Hoodoo, Oregon
Three years ago, new owner Chuck Shepard set out to double Hoodoo’s skier and rider visits. He began advertising and promoting heavily, and it worked: visits were up 40 percent. To handle this and future crowds, Hoodoo has embarked on its first significant expansion in 20 years. First, it is building a new 60,000 square foot base lodge, to replace the outdated 8,000 square foot old lodge (which is being transformed into patrol HQ and a meeting room for large groups and parties). The new lodge will have cafeteria seating for 1,000, plus a bar and facilities for rental, retail, ski school, and day care—a major improvement on what was a dark, locker-room kind of place.
And second, the resort is replacing two old lifts with new Doppelmayr CTEC fixed-grip quads. The old Green Chair, a 1965 Riblet double, had a capacity of 1,020, and rose 1,029 vertical feet over its 3,635-foot length. The new quad has a capacity of 1,800 per hour and a mid-station. It has bottom tension and drive. The Red Chair, a 1969 Riblet double, rose 662 vertical feet over a 2,258-foot length. It had an hourly capacity of 1,100. The new lift ups that to 1,400, the maximum the Forest Service would approve. It has top drive and bottom tension.
Finally, Hoodoo is adding a seven-acre snow tubing area and tube tow, and, to handle all the increased business, adding 350 spaces to the parking lot.
Breckenridge, Colorado
Major improvements are underway at Breckenridge for the 2002-2003 winter season. Among them: the high-speed six-passenger Independence SuperChair, which accesses 165 acres of intermediate terrain on Peak 7, and the Peak 8 SuperConnect high-speed quad, which replaces the old Chair 4 and vastly simplifies the transfer of skiers among Breck’s four main peaks. Both are Leitner-Poma creations. The improvements increase overall lift capacity at the resort to 36,880 people per hour and total terrain to 2,208 acres.
Both new lifts are noteworthy. Chair 8, the Independence, is one of two major installations in the U.S. to use an AC variable-frequency drive (see Sugarbush story, page 44). This 900 hp, 7,150-foot-long six-passenger detachable covers 1,320 vertical feet and opens vast new terrain on Breck’s Peak 7. The AC drive is said to perform like a DC, but to be 20 to 25 percent more energy-efficient. Another technical wrinkle: the Independence uses right-angle loading, which requires less excavation and decking than traditional loading and allows for easier loading by passengers, with extra time to get settled before the lift accelerates.
The new SuperConnect is a detachable quad, 8,200 feet long, with a rise of 1,400 vertical feet. It starts a few hundred yards above Beaver Run Resort at Peak 9 and terminates near the Vista Haus on Peak 8. The base is accessible from the trails on Peak 10 or via a short lift ride from the Peak 9 base (both the Beaver Run SuperChair and Quicksilver Super6 access the new lift). A mid-station loading point allows skiers and riders to board the new lift where the old Chair 4 previously began. The lift uses a traditional 900 hp DC drive, but it also employs right-angle loading, and has a few technical twists of its own: the lift makes an eight-degree corner at the lift’s midstation, and the midstation also features right-angle loading—the rail deviates out, becomes square to the loading platform, turns back, and re-engages on the moving cable.
Whiteface, New York
The Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) is adding a new high-speed lift at Whiteface and relocating a triple rendered redundant by the new lift to sister area Gore Mountain. Whiteface’s new Face Lift runs from the base area to the top of Upper Valley in approximately six minutes, cutting transit time by more than half. The new lift covers 6,300 feet and 1,300 vertical with a capacity of 2,400 per hour. It is a 600-hp, bottom drive and tension installation. It links with the existing Summit fixed quad to cover Whiteface’s full 3,500 vertical. With the added capacity of the new quad, Whiteface is adding a trail and widening existing trails at the top of the lift.
Installation of the new quad allowed Whiteface to remove two older lifts, double and triple chairs that ran parallel to one another and shared a top station/midstation platform. Crews blasted the base of the old platform creating a much more open area where trails merge.
The Face Lift completes a restructuring of the lift system from the base area, which now features two major high-speed options: the new quad takes skiers toward the mountain summit, while the eight-passenger gondola installed a few years ago carries skiers to the summit of Little Whiteface. The gondola helped lift Whiteface’s annual visits from 100,000 to more than 155,000; ORDA hopes the new lift will help skier-visit growth to continue.
At Gore Mountain, the refurbished triple will help complete the buildout of Topridge (formerly known as Bear Mountain) which includes three new intermediate and expert trails plus some gladed terrain. The Topridge triple will cover 1,000 vertical feet over a 4,100-foot length. The top drive installation is powered by a 400-hp motor.
Whitetail, Pennsylvania
As Whitetail enters its second decade of existence, it is expanding on several fronts. First, and foremost, it has added 17,000 square feet to the base lodge, nearly doubling the size of the original 20,000 square foot structure. The lodge will now house administrative, group sales and guest services, and move the retail shop to the main level. It also provides a more convenient traffic flow in the food court. In the past, the administrative offices were located a mile away.
In addition, the resort is adding lights for night skiing on three of the resort’s four formerly unlit expert trails, and on one additional intermediate run. This means that 17 of the resort’s 19 trails are now lit for night skiing, and permits operation of the Expert’s Choice quad chair from first to last light. And finally, the area is adding Whitetail Adventure Tubing, a tubing hill with five or six lanes, two handle tows, and its own warming hut.
Terry Peak, South Dakota
A new Doppelmayr CTEC detachable quad, the Surprise Express, replaces an old fixed-grip Riblet quad at Terry Peak. This is the area’s second detachable; the first, the Kussy Express, went in two years ago, at the start of the area’s current five-year development plan. These are now the only two high-speed quads in all South Dakota—and in all of the Plains states, we’d wager. The new lift has a vertical of 750 feet over its 3,500-foot length. Its base was moved a little further up the hill from that of the old Riblet, to eliminate a bottleneck at the base area and to leave room for the possible future addition of slopeside condos.
Construction of the quad’s summit terminal served as the beginning of excavation for a new summit lodge, which Terry hopes to begin in earnest next summer. The resort also tripled its water storage for snowmaking when it acquired three wells and three holding ponds, over 14 million gallons of visible storage, as part of the reclamation of the nearby Golden Reward mine.
