH SPEED quad chair that should wisk our skiers and riders to the to top in about 4 minutes!

We will also begin the construction of a NEW DAY LODGE located between the 2 main chairlifts (The Eagles Express and Sunrise Chairs). In addition we are also planning on a major electrical upgrade, installation of a state of the art snowmaking system and a new 250 car parking lot.


All of these developments take place on Black Mountain in and around the Bike Park Area. Due to these construction and access requirements, we will not open the Cypress Bike Park for the summer of 2007.

Both manufacters are going to have big years, particularly Doppelmayr CTEC.

By my count, D-CTEC could have as many as 5 gondolas, at least 15 detachcble chairs and 8 fixed grips. Way up from 2006. This probably is not all of them either.

Doppelmayr CTEC
2006 2007
Tram 1 >>> 1
Gondola 1 >>> 5
High Speed Six 1 >>> 2
High Speed Quad 9 >>> 13
Quad 10 >>> 3
Triple 2 >>> 3
Double 1 >>> 1
Single 0 >>> 1
Surface 1 >>> 2
Total 25 31

Leitner-Poma is up by my count too. All though there aren't as many gondolas as last year, they have at least 7 detachable chairs and 4 fixed grips, both up from 2006.

2006 2007
Tram 0 >>> 0
Gondola 3 >>> 1
High Speed Six 2 >>> 2
High Speed Quad 2 >>> 5
Quad 1 >>> 4
Triple 0 >>> 0
Double 0 >>> 0
Single 0 >>> 0
Surface 0 >>> 0
Total 8 12

I know it's but, why is Doppelmayr CTEC doing more instalations than Leitner-POMA? Is there a major price difference or just location? What other factors are there?

Doppelmayr CTEC has three manufacturing facilities in North America with one currently not being used (former Doppelmayr plant in Golden, CO), while Leitner-POMA only has one. Because Doppelmayr CTEC has more, it's able to produce more lifts more efficiently which allows for cheaper prices.

Leitner-POMA's plant in Grand Junction is about half the size of Doppelmayr CTEC's plant in SLC.

I suggest we start a new topic for this discussion. Doppelmayr and CTEC have always been bigger companies than Leitner and Poma. Leitner never built very many lifts in North America and Poma has been behind both Doppelmayr and CTEC for a long time. Before the merger, there was only been one year after 1990 in which Poma and Leitner built more lifts than either Doppelmayr or CTEC. Both Doppelmayr and CTEC were larger companies before the merger and they combined to form an even bigger company. It is interesting that Leitner-Poma said in SAM last year that it "goes back and forth" between the two when it really hasn't much. Here are some graphs that compare the companies. The first one is Doppelmayr and CTEC since 1990 added together along with Leitner-Poma. The second one shows all lifts built by all manufacturers since 1955. A lot has changed through the years!
 dctec_vs_lp.JPG (38.29K)
Number of downloads: 42
 lift_manufacturers_graph.JPG (359.96K)
Number of downloads: 39
This post has been edited by Skier: 16 March 2007 - 09:18 PM

Anyone heard whether Smuggler's Notch is getting their six pack this summer? I haven't heard about it for awhile.

I looked at their website and didn't see anything about it. I sent an email to them quite a while ago asking about and they told me that it was still in the planning stages. They also asked me about what I thought about it and if I could offer any input on the subject. I provided my ideas and thoughts and was emailed back by the GM stating that my ideas would be taken into consideration and possibly investigated further. I hope to hear more about this as the spring goes on.

Skier, on Mar 18 2007, 02:21 AM, said:

I'll have my mom look into it. (She works up there)

If it's like their other "planned" lifts, it may take a while, which is fine by me! They usually like to pay for stuff with cash, so tearlier this year may not have been too good to them for that.

Dave

From today's Aspen Time's newspaper, it appears that plans for the new Elk Camp beginner lift at Snowmass are on hold since it was not listed as being a project this summer. There were also plans to replace Sheer Bliss with a HSS this summer too, but that's on hold until a later date.

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20070319...044/0/FRONTPAGE