

Possible Lifts for Summer 2008
#102
Posted 09 October 2007 - 01:17 PM
Wildhorse project moving forward
Steamboat Springs — The developers of Wildhorse Meadows have formalized plans to link their multi-phase residential project with the base of Steamboat Ski Area via a new gondola.
Resort Ventures West President David Hill announced last week that Wildhorse Meadows has entered into an agreement with Leitner-Poma to engineer the public gondola that will ferry passengers from the new Trailhead Lodge to an upper terminal near the ski area’s gondola building.
“The gondola will come in two phases,” Hill said. “You’ve got to design it and then final price it.”
Resort Ventures West Vice President Brent Pearson said his company has provided Leitner-Poma with a $3 million letter of credit that assures owners in the development that the gondola will be completed.
Leitner-Poma also is building the ski area’s new Christy Peak Express chairlift. The company has a manufacturing plant in Grand Junction.
Construction on the Wildhorse gondola will begin next summer, but it will not be ready to carry passengers until the beginning of the 2009-10 ski season. Completion of the gondola must be timed with the construction of another project under separate ownership because its upper terminal will be located in a public plaza that will be part of the One Steamboat Place resort-style development.
“Initially, we’ll do the bottom terminal and the towers in Wildhorse Meadows and perhaps the towers on the knoll,” across Mount Werner Circle, Hill said. “The upper terminal can’t be built until the parking structure for One Steamboat Place is built. The city has to sign off on the plaza area for the gondola to be ready.”
Construction that takes place next summer will help to ensure completion of the gondola in time for the winter of 2009-10, Hill said.
“If all we have to do (the second summer) is that upper terminal, that’s great,” he said.
When the complex process is complete, it will dramatically change the appearance of the lower ski base, with groups of enclosed gondola cars rising out of a new resort village and spanning a public street on their way to the lifts that take skiers to the slopes.
“It’s a public lift,” Hill said. “But it will not handle the (passengers generated by) the whole Meadows Parking Lot. It’s not designed for that.”
Hill said ski area surveys reflect that the skiing public enjoys the convenience of having its shuttles meet them at their car in the parking lot. Members of the general public on foot in the Wildhorse plaza, or pedestrians wishing to travel to the lower ski base, are welcome to ride the gondola.
The new Wildhorse gondola will be distinctly different from the ski area’s gondola, which features cabins that detach from the haul cable as they come through the terminals.
Wildhorse’s “fixed-grip pulse gondola” will have four groups of three cabins, each cabin accommodating six people. Each group of three cabins will leave the terminals in a pulse and then slow down upon arriving at the next terminal. The two groups of cabins at the midway point when others reach the terminal also will slow down because they are fixed to the haul cable.
The gondola will travel at 1,000 feet per minute and produce trip times of about 4 minutes, 30 seconds, Hill said. A detachable gondola might make the same trip in 2 minutes, 30 seconds, he added.
Liftblog.com
#104
Posted 13 October 2007 - 06:53 PM
LuvPow, on Oct 12 2007, 09:43 PM, said:
Weird, last I heard it was going to be rebuilt and mostly reused as a transportation lift at the base.
It will be interesting to see what is done with the capacity and what design the new one will be.
This post has been edited by poloxskier: 13 October 2007 - 06:54 PM
Theres a place for all of God's creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.
"You could say that a mountain is alot like a woman, once you think you know every inch of her and you're about to dip your skis into some soft, deep powder...Bam, you've got two broken legs, cracked ribs and you pay your $20 just to let her punch your lift ticket all over again"
#105
Posted 13 October 2007 - 07:08 PM
Liftblog.com
#106
Posted 13 October 2007 - 07:47 PM
My guess is that the bottom terminal will be designed to fit in with Keystone's current village theme (mining) and a new top terminal building will replace the current Lift Engineering one.
#107
Posted 13 October 2007 - 11:07 PM
The original plan that was floating arround the mountain last year was to use the river run gondola rebuilt into one that would connect the bases as well as some parking and use Outpost to connect the Keystone lodge to the Mountain House base area. Which would probably leave alot of parts left over though.
I will be back at work next week and will ask arround and see what I am able to find out about the new instalation.
This post has been edited by poloxskier: 13 October 2007 - 11:08 PM
Theres a place for all of God's creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.
"You could say that a mountain is alot like a woman, once you think you know every inch of her and you're about to dip your skis into some soft, deep powder...Bam, you've got two broken legs, cracked ribs and you pay your $20 just to let her punch your lift ticket all over again"
#108
Posted 14 October 2007 - 09:27 AM
poloxskier, on Oct 14 2007, 12:07 AM, said:
I heard that the Outpost is staying put right were its at... this summer from a LM there.
Laurence Sterne
#110
Posted 14 October 2007 - 03:48 PM
Schweitzer has decided to relocate its current day use parking lot further down the mountain and develop the lot for ski in ski out homes. To shuttle people to the mountain, two new chairlifts will be installed. One chairlift will lead to the village while the other will take skiers to the top of the mountain.
http://www.bonnercountydailybee.com/articl...news/news02.txt
I think the proposed lift that will take skiers to the top of the mountain is a bad idea. The cost for this project far exceed the benefit and this lift will only experience peak periods during the morning. The idea of having a chairlift link the parking lot with the village is also another bad idea. A better solution is to install a gondola since it's far more convenient to transport people this way, especially when people have to take a lot of items to the lodge with them and have young children to watch after.
#111
Posted 14 October 2007 - 05:32 PM
coloradoskier, on Oct 14 2007, 11:53 AM, said:
Has that plan been shelved?
Last I heard is the Exhibition lift was due to be replaced with a HSQ and the base terminal moved over to create more parking. Doesn't seem like there would be room for many more spaces but I'm not sure exactly what they had in mind. I'm fairly sure the new HSQ would terminate in the same location as the current triple. Extending it to the top of Norway with a midpoint at mid mountain was just an idea I thought would be nice but it has never been proposed by those in Charge as far as I know. Not sure what the timing is on the new Exhibition, however, does anyone else know??
#112
Posted 14 October 2007 - 05:54 PM
Liftblog.com
#113
Posted 14 October 2007 - 08:56 PM
boardski, on Oct 14 2007, 05:32 PM, said:
I had heard that aproval was granted but according to the Summit Daily News it is still at least 2 years off. I havent heard any thing directly from the Basin though.
Theres a place for all of God's creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.
"You could say that a mountain is alot like a woman, once you think you know every inch of her and you're about to dip your skis into some soft, deep powder...Bam, you've got two broken legs, cracked ribs and you pay your $20 just to let her punch your lift ticket all over again"
#114
Posted 15 October 2007 - 01:43 PM
boardski, on Oct 14 2007, 07:32 PM, said:
From Arapahoe Basin's development plan submitted to the forest service.
"Replace the existing Exhibition lift (fixed-grip triple) with a high speed detachable quad chair accommodating 2,60 people per
hour in a slightly modified alignment. Create an additional 231 parking spaces by widening and re-grading the Lower Overflow Lot and the High Noon Lot, bringing total parking capacity at A-Basin's five lots to 1,781 vehicles."
#116
Posted 15 October 2007 - 03:18 PM
#117
Posted 15 October 2007 - 04:40 PM
coloradoskier, on Oct 15 2007, 01:45 PM, said:
I'll look for it but I originaly read it in print.
Theres a place for all of God's creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.
"You could say that a mountain is alot like a woman, once you think you know every inch of her and you're about to dip your skis into some soft, deep powder...Bam, you've got two broken legs, cracked ribs and you pay your $20 just to let her punch your lift ticket all over again"
#119
Posted 16 October 2007 - 10:27 AM
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