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Belleayre Opens Gondola Today

catskills

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Belleayre Gondola open today.

Families that I talked to said they enjoyed the warm ride up and the long Blue intermediate trail “deer run” to the bottom across the new bridge.
 

BenedictGomez

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Belleayre Gondola open today.

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catskills

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Wow lots of negativity here. Fact is skiers and boarders are enjoying the new Gondola. Some of them are young children that will grow up to ski and ride other mountains. This is a good thing. :grin:
 

Hawkshot99

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Wow lots of negativity here. Fact is skiers and boarders are enjoying the new Gondola. Some of them are young children that will grow up to ski and ride other mountains. This is a good thing. :grin:
Of coarse there is ALOT of negativity here towards it. It us a huge waste of money. A 1400' mtn does not need a gondola! They wanted it only because Gore and surface have them.
I personally hate gondola in general. Id much rather ride a bubble and not take my skis off. Belleayre could have done so much better with the $ then they chose.

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cdskier

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Belleayre skiers are absolutely loving it. Smiles all around.

I'd love driving around in a Maserati...doesn't mean it is a good use of my money. I'd much rather have seen Belleayre work on the expansion to the Highmount area.
 

Dick Gazinya

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I'd love driving around in a Maserati...doesn't mean it is a good use of my money. I'd much rather have seen Belleayre work on the expansion to the Highmount area.
I'm pretty sure the gondola is the centerpiece to the highmount expansion. Once highmount is added the gondola will take you to the top center of the mountain.
 

kingslug

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Hope so..way too long for that area to just sit there...amd this winter is proving that yes..we get winters here in the northeast.
 

MEtoVTSkier

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I can't imagine anyone on the hill complaining about gondola with these temps this week. And as far as New York State wasting money.... Bahahaha! :lol::rolleyes::lol:
 

cdskier

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I'm pretty sure the gondola is the centerpiece to the highmount expansion. Once highmount is added the gondola will take you to the top center of the mountain.

This. Been said before.

A new "Discovery Lift" has been part of the UMP for a while, however it was only recently that it suddenly changed to become a gondola (was originally slated as a detachable quad if you read the UMP documents).

That said, I still don't understand the need for that lift period as part of the plan. One of the key arguments made in the UMP for increasing terrain at Highmount and on the West side is that advanced and expert terrain is under-represented at Belleayre in comparison to market demand. The terrain at Highmount and on the west side that would be added was slated to be largely steeper more advanced terrain to bring the trail type ratios more in line with the market demand values they came up with. So your target audience for the majority of the new terrain is not the target audience that would benefit from the gondola. There's no need to move people from the base (beginner area/terrain) to the Highmount/West side terrain. The people skiing that terrain could easily have either parked in the Tomahawk lots or Overlook lots and then used the Tomahawk lift to get to the same place the Gondola brings you. Or once you add the new West side lift in they could have used that as well to access the top ridge and get to Highmount quickly.

I'd be really curious to know what the cost differential would have been between a detachable quad and a gondola. Did they get such an amazing deal on the gondola to justify it instead of putting in a quad and putting the remaining money towards one of the other new lifts in the plan? Or towards other infrastructure needed for the expansion plan?

Even if the Discovery lift is the "centerpiece"...put it in last once all the other pieces are in place to tie everything together if you really insist on having it. There's very little advantage that I can see to putting in that lift first as they did. Even the UMP says they intended the lift primarily as a "transit" lift and not really for people to regularly lap and ski and therefore were excluding it from their comfortable carrying capacity calculations for the resort.
 

JimG.

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I can't imagine anyone on the hill complaining about gondola with these temps this week. And as far as New York State wasting money.... Bahahaha! :lol::rolleyes::lol:

Much happier sitting in a gondola cabin on Sunday than sitting on a high speed open lift.

I too marvel at the complaining about wasting money. That's what NY does, why not waste it on something I can benefit from like a ski lift?

Belleayre is going to have to do something about it's other lifts they are prehistoric. Guessing they went for the Gondi first to make a splash and/or put in the centerpiece first so they are committed to the rest of the upgrades and additions needed.
 

cdskier

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Belleayre is going to have to do something about it's other lifts they are prehistoric. Guessing they went for the Gondi first to make a splash and/or put in the centerpiece first so they are committed to the rest of the upgrades and additions needed.

Considering that most of their lifts are fixed grips...they really are not that old in reality. Tomahawk was installed in 1999. To put that in perspective...Tomahawk is newer than nearly every single lift at Killington! Lift 7 is from 1986...still not terribly old for a fixed grip. I actually thought their lifts were older (unless they were not brand new lifts when they were installed...but I'm just going by the install dates Belleayre provided). That said, I've seen lifts from the 60s at other areas that ran better than Lift 7 and Tomahawk...

And fwiw, there's nothing in the UMP about replacing either lift 7 or Tomahawk. They do plan to eventually replace lifts in the beginner area though.
 
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