Park City Mountain wants to go big!

In two years, that is… In recent years, though, Park City Mountain has built a reputation for congestion and long lines, not just because of Covid restrictions, but also as the number of visitors have increased, and its aging lift lift infrastructure is no longer up to the task. 

So in order to make its clientele hope for smoother trips up its mountains, it announced a few days ago that it would update its uphill capacity season after next... Currently, the Silverlode Express, a six-people chair, can’t handle the crowds that land at its sort of dead-end, restaurant-equiped base. 

Vail Resorts will, as a result, upgrade it to an 8-pack. The problem is that the company has been woefully unable in recent past to regiment its ski lines, so a legit question is to wonder how can they hope as the say to increase that lift capacity by 20%, if they don’t work at making sure that every seat, on each chair, is occupied? 

On top of that, I have also noticed that the more skiers are lined up on a chair (six-packs are a good example, but 8 will exacerbate the problem), the more they tend to fall at the top as they don’t know which way they’ll turn, collide with each others or panic when the must unload, resulting in repeated lift stoppages. 

The more beginner or intermediate the crowd, the bigger the problem. We’ll see how these issues are handled… Then that six-pack will replace the medieval triple, fixed grip chair called Eagle lift and will bring even more people faster to more or less the same spot, that base of Silverlode lift… 

Sure it’s an improvement, but it might not help the current problem that much. In January of 2020, I had proposed a simple (although partial) fix for that clutter problem, but it obviously went ignored… 

In a next blog, I will expand on this idea and, as usual, submit it to Park City Moutain’s management.