- Joined
- Oct 29, 2016
- Posts
- 531
Interesting story on Big Sky's tram (link below). It's written by the ski area so it may be a little rose colored but not too bad. They made an interesting point about the 80's and early 90's being the dark ages of skiing when fear of litigation resulted in few expert runs and building even small ski jumps could get your pass pulled. That's my recolection as well.
The new expert terrain was visionary and a wise business decision but they overstate their leadership. Jackson, Snowbird, Squaw and many others had been expert skiing havens well before. And other ski areas were making similar moves such as the North Face expansion at Crested Butte which predated the Big Sky tram by a decade.
As cool as the Lone Peak skiing is, I often think of the Tram as a blunder due to lower cost options and the very low capacity. Waiting in line for an hour really spoils the fun. Alternative options would have gone up the south face at <15% the cost and provided 10x the capacity. Regarding wind, trams are better than chairs and T bars better than both. I hope they add a T bar up the back side soon. I don't plan on going back until they find a solution.
The new expert terrain was visionary and a wise business decision but they overstate their leadership. Jackson, Snowbird, Squaw and many others had been expert skiing havens well before. And other ski areas were making similar moves such as the North Face expansion at Crested Butte which predated the Big Sky tram by a decade.
As cool as the Lone Peak skiing is, I often think of the Tram as a blunder due to lower cost options and the very low capacity. Waiting in line for an hour really spoils the fun. Alternative options would have gone up the south face at <15% the cost and provided 10x the capacity. Regarding wind, trams are better than chairs and T bars better than both. I hope they add a T bar up the back side soon. I don't plan on going back until they find a solution.