‘New’ quad lift arrives at Magic Mountain Will increase skier capacity

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2018 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Piece by piece, the quad chairlift that served the Stratton Snow Bowl for 27 years has been arriving at Magic Mountain to be reassembled.

Beginning on Tuesday, June 12, a crane started unloading tractor trailer loads of tower components on the ski area’s back parking lot. By by Thursday afternoon, Director of Operations Matt Cote said that they were nearly finished moving the lift,including 148 chairs, a 40,000-pound cable spool and the terminal that controls the lift and weighs more than 58,000 pounds. The last two items required a specialized crane due to their weight.

“Most of the pieces are here,” said Cote as the last tractor trailer left. “We’ll get a few more loads with a smaller trailer and that will be it.”

Busy summer ahead

In addition to the quad chair, the mountain is also installing the Green Chair — a mid-mountain lift that was started a number of years ago but never finished. And they are working on bringing its snowmaking pond into compliance with state regulations while increasing its capacity.

While the mountain’s crew preps the many pieces for installation, resort owner SKI MAGIC LLC has finished the engineering and surveying necessary to submit the application for state permits. According to Magic president Geoff Hatheway, the hope is to get the go ahead in August.

The Poma quad life will replace the old Black Line chair lift and increasing that lift’s capacity from 620 to 2,000 skiers per hour. Hatheway told The Telegraph last month that the mountain would continue to limit the number of day tickets sold during busy periods to maintain low density skiing, but that the limit would increase from 1,500 to 2,000.

Cote praised the “cross-valley” relationship with Stratton, saying that the folks at the big mountain to the south “really wanted it to be here and made it happen.”

“A lot of people who work at the large mountains started out at smaller places and understand the challenges of this kind of operation,” said Cote.