Industry News
The first high-speed lift is currently being installed at Ski Santa Fe, New Mexico. The resort in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is replacing the fixed-grip Ski Santa Fe’s Chair 1, Super Chief Quad, with a detachable express quad chair named Santa Fe Express. The 46-year-old Poma is being replaced with a brand new and super fast Leitner-Poma quad chair, which will cut the uphill time from 9 minutes down to 4:30 minutes, doubling its capacity.
The New Mexico resort posted an update on July 3 stating that the old Super Chief Quad lift had now been entirely removed.
In July, the crew at Ski Santa Fe has been busy pouring the concrete bases that will anchor the new lift towers. The largest of the tower pads, located at the upper terminal, was the first to be completed. The “Fin” required almost 70 yards of concrete to be delivered via helicopter. The Black Hawk is fitted with a bucket under the belly of the craft, allowing it to receive concrete directly from the mixing truck before expertly flying the load to the top. Each bucket carried a little under a yard of concrete, which meant a lot of trips just for the upper terminal concrete base. A total of 12 towers will be installed and the Santa Fe construction team broke up into three teams for the smaller bases to move as quickly as possible.
Once the concrete is fully set, the wooden forms will be removed and any ground excavated will be refilled. The next major milestone will be in mid-August, when the helicopter will be reenlisted to help install the new lift towers. This week, parts of the top station were installed by helicopter. The resort shared a video of the installation on social media.
Ski Santa Fe is a privately owned ski resort located 16 miles from Santa Fe. The resort offers 86 trails serviced by seven lifts. Its base elevation is 10,350 feet, and its peak elevation is 12,075 feet, giving a total vertical of 1,725 feet. The resort sees around 225 inches of snowfall on average.
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