Utah Park City Mountain Lift Upgrades Blocked

[Truberski]

I feel for my old PC neighbors and friends as PCMR is really the only option since they merged with Canyons. Deer Valley prices out many from a full season pass and Ikon doesn’t give you the “local days” that you need for a full season. We were back there last winter and had dinner with a bunch of our old friends that still live in PC. All of them had Epic passes but none were happy with PCMR and lots of Vail bashing over cocktails. I still miss the place but less so when I hear from them and others about state of state.

And, there are lots of people that have lived there for many years that are not among the 1%. Just average people with average incomes and lives. None of them are ready to leave the place but crazy how much the quality of life has changed in only 10 years. No easy answers for PC or SLC resorts and hopefully this is the start of more balanced planning and development, and improved citizenship by the resorts.

 

[locknload]

I started skiing and visiting Park City about 15 years ago. Its night and day from those early years until now with the change in vibe of the entire area. Park City was always a nice/upscale town but its turned into something totally different now. I'm not sure where all this ends. VR owns the keys to the kingdom (access to 2 of the 3 resorts) and isn't known for being a great corporate citizen. Real estate has shot through the roof and has priced out a lot of long-time locals. Every powder day feels like a day at Disneyland with the lift lines and crowds...and the resentment from locals is palpable now. I'm not sure what the answer is..but the entire community needs to sit down and address a range of issues or Park City is going to lose everything that has made it so special.

Great quote from Tom Clyde in the Park Record on this issue:

"This is obviously the beginning of the story and not the end. Turning down the lift permits doesn’t fix the broader problems, and there’s nothing in Vail’s way of doing business that suggests it will start a benevolent conversation about how they can modify the operation to enhance the quality of life for local residents. But Wednesday night was significant in Park City and in the ski industry generally. The interests of the ski resorts and the ski town have been on a more or less parallel track for 60 years. Wednesday, it became clear that they have diverged, and maybe completely derailed. It’s going to get interesting."

 

[Brian Finch]

I do feel for the tourist or mega pass client. They have spent the $$$ & are playing by the rules, to a degree. Where they may show better citizenship is in not being a disaster, parking in actual spaces, being courteous to others, avoiding alcohol induced lift line fights at 9:45 am and learning to walk in ski boots. It'd be swell if the tipped too.

The crux for the mountains and locals is that skiing is a 10 week sport in most parts of the country, where the weekend and powder days tend to number ~ 25 days per year + a few holiday dates. No one has sorted out how to avert bottlenecking on those ~35 days per year. We literally have mountains now closed midweek & have 2 hour lines for parking on Saturday. No one is scaling up for 35 days per year.

Seems that what we need to stop trying half (quarter? eighth?) solutions like paid parking & blow things up!! Offer free skiing Monday - Thursday. I would think the enhanced revenue from Food 'n Beverage + souvenirs and hardgoods sold would more than cover things and how many weekenders can't get thru the lines now to hit the cafe or shop?

Until skiing is a legit ~100 day per year sport, we will continue to wither on the vine with this famine mindset so firmly entrenched.

 

[locknload]

I do feel for the tourist or mega pass client. They have spent the $$$ & are playing by the rules, to a degree. Where they may show better citizenship is in not being a disaster, parking in actual spaces, being courteous to others, avoiding alcohol induced lift line fights at 9:45 am and learning to walk in ski boots. It'd be swell if the tipped too.

The crux for the mountains and locals is that skiing is a 10 week sport in most parts of the country, where the weekend and powder days tend to number ~ 25 days per year + a few holiday dates. No one has sorted out how to avert bottlenecking on those ~35 days per year. We literally have mountains now closed midweek & have 2 hour lines for parking on Saturday. No one is scaling up for 35 days per year.

Seems that what we need to stop trying half (quarter? eighth?) solutions like paid parking & blow things up!! Offer free skiing Monday - Thursday. I would think the enhanced revenue from Food 'n Beverage + souvenirs and hardgoods sold would more than cover things and how many weekenders can't get thru the lines now to hit the cafe or shop?

Until skiing is a legit ~100 day per year sport, we will continue to wither on the vine with this famine mindset so firmly entrenched.

Interesting ideas. You are right that we are trying to cram all the skier visits into the main 10-12 weeks of the season (Late December through March) and with the advent of mega passes and older ski infrastructure its led to fairly predictable results in terms of crowds, parking fights and an overall diminished skier experience. Something in the model has to change or I'm guessing we'll see a decline in people continuing to pay a premium to get low-end experience.

 

[fatbob]

Until skiing is a legit ~100 day per year sport, we will continue to wither on the vine with this famine mindset so firmly entrenched.

Yeah you're going to have to break the US working week and schooling to achieve that. Alternately shift to the Euro model and force week long ski breaks ( in many destination resorts Saturday is the quietest day on the slopes but busiest on the roads as tourists change over). To do that you'd need pretty active intervention in the rental/ hotel market to force minimum 7 night stays though. And it doesn't solve for places like SLC and Colorado Front Range where the local drive up population is vast.

Alternately if you take a wholly rational market view of the whole thing then it should eventually work itself out. People will get tired of paying over the odds for a poor experience (and remember tourists aren't skiing at the sub $20/day rate that locals are) and crowds will self regulate. Problem is that people aren't rational and value different things so people are still happy to burn a significant amount of cash to wait in lines and eat junk food at Disney so you might be waiting past the end of climate viable skiing for that to happen.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I'm glad to see PC standing up for themselves. I wish Stowe (town of) would have blocked the replacement of the Mountain Triple with the new 6-pack. Too late, it's happening.

 

[HardDaysNight]

Replacing the Silverlode 6 pack with 8 will have a minimal effect on uphill capacity anyway. A major reason for the logjams at that lift is the very frequent stoppages caused by tourons being too clueless to load/unload coupled with untrained operators who hit the wrong buttons. I’m not persuaded that it will prove easier to manage 8 halfwits per chair rather than 6, so expect stoppages to increase rather than the reverse. Also, the chairs are spaced further apart on the 8 seater so even the nominal capacity is not much higher than the 6 pack. Finally, there’s only so much snow to ski when one gets to the top anyway - and that snow is already wall-to-wall with skiers/riders at peak times. The 8 pack seems more like a promotional “look how great we are” stunt than a real improvement. A new Eagle lift routed as proposed would be a major improvement however.

 

[fatbob]

Whatever happened to split /alternating load point chairs in the US? Think I've seen one at Breck but not really elsewhere. Gives each group individually more time to sort themselves out for load. A dual load sixer strikes me as best uplift capacity especially with aggressive line marshalling.

 

[crosscountry]

No one has sorted out how to avert bottlenecking on those ~35 days per year. We literally have mountains now closed midweek & have 2 hour lines for parking on Saturday.

Are you saying no one had thought of midweek passes?

The problem won't be solved by the ski resorts. It'll have to be solved by my boss not expecting me to be in the office on Wednesday!

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Whatever happened to split /alternating load point chairs in the US? Think I've seen one at Breck but not really elsewhere. Gives each group individually more time to sort themselves out for load. A dual load sixer strikes me as best uplift capacity especially with aggressive line marshalling.

I don't even know what you are talking about.

 

[Seldomski]

I don't even know what you are talking about.

There is a 6 person chairlift at Breckenridge that loads two chair simultaneously - in parallel. The end result is you have a lot more time to get in position and on the lift. It's in the beginner area of the mountain at Peak 9. I have never seen another lift like this in the US.

Video is over long but shows what the loading looks like.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I was really wishing I could make the videographers head turn left as he was loading. Never seen anything like that.

 

[Seldomski]

I was really wishing I could make the videographers head turn left as he was loading. Never seen anything like that.

This video is a lot better:


Note that if someone falls on one side, they stop the entire lift. There isn't a way to stop just one chair and let the other keep going- at least not a way I have ever witnessed.

 

[Brian Finch]

Are you saying no one had thought of midweek passes?

The problem won't be solved by the ski resorts. It'll have to be solved by my boss not expecting me to be in the office on Wednesday!

Well, looks like the Epic Local pass is > $650. If Midweek was free, I bet more would go (& spend money more freely).

Have you asked your boss for Wednesdays off? Seems like its an employee's market.

 

[James]

Interesting. Never seen that. For good reason-

“This is the only lift in North America with double loading. Every other chair goes to one of two load platforms.”

Quicksilver Super6 – Breckenridge, CO

Visit the post for more.

liftblog.com

I’ve been on a six chair in Switzerland which has very unusual loading. You load on the line coming down, before the bull wheel. So you enter st s right angle to the line from the queue, then have to reorient yourself to sit down.

Now you’d think it would be a complete cluster, but it’s not really. What saves it is there’s plenty of time, and there’s st least two chairs you have access to. (Possibly 3, but I’m not sure)
So let’s say the group that would be two chairs ahead of you doesn’t fill a chair, you can skate out there and get on. It’s not as complicated s it sounds, but you do have to pay attention. So it kind of works for those just getting on normally in zombie mode, and those more active.

I really should have taken a video.

Edit: I did find this photo of loading.


www.skiresort.info/ski-resort/4-vallees-verbierla-tzoumaznendazveysonnazthyon/ski-lifts/l92894/
There’s another chair to the left of that white jacket that’s either there or just about. So you could load there or scoot into the one where people are about to sit down.

 

[crosscountry]

Have you asked your boss for Wednesdays off? Seems like its an employee's market.

Indeed (an employee's market). Still in negotiation...

The problem isn't so much my boss, but his boss and his boss's boss...

(The flood gate had already been cracked open during the pandemic, Now the bosses are trying to hold back the tide of the flood and close the door again. But the flood (us) is trying to push it fully open the whole way!)

 

[Brian Finch]

The problem isn't so much my boss, but his boss and his boss's boss...

^ yup - I feel ya.

I've found that I'm so much more productive when I can self schedule. Pull a lot of 6a-7p in the Summers to ski in the winters. Covid has messed up the time honored tradition of "I'm not seeking care January to Valentines day b/c my deductible just reset" though.....

Keep pushing those gates open!

 

[BigSlick]

Dumb decision. Eagle lift is a major base to mid-mountain mover and is a real bottle neck in the morning. It was/is in desperate need of an upgrade. We can all agree that Vail is bad, but that decision will hurt locals too unless they like waiting in long lift lines.

 

[fatbob]

Interesting. Never seen that. For good reason-



I’ve been on a six chair in Switzerland which has very unusual loading. You load on the line coming down, before the bull wheel. So you enter st s right angle to the line from the queue, then have to reorient yourself to sit down.

Funny was thinking of that Verbier chair and trying to recall how it worked when posting about split 6ers. It seems intimidating but it's actually really easy and enables you to scoot pass daydreaming tourists and score the front chair.

 

[James]

Funny was thinking of that Verbier chair and trying to recall how it worked when posting about split 6ers. It seems intimidating but it's actually really easy and enables you to scoot pass daydreaming tourists and score the front chair.

I agree. It’s weird but almost easier. There is a bit of organized scrum. I can’t drcide if it would work in the US or not.

Found a (overly dramatic) video.