ATTITASH MOUNTAIN RESORT, NH

Attitash and parent company Vail Resorts said goodbye to one of the most dreaded lifts in New England with a party on April 2. “Thank you for 37 long years,” read a banner carried by the final brave souls to take the 16-plus minute crawl on the Summit Triple, which has been plagued with reliability issues for many years. 

A summit observation tower, sections of an alpine slide, and a water toboggan summer attraction all had to be removed to make way for the Mountaineer, a new detachable quad from Leitner-Poma of America (LPOA). LPOA is leading the project with support from Fall Line Construction and other contractors.

Attitash opted to pause summer operations to focus on the lift project. “The hub of our summer operations, the Attitash main base area, is being extensively re-graded to accommodate a new base terminal location and improved flow from one side of the base to the other,” said Attitash GM Brandon Swartz. Attitash decided to use its other base area at Bear Peak to stage 22 lift towers and helicopter concrete operations. Thus, both base areas and mountains needed to be closed to the public this summer.

The Summit Triple crossed over a Garaventa CTEC detachable quad called Flying Yankee. An existing shared tower will be modified by shortening its height so the Flying Yankee will now cross over the new Mountaineer. 

The 845 hp Mountaineer will be a workhorse, spanning more than 6,000 feet with 125 carriers. The bottom drive, bottom tension machine will rotate at 1,000 fpm and improve ride time by more than 10 minutes. Capacity will increase from 1,500 pph to 2,400 pph. With limited terrain off the immediate top of the lift, snowmaking was added to black diamond trail Wilfred’s Gawm ahead of the 2021-22 season, providing more than one reliably-open trail from the top. Upon completion this fall, Attitash will have removed four aging fixed grip chairlifts from the mountain and replaced them with two modern quads in two years. New England skiers rejoice.

 SNOWSHOE, WV

Snowshoe embarked on its first lift installation in 17 years just two days after the mountain closed for the season on April 2. A local contractor assisted with removing an existing 1974 Thiokol triple called Powder Monkey. It is being replaced with a Skytrac fixed-grip quad. 

A low snow year in the Mid-Atlantic helped jumpstart the project, but during the first week of May, a surprise storm dropped more than a foot of snow on the construction site—it was the largest storm of the entire season. Despite Mother Nature’s curveball, all towers and terminals of the old lift were removed by May 11 to make room for Skytrac to begin install work.

The new lift will increase capacity from 1,600 to 2,400 pph. “This will be a crucial part of our overall lift system and will help to alleviate pressure on our workhorse lift, Ballhooter,” said VP of mountain operations Ken Gaitor. “The new Powder Monkey will also serve to access the north end of the Snowshoe Village and future development planned there.”

Gaitor said Snowshoe considered installing a detachable lift, but decided to stick with fixed-grip due to reliability in icing events and wind.

The project’s scope also includes replacing snowmaking pipe around the new lift (bigger pipe for increased capacity), a Chairkit loading conveyor, and improved drainage around the bottom terminal. The alignment has shifted skier’s left with the top terminal sitting 10 feet higher and the rotation reversed from the prior lift. The Powder Monkey quad will carry skiers and snowboarders at 450 fpm thanks to the loading conveyor and ascend 604 vertical feet in less than 8 minutes.

 MAMMOTH MOUNTAIN, CA

Mammoth Mountain is building its first new chairlift since 2011 this summer in the Canyon Lodge base area. It originally sought to replace two aging Yan detachable quads with D-Line six-place chairlifts this year. Labor constraints at Doppelmayr made that infeasible. With construction tasked to Mammoth’s in-house maintenance staff, leaders opted to leave the second project for another year. 

After 715 inches of snowfall as of mid-May, that decision looks good in hindsight. Between the length of the season and the annual lift maintenance work to be done, “we didn’t have enough personnel to tackle two lifts this summer,” said Mammoth VP of mountain operations Chris Bulkley.

To prepare for demolition of the existing 1994 Yan, two snowcats, an excavator, and a loader removed more than 10 feet of snow from the bottom terminal area over a week in mid-April. The entire project area had to be fenced off to skiers while maintaining access to lodges on both sides of the lift line. The whole lift alignment and top terminal were later cleared by snowcat, with 20-foot snowdrifts in places.

The new Canyon Express will rise 1,216 feet with 15 towers over a slope length of 5,559 feet and move 3,000 skiers per hour. The alignment includes 90-degree loading, and the top terminal will shift downhill to avoid an avalanche path that prevented lift maintenance teams from accessing the old Canyon Express on control mornings. 

The lift will feature in-terminal parking surrounded by glass walls to protect all 88 carriers at night. Each chair will have an auto lowering and auto opening restraint bar, technology adopted last year by Mammoth parent company Alterra on installations at Deer Valley, Utah, and Steamboat, Colo. 

In addition to the lift project, construction has also commenced on a new Wiegand mountain coaster and $4 million in snowmaking upgrades surrounding the new six-pack.

 SNOWRIVER MOUNTAIN RESORT, MI

A complete lift transformation is underway at Snowriver Mountain Resort’s Jackson Creek Summit. Midwest Family Ski Resorts acquired the northern Michigan ski area a year ago and quickly contracted Doppelmayr to build a flagship detachable six-pack, the first such machine in the Upper Peninsula.

The new lift, dubbed Voyageur Express, will replace a Riblet double and a Riblet triple in a new alignment. Two other aging and redundant lifts were also removed from the mountain this spring. All four outgoing lifts dated back to the 1960s. An in-house team felled a total of 75 lift towers—many of which were in the middle of ski runs—by snowcat immediately after the season ended in April. The new six-pack will have just 10 towers. 

“Each of the new tower locations have been carefully selected to be at trail edge where they’ll have minimal impact on the skier experience on the mountain,” said Snowriver GM Benjamin Bartz. The new lift’s ride time will be a little more than 3 minutes, about a third of the previous ride time, at a line speed of 1,000 fpm.

The installation is being led by a project manager from Doppelmayr with Snowriver employees and local contractors rounding out the team. 

Voyageur will uplift 2,800 passengers per hour initially, slightly fewer than the two lifts it replaces. It can be upgraded to 3,200 pph with additional chairs if demand warrants. It will span 3,051 linear feet and rise 538 vertical feet. The new alignment starts lower on the mountain, allowing skiers to reach the centralized lift from both east and west. 

One downside of the lower loading location is late season snow storms caused flooding and delayed road access to the bottom terminal site for part of the spring. 

Despite that challenge, the project remains on schedule to open for winter 2023-24 and, according to Bartz, equipment deliveries have been tracking on or ahead of schedule.