New Lifts: Canadian Rockies Add A Pair This Summer
Two of North America's largest resorts, Alberta's Lake Louise and British Columbia's Whistler Blackcomb both expect to install short but essential chairlifts during this summer's constructions season.
Lake Louise (4,200 a., 3,250 vert.) continues to upgrade its moderate and learning terrains with the construction of a new chairlift to viewer's right out of the main base. The Sunny Side fixed-grip quad will take a new diagonal line from where a pair of moving carpets previously began up the beginner slope.
The new lift is part of Lake Louise's multi-year project to ease access and crowding on the mountain's terrain. Last season, Richardson's Ridge went up to provide improved service to blues and greens out of the backside Temple Lodge area. Two seasons ago, the Pipestone Express high-speed six-pack (formerly named Upper Juniper Express) went in on the upper mountain to ease congestion from the top of the Juniper Express to the summit.
Two-peak Whistler Blackcomb (8,171 a., 5,380 vert.), the largest ski and snowboard terrain in North America, plans to replace one of its shortest lifts this summer. The Showcase T-bar at Blackcomb has long been the resort's year-round lift, serving the highest terrain on the Horstman Glacier at 7,500 feet above sea level.
But recent glacial melting has forced managers to periodically close the lift because three of the T-bar's towers were pinned into the ice. The Horstman T-bar, located below the Showcase lift, was removed in 2020 because of receding snow depths.
After 38 years of on the hill, the 1,400-foot-long surface lift will be replaced by a fixed-grip quad with a new alignment. Skiers and riders will not only be lifted off the surface to help preserve coverage, the new chair will shift its line to the north.
The resorts of Western Canada mostly avoided the meager snowfall winter that plagued ski and snowboard mountains in the American West.
