Friday, November 27, 2009

Flying high on Bald Mountain

Sun Valley’s first gondola soars into action for the 2009-2010 ski season


A view of the end station of the Roundhouse gondola positioned 1,928 feet above where the gondola starts at the River Run base area. Photo by David N. Seelig

By JON DUVAL and TREVON MILLIARD
Express Staff Writers

After two summers of intensive work that included helicopters, chainsaws and a "spider hoe," visitors to Sun Valley's Bald Mountain can finally enjoy the fruit of this labor: a gondola ride up River Run.

Sun Valley Resort's newest on-mountain amenity whisks skiers and snowboarders from the River Run Lodge to the Roundhouse restaurant, ascending 1,928 vertical feet in six minutes and 40 seconds. At one point, riders hang 204 feet above the ground as the cabin passes over the Lower Olympic ski run, feeling as if they're floating in air. The walls are entirely glass, floor to ceiling all the way around.

The gondola officially opened on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, after years of planning.

In addition to protecting passengers from the elements on freezing winter mornings, the gondola—capable of transporting 1,800 people per hour—will prove plenty useful in the summer as well.

"This will enable us to keep the Roundhouse restaurant open year round and at night," said Jack Sibbach, spokesman for Sun Valley Resort.

As part of the gondola addition, the Roundhouse will now be open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will offer breakfast. Also, the former Averell's Restaurant in Roundhouse, which was closed for years and used mainly for storage, has been turned into Averell's Bar, serving wine, beer and appetizers.

Sibbach said the hope for the new gondola and improvements to Roundhouse is that non-skiers will ride up for lunch or a drink.

And a lot of buzz has surrounded the gondola, nationwide.

Readers of Ski magazine bumped Sun Valley four spots in its annual survey of North American resorts this October, landing the resort in seventh place. It's the first time Sun Valley has done better than 10th place in four years, and has much to do with the new gondola's improving the "classic, first-class ski town and ski mountain," as one reader wrote.

"Life gets even better when the Roundhouse gondola debuts this season," wrote another.

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National Geographic Adventure magazine has also noticed the new addition and taken note.

It has named Sun Valley as one out of the 11 mandatory ski destinations from Oregon to Maine to visit this winter. And the magazine also pegged the gondola as a significant reason for the attention, writing that Sun Valley is "launching its first gondola this winter."

Carol Waller, executive director of the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau, said the press garnered from the gondola is obviously an advantage for drawing people here.

"New is news," she said. "New is exciting."

And the chamber has grabbed hold of the opportunity and put the gondola at the forefront of its new ad campaign, "The Fun Never Sets."

"The gondola, in itself, isn't the be-all and end-all to get people here," Waller said. "But it's part of the big picture."

And that big picture, she said, is that Sun Valley continues to invest in the ski-resort experience—an anomaly in this economic recession.

"Not a lot of ski areas are investing in large, on-mountain infrastructure improvements right now," she said.

Construction on the project began two summers ago, when the lift line for the gondola was cut with help from several Sun Valley Ski Patrol members. The newly vacated strip was opened to skiers last winter as the Sleeping Bear run, running between Roundhouse Slope and the lower Olympic cat track.

Starting this spring, however, the real action began, as a walking excavator, or spider hoe, used its shovel and outriggers and wheels to crawl across steep, rock-strewn slopes to dig tower foundation holes in seemingly inaccessible sections of the mountain.

Next, a helicopter capable of carrying 6,000 pounds was brought in to help install the 21 towers. The towers and the two end terminals support 56 cabins and more than two miles of cable weighing 91,000 pounds. The cable hangs with a tension force of 91,850 pounds.

On the ground, Salt Lake City-based crews of the Austrian gondola manufacturer Doppelmayr wrangled 5,000-pound metal structures into position, managing to retain all of their extremities despite wavering from side-to-side in the wind.

The gondola replaced the old Exhibition chairlift, which ran from the top of the River Run lift to the base of Roundhouse. That lift, however, will get a second life at Discovery, a ski area near Missoula, Mont., that bought it from Sun Valley.

Though the plans have yet to be finalized, the resort has indicated that it will eventually extend the gondola to the top of the mountain.

This project is part of the resort's Bald Mountain master plan, which also includes a remodel of the Roundhouse restaurant, a larger chairlift or gondola on the Warm Springs side and an expansion of the permitted ski area.

Jon Duval: jduval@mtexpress.com




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