252 replies to this topic

[TheEpicPancake]

floridaskier, on 19 February 2014 - 07:23 PM, said:

Park City:
- Thaynes isn't too bad, it's pretty short and mostly serves bump runs, so it's nice on the legs. Motherlode is a different story though. That's just painful, and a high speed quad there would take a lot of the pressure off the overcrowded Silverlode. My proposal: King Con six pack, and use the old King Con to replace Motherlode. A single lift to replace Motherlode and Thaynes would be pretty bad for the Thaynes pod - it's a flat, long, narrow runout down Thaynes Canyon to get to Motherlode (and more runout to get all the way down to King Con).
- Town Lift isn't used much but it's a very high visibility lift for the whole town. Would be great to see a gondola here (and my pipe dream of the Town Lift to Deer Valley Silver Lake gondola probably ain't happening, but it would be cool)

The Canyons
- Dreamscape, Dreamcatcher, Peak 5, Day Break are all too slow, poorly aligned, and not covered with any

Snowbasin
- Agreed that it would be great to see Wildcat, Becker, and Middle Bowl replaced at some point. Middle Bowl isn't open very often, and it would be nice to be able to lap the terrain there faster. The gondolas are nice, but it would be good not to have to take your skis off every time.


I remember there was talk in the newspaper about Motherlode getting replaced in the summer of 2008, but they did Ski Team/Crescent instead (a better idea in my opinion). I would think Motherlode is at the top of the list once they get their ownership issues ironed out with Vail and Talisker, but not before

Actually the Deer Valley Main Street - Silver Lake gondola is in the planning process. I would imagine it to be built within the next couple years from what I hear. They're looking at 2 possible alignments - both starting near the Transit center and either ending next to the top terminal of Silver Lake Express or in the parking lot on the other side of Silver Lake lodge.

And I agree with what you say about the Canyons - not only are those lifts slow but they're definitely poorly aligned. I just don't know if there's much room for re-aligning now though, with all those mansions tucked in every corner of that part of the resort. But at least upgrading them would help.

[SkiDaBird]

skidude2, on 19 February 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

First thing that came to my mind when I saw this post was indeed Motherlode at PCMR. Everything has been well stated here. Silverlode definitely needs some relief. It always has a long line.

Dreamcatcher at Canyons needs to be made into a detachable. Dreamscape and Peak 5 are not too long so I'm fine with fixed grips there but Dreamcatcher is a long lift with decent vertical and a lot of great runs that get ignored.

Also (since I'm in Utah):

Solitude could use a couple replacements on some of the shorter lifts. They need more length!

Solitude really couldn't do a lot. It's a smaller place and that is what is good about it. A couple of proposals of mine include a low capacity HSQ for Sunrise, as well as the one HSQ/HSS to replace both Apex and Powderhorn that was proposed on the new lifts forum a couple of years ago. They probably could use the existing Apex and Powderhorn to replace Sunrise, stealing towers from Powdy to cover how short Apex is. Then a new lift going up the Apex line, with a midstation at the Apex top, then continuing all the way up. Won't happen anytime soon since Apex and Powdy are in great shape still but that is the point of this thread.

[slider729]

Killington - Snowdon mtn needs replacement/ upgrade to HSQ - with the right modifications to the Killington base lodge area and parking lot it would be better utilized.

Mount Snow - North face lifts and the Sunbrook lift. Long slow lifts - although too much capacity at the peak?

Sunday river - Locke peak, spruce peak and whitecap base lifts . Some re alignments would help.

Sugarloaf - Bucksaw on the west side. Proposals included new intermediate trail pod between west mtn base and bucksaw current area. Hsq or even convertible lift (to gondola cabins) to service dinners at bullwinkles would be nice.
King Pine lift with lower base location to catch more area from brackett basin - Go HSQ.

Sugarbush - Valley House Double - Plenty of abilty to absorb crowds on the spring fling side of lincon peak if the base was lower and it was higher capacity.

Cataloochee, NC - Summit double. Replace with a fixed grip quad (only 750' vertical), but current lift has poor loading and queue area, low overall capacity and akward midstation where due to snowmaking interferes with height of chairs crossing over trail (which has to be marked with bamboo).

Sugar Mtn NC, Main summit doubles (2). The slowest lifts on the east coast - Again not impressive vertical so Fixed grip Quad lift may be sufficient.

Canyons lifts mentioned earlier - along with the Snowbasin replacement of Becker.

[DonaldMReif]

floridaskier, on 19 February 2014 - 07:23 PM, said:

Park City:
- Thaynes isn't too bad, it's pretty short and mostly serves bump runs, so it's nice on the legs. Motherlode is a different story though. That's just painful, and a high speed quad there would take a lot of the pressure off the overcrowded Silverlode. My proposal: King Con six pack, and use the old King Con to replace Motherlode. A single lift to replace Motherlode and Thaynes would be pretty bad for the Thaynes pod - it's a flat, long, narrow runout down Thaynes Canyon to get to Motherlode (and more runout to get all the way down to King Con).
- Town Lift isn't used much but it's a very high visibility lift for the whole town. Would be great to see a gondola here (and my pipe dream of the Town Lift to Deer Valley Silver Lake gondola probably ain't happening, but it would be cool)

The Canyons
- Dreamscape, Dreamcatcher, Peak 5, Day Break are all too slow, poorly aligned, and not covered with any

Snowbasin
- Agreed that it would be great to see Wildcat, Becker, and Middle Bowl replaced at some point. Middle Bowl isn't open very often, and it would be nice to be able to lap the terrain there faster. The gondolas are nice, but it would be good not to have to take your skis off every time.


I remember there was talk in the newspaper about Motherlode getting replaced in the summer of 2008, but they did Ski Team/Crescent instead (a better idea in my opinion). I would think Motherlode is at the top of the list once they get their ownership issues ironed out with Vail and Talisker, but not before

With Snowbasin, I would definitely say that gondolas are great as access lifts, but not as lifts to do laps on terrain, because I'm the kind of guy for whom it wuold be a bit of a hassle to take skis off after each run. Logically, Strawberry would be better as a high speed six pack (and there are some chairlifts in Colorado, like Sheer Bliss, the Beaver Run SuperChair, and the American Flyer, that are the length of the Strawberry Gondola or longer).

[skierdude9450]

Wizard and Solar Coaster on Blackcomb truly need to be six packs. Their capacity as it stands is insufficient to accommodate the morning rush. You can easily wait more than half an hour if you arrive at Wizard between 9-10 on a busy day.

I'm really excited for the Whistler Village Gondola's new cabins. Unfortunately it probably won't shorten the line substantially, but it will be a much more enjoyable ride.

[teachme]

skierdude9450, on 19 February 2014 - 11:11 PM, said:

Wizard and Solar Coaster on Blackcomb truly need to be six packs. Their capacity as it stands is insufficient to accommodate the morning rush. You can easily wait more than half an hour if you arrive at Wizard between 9-10 on a busy day.

I'm really excited for the Whistler Village Gondola's new cabins. Unfortunately it probably won't shorten the line substantially, but it will be a much more enjoyable ride.

While Wiz and SC are old, they are not the only way up the mountain. Have not been up there on a busy winter day in a while (I'm allergic to crowds), but on days when Wiz is 30 min, how long is it on the Gondola from the village / Base 2?

[DonaldMReif]

boardski, on 18 February 2014 - 06:56 PM, said:

Would the T-Bar area at Breck be too windy for a chair though? I definitely agree with upgrading 6 and it would be nice to extend the lift lower down to originate next to E lift. More people must be using E now to warrant a high-speed lift (last time I skied Breck was 2012). The Teocalli idea sounds good too.

Regarding Morningside at Steamboat (from an earlier post), it might be worthwhile to try a loading carpet there before upgrading to HSQ. Upgrading that chair to high speed is going to make the chutes very accessible to inexperienced tourists= a lot of injuries and difficult rescues. It would be nice if the terrain could be expanded back there but I don't know where they could go. Looks considerably flat at the bottom of Morningside.

Do the ski area management personnel who make the decisions about lift upgrades read our ideas? I think we should all be hired :-)

boardski, on 18 February 2014 - 06:26 PM, said:

I was noticing long lines at Mineral Basin last time I skied the bird. Seems like they almost need a second lift in addition to Mineral Basin to return skiers/ riders back to the front side. Especially if they are wanting to add more terrain which would require a lift ride up MB to return to the front. That 6 pack would be good for the second lift. Since people need to ride the lift to get back out of the bowl, the high capacity lifts would not put more people on those runs, they would just help people not get stuck in 20+ minute lines. As for the places I go in Colorado, here are a few:
Loveland: Time to modify lift #2. I would like to see them move the bottom of the current lift to the midway reload and install a new lift from the bottom (opposite side of ticket office) to E-Tow cabin.
Lift #5 should also be restored to normal operation.

Mary Jane: (at Winter Park): Sunnyside should be replaced with HSQ and current triple should be moved to replace Pony Express and Iron Horse by Starting at bottom of Pony, midway unload near top of current Pony and top station at top of Iron Horse.

A-Basin: Replace Lenawee with HSQ (or FGQ if too windy on top) and move current FGT to replace Pallavicini.

Sunlight: All new lifts needed, good place for some "not too used" triples and quads, they should also add a lift in the "Sunlight Extreme" area, great trails but the run-out is a hassle. A great area but I worry about it's future.

Steamboat: Should either start running Priest Creek (old FGD which paralells HSQ) or replace with a newer lift which can be used to make it possible to ski the Sundown area without dealing with horrendous lines and multiple slows and stops on Sundown chair.

Copper: A gondola or "Chondola" would be nice to replace Flyer. If the plan is to start grooming everything like they do around Super Bee once Alpine is upgraded, I hope the Alpine stays as is (long FGD) until it rots.

Purgatory: Needs some type of two-way transfer tow to go between lifts 3,5,8 (along the bottom would be nice) similar to the one Alta has.

Sunlight could go with a bottom-to-top low capacity high speed quad.

For Loveland, Chair 2 should either be split into two lifts (which I think might be on the master plan), or they should put a high speed quad on the current lift line (it's about 1.15 miles long, about the same length as the Outback Express lift) with a midway load/unload station.

As for the Mary Jane, there have been the discussions that suggest that Winter Park upgrade the Zephyr Express to a high speed six pack, and use the original lift to replace Sunnyside, then use Sunnyside to replace Looking Glass.

[Midwestrider]

Chippewa Double and East side t-bar at Indianhead MI, and The Miner-Denver/CTEC/Riblet Double (currently out of service) at the Porkies MI.

[RibStaThiok]

RibStaThiok, on 19 February 2014 - 07:24 PM, said:

Wildcat rarely gets used anymore. It's more of a back-up in case Becker or Needles goes down. Every once in awhile it will get used on a Saturday and Sunday. If Needles goes down, Needles Lodge can still be used via access from Middle Bowl which would get access from Wildcat and Becker. As for Middle Bowl it is a good lift in the late season as there is still a considerable amount of snow in the Middle Bowl area in spring time and if you will recall a few years ago after the resort had closed winter ops, they ended up re-opening Middlebowl via access from Becker because of the amount of snow still in that area. They had to take Needles down for its maintenance and preps for summer ops, so MB was the workhorse of the mountain.

If Sun Valley has the desire to spend some $$$ then yes, Becker and Porcupine could benefit from an upgrade to a HST or HSQ to shorten the ride time but I don't think an upgrade of Middlebowl or Wildcat is needed since they are not used all the time as it is.

There had been some discussion a few years back about putting in a FG lift in the Strawberry area for access into and out of should the Straw Gondola ever go down or be shut down due to the high winds that tend to frequent upper Strawberry. I had suggested back then the possibility of an upgrade and relocate of the Thiokol Wildcat Tripple over to Strawberry Bowl.

Now thinking further on this (Snowbasin is my favorite resort, does it show?)
They could upgrade Becker to a HST or HSQ and move the existing Becker over into Strawberry Bowl

Isn't it fun trying to think up the things for the resorts to do? If only we had the $$$.

[skierdude9450]

teachme, on 19 February 2014 - 11:57 PM, said:

While Wiz and SC are old, they are not the only way up the mountain. Have not been up there on a busy winter day in a while (I'm allergic to crowds), but on days when Wiz is 30 min, how long is it on the Gondola from the village / Base 2?

Excalibur from the village can be just as bad, but generally not as long as WVG; Base 2 usually isn't too bad as they just have singles to fill up cabins coming from the village, but you can still wait 15-20 minutes some times.

[snoloco]

Windham, NY needs to upgrade their base to summit lifts soon. Right now they have an aging 1993 Garaventa CTEC high speed quad as the main lift and a painfully long and slow 1983 Von Roll triple as the back up. I would like to see them get a six pack bubble chair to replace the triple and keep the quad as the back up for crowded weekends. A bubble lift would fit in well with the fancy upscale feel that Windham strives for.

Whiteface, NY could benefit from these lift improvements. Replace the Face Lift HSQ with an HSS. Move the quad to replace the fixed grip Summit Quad. That lift has a ride time of 11 minutes and should be upgraded. The Face Lift upgrade would also help if Cloudsplitter went down for wind as it is the only lift that gets you out of the base are to access the Summit, Lookout, and Little Whiteface lifts. The Bear lift which is a hall double should be a fixed grip quad for additional capacity out of the base in case Cloudsplitter is down as well, since you can get to Freeway from it. Little Whiteface should be a fast fixed grip quad with a loading carpet to allow a speed of 550 fpm, for better access to the Mountain Run and Little Whiteface trail pods.

[missouriskier]

slider729, on 19 February 2014 - 09:33 PM, said:

Sugar Mtn NC, Main summit doubles (2). The slowest lifts on the east coast - Again not impressive vertical so Fixed grip Quad lift may be sufficient.

I haven't ever skied there, but people who do ski Sugar complain about those lifts all the time. A HSQ or HSS is easily justifiable considering that it would be almost a mile long, with about 1,200 ft of rise. I doubt if they get replaced under the current ownership, though. People on SkiSoutheast.com don't seem to think too highly of the operations there. Those NC ski resorts do have the potential to be much better with lift and snowmaking upgrades.

[SkiDaBird]

DonaldMReif, on 19 February 2014 - 10:39 PM, said:

With Snowbasin, I would definitely say that gondolas are great as access lifts, but not as lifts to do laps on terrain, because I'm the kind of guy for whom it wuold be a bit of a hassle to take skis off after each run. Logically, Strawberry would be better as a high speed six pack (and there are some chairlifts in Colorado, like Sheer Bliss, the Beaver Run SuperChair, and the American Flyer, that are the length of the Strawberry Gondola or longer).

It's not length that is the problem. Honestly, if you don't like Gondolas, Snowbasin isn't a good place for ya. We have a few long ones in Utah as well. Peruvian is easily 10 min if it isn't running at 1000, I think it's just under 9000 feet long. Collins is really long as well, especially considering it usually runs slower than most HSQs since it breaks a lot.

[Snowy Ferries]

Chair 1 at Mission ridge should be upgraded to a quad. It's a 1966 Riblet center-pole double. In the morning, that lift is a real bottleneck; it's the main access lift to the Midway restaurant, Liberator Express, and Chair 3, the most popular lifts in the resort. The only time I have to wait in lift lines at Mission is when I an getting on Chair 1 at the beginning of the day. Chair 4 experiences the same problem, as it is another (albeit far less convenient way) to Midway. It is also the main beginner/ski school chairlift, and I think wide, easy to load carriers with retention bars would be a nice improvement.

[Aussierob]

The line up for the Gondola at Blackcomb is easily as bad as the one for Wizard. I think your options there are for a Gondola to replace Wizard and a six on Solar, maybe with the potential to swap half the lines for summer ops like we do now with the bubble chairs. Replacing Wiz with a gondola to the top of Solar and leaving Solar alone would also work.

[ceo]

slider729, on 19 February 2014 - 09:33 PM, said:

Sugarloaf - Bucksaw on the west side. Proposals included new intermediate trail pod between west mtn base and bucksaw current area. Hsq or even convertible lift (to gondola cabins) to service dinners at bullwinkles would be nice.

That would be a nice place for a trail pod; pull some crowds from the main mountain and provide a reason to upgrade the horribly long and slow West Mountain lift. I've heard a proposal to install a gondola on the Bucksaw alignment, then continuing to the summit via an angle station at Bullwinkle's. I think the base area is too spread out as it is without putting your signature lift a quarter mile from the base lodge.

Quote

King Pine lift with lower base location to catch more area from brackett basin - Go HSQ.

They've been talking for a while about replacing King Pine with an HSQ, and moving the existing lift down to replace Double Runner.

[ceo]

Cannon Mountain: Cannonball Express quad. Slow, cold and having problems (they have to load three to a chair when it's at capacity). And either make it an HSQ or rename it. :-)

[alexboesen]

Chair 9 (Plunge Lift) at Telluride needs to be upgraded to a HSQ.

Shedhorn at Big Sky Resort needs to be upgraded to a HSQ.

[alexboesen]

Aussierob, on 23 February 2014 - 06:13 PM, said:

The line up for the Gondola at Blackcomb is easily as bad as the one for Wizard. I think your options there are for a Gondola to replace Wizard and a six on Solar, maybe with the potential to swap half the lines for summer ops like we do now with the bubble chairs. Replacing Wiz with a gondola to the top of Solar and leaving Solar alone would also work.

Of the two ideas, I think a Gondola to the top of Solar and leaving Solar alone is a much better idea.

[alexboesen]

DonaldMReif, on 18 February 2014 - 06:44 PM, said:

I think the American Flyer needs to stay a chairlift. No offense, but it does have terrain that can be lapped, and I think it's in pretty good shape.

Other lifts in Colorado I think need upgrading:

Breckenridge:

Colorado SuperChair- This one is confirmed to be happening.

Lift 6 and Lift E - both should become high speed quads to increase capacity. One of them could then be used to replace the T-Bar.


Crested Butte:
Twister could be removed, although the master plans suggest making it a fixed grip quad.

Teocalli-Either upgrade to a high speed quad and extend downhill, or run on a more regular basis

Breckenridge - One more to add is a HSQ on C Chair with an extension up towards the top of Mercury.