Park City Mountain Resort, Utah
Park City had two of the oldest Alpine slides currently operating in the U.S., installed in 1977. With the slides becoming increasingly popular, the resort decided to double capacity by adding two new lanes. These cover the same length, 2,750 feet, and vertical, 550 feet, but reflect advances in the Alpine Slide business: The old lanes are made of lightweight concrete; the new ones of fiberglass. The materials change has led to other innovations: the new lanes have more swooping, high-banked turns, like on a race track. The older track feels more “wiggly,” says project manager Tom Pettigrew; the new track, more of a superhighway feel. Although the new lanes are adjacent to the old tracks, the installation was anything but simple. The site is not easily accessible by vehicle, and preparing the roadbed was complicated. “It’s no different than building a two-lane road in a remote area,” Pettigrew says. Crews encountered deep topsoil, which was removed and replaced with more solid fill. Several dips and valleys in the line were filled as well. Once the bed was done, though, the track itself was installed in 19 days. Revegetation of the surrounding hillside required hydroseeding and, since the slope was 20 percent or more in places, tackifiers were added to the mulch to help it adhere to the hillside. The track debuted July 23, ahead of schedule and on budget, and has provided the increase in capacity that the resort sought—the four slides can handle 600 riders an hour. Park City also doubled capacity on its Ziprider, the nation’s only such ride at press time (though others are under development).
Tamarack Resort, Idaho
The nascent Tamarack Resort is investing $52 million this summer on five lifts, 62 chalets and cottages, a members’ lodge, maintenance building, golf course, multiple landscaping projects and road and utility construction. The marquee lifts are a pair of Leitner-Poma detachable quad chairlifts (1,700 and 1,100 vertical feet) that rise 2,800 vertical feet to the area’s summit. But the lodging is equally important. The first slopeside dwellings to be built at Tamarack, they are unusual for their small size: the cottages are two-bedroom, two-bath units of just 1,250 square feet, while the chalets are 3-bedroom, 3-bath layouts of 1,818 or, with 3.5 baths, 2,400 square feet. These homes, part of the successful initial sales Tamarack conducted earlier this year, balance the buyers’ desire for an affordable vacation home and the resort’s need for warm beds, says Rory Veal. The homes were designed by Gordon Pierce of Resort Design Associates, which has designed many buildings in Vail and Beaver Creek. Features include EnergySeal expanding foam insulation, with a high R value, in ceilings, and acoustic insulation between rooms. The resort also offers furniture, audio-visual, and accessories packages to make furnishing easy. The homes are scheduled for completion between October and December. Nearly 20 estate homes are also under construction this summer as well. Tamarack is also busy building its four-story, 47-room, 75,000-square-foot Members Lodge for The Club at Tamarack Resort, which will house a bar, restaurant, Nordic Center, two heated pools and a large hot tub; it will open in late 2005. For the coming season, Tamarack will operate skier services out of temporary structures.
Alpine Valley Resort, Wisconsin
With 20 slopes and 388 feet of vertical, Alpine Valley is installing its second detachable quad chair. Its large beginner clientele and numerous school groups out of the Chicago area require substantial uphill capacity. The new Leitner-Poma lift replaces an old Hall double chair installed in the late 60s and will vastly improve service to Alpine’s beginner terrain. The new quad rises 232 vertical over a 1,333-foot line length, and its 1,000 feet per minute speed makes this one of the shortest lift rides in skidom—less than a minute and a half. The beginner-friendly, easy-loading lift has a capacity of 2,100 an hour. It has a 144-hp motor and bottom drive and tension. Alpine is also installing a new rope tow, regrading and adding a small run from the new lift, which follows a slightly different line and rises a little higher than the double it replaces.
Loon Mountain, New Hampshire
Loon Mountain is installing a new Doppelmayr CTEC high-speed detachable quad chairlift on North Peak. The $3.3 million lift is 4,820 feet long and rises about 1,400 vertical feet to the 3,050-foot summit of the North Peak. The chair replaces a CTEC triple and makes one of the favorite parts of the mountain more accessible—it cuts the ride time to the summit from 9.5 minutes to 4.8 minutes. It also increases capacity to 1,550 riders per hour, up from the triple’s 1,100. At press time, Loon was still removing the old lift; installation of the quad is scheduled to be complete by the end of October, with load testing tentatively set for the end of November. The addition of the lift is part of an overall upgrade to the North Peak area of the resort, which includes widening the Flume trail and clearing glades, plus the addition of a deck around the Camp III mid-mountain lodge. The older CTEC triple itself is scheduled to upgrade Loon’s East Basin, replacing a double chair there within the next few years.
Black Mountain, Maine
Black Mountain is a 470-vertical-foot hill opened in 1960. It is part of the non-profit Maine Winter Sports Center, which aims to get more locals back on the hill. And Black is in expansion mode. A year ago, it added a used Hall double, purchased from nearby Bretton Woods. This year’s program is more ambitious: a new base lodge, parking lot and maintenance building plus a new lift and trails to expand the area to 1,500 vertical feet. The crown jewel of this effort is a new 4,200-foot Doppelmayr/CTEC triple with 117 chairs and a capacity of 1,200 riders per hour. It will serve six new trails—“terrain that’s never been skied,” says manager Jeff Knight–on a 1,150 vertical. It has a DC bottom drive with 200 hp motor and bottom tension. Off the hill, the centerpiece of the expansion is the new lodge. It will be a three-story structure on an 84-foot by 64-foot footprint and, Knight promises, “It will be a beautiful building.”
