Industry News
Thredbo Alpine Resort, Australia, revealed in an exclusive interview with Snowy Mountains Magazine that it will replace its 1988 Gunbarrel quad chairlift with a new six-seat Doppelmayr D-Line for winter 2028. In addition, the resort plans to significantly boots its all-weather snowmaking capacity at Friday Flat for the 2027 season. The Gunbarrel Express is one of the resort’s key lifts that travels from the valley at Friday Flat to the higher alpine ski terrain of the resort.
The investment marks one of the biggest upgrades to Thredbo’s lift network in years. The last big lift installation at the resort was the Merrits Gondola which opened in June 2020.
The news was first reported by Snowy Mountains Magazine following an exclusive interview with Thredbo General Manager Stuart Diver. According to the interview, funding for the project has been approved by Thredbo’s parent company, EVT. The project remains subject to final approval from the NSW Department of Planning. “We hopefully get some preliminary works done this summer, and then pre-27, and then have full installation and operational for winter 28,” Diver told Snowy Mountains Magazine.
The project is expected to cost in the vicinity of AUD 35 million (USD 25 million).
The Gunbarrel chairlift has been part of Thredbo’s lift network since 1988. By the time its replacement opens, the existing quad will have provided nearly 40 years of service.
The current Gunbarrel Express climbs approximately 426 meters (1,398 feet) of vertical in 6 minutes and 10 seconds. While the travel time of the new lift will stay roughly the same, the expansion from a four to a six chair will boost the capacity from currently 2,800 skiers per hour to approximately 3,000 passengers per hour. The new chair will reportedly use the same design as the recently installed six-seat chairlift at Mt Perisher, with Doppelmayr’s D-Line technology designed for the demanding conditions found at Australian ski resorts.
While the new Gunbarrel chair will not dramatically increase uphill capacity, the nearly four-decade-old lift needs replacing. The new lift is part of the resort’s broader long-term infrastructure investment. However, it is important to note that the lift has been involved in a couple of incidents during its long service life. In July 2019, a skier fell from a four-person chair near the top of the lift after the chair became dislodged from the haul rope during extremely strong winds. The skier fell approximately 5–10 meters (15–30 feet) into the snow and escaped with minor bruising. Investigations attributed the incident to an exceptionally powerful wind event, with gusts reported in the area reaching approximately 90–110 km/h (56–68 mph). The incident followed another event involving Gunbarrel in 2016 in which an empty chair became detached.
The Gunbarrel project isn’t the only major upgrade coming to Thredbo. The resort will install a second all-weather snowmaking unit at Friday Flat ahead of the 2027 season, almost doubling the capacity of the unit installed this year. That first unit has already proven valuable during a difficult Australian snow season. Thredbo was able to build a substantial base at Friday Flat despite limited natural snowfall, helping keep the beginner area operational. The second unit is intended to allow the resort to cover the entire Friday Flat area with approximately 50 centimeters (20 inches) of snow before opening, without relying on natural snowfall. That includes the beginner bowl, carpets, Thredboland, Giddy Up, the Burrow and other terrain around the base area. “If you saw Friday Flat at the beginning, in a very obviously limited snowmaking year, we had about four cat widths wide,” Diver told Snowy Mountains Magazine. “I want Friday Flat to be side to side, and I want every part of Friday Flat to be open.” The new snowmaking unit will reportedly have almost twice the capacity of the existing machine.
Thredbo also plans to upgrade its pump house, expand snowmaking pipelines and acquire additional fan guns. The resort’s longer-term strategy is to move additional all-weather snowmaking toward the Cruiser area, High Noon and potentially thinner sections of Supertrail.
The Gunbarrel replacement represents a change from Thredbo’s earlier lift-development priorities. The resort had previously identified the Snowgums double chair as the next lift it wanted to replace with a six-seater. That plan has now been pushed back.
Instead, Thredbo has prioritized Gunbarrel, with the Kosciuszko Express now expected to be the next major lift replacement after Gunbarrel. The Kosciuszko Express presents a different engineering challenge because of its exposure to strong winds. “We’re looking for a really good solution to the Kosciuszko Express replacement, which obviously has to have the ability to operate in much higher winds, given the propensity for wind hold days,” Diver said. That suggests Thredbo’s lift modernization program could continue well beyond the Gunbarrel project.
