TL;DR
Early season snowfalls are both a blessing and a curse when you run a world class ski resort and are trying to put the finishing touches on a new six pack lift. Alta ski area in Utah has let everyone know that there will be a slight delay in the opening of their newest lift, the Sunnyside Six Pack. Check out all the details here.
We have seen some incredible early season snowfall across Utah and the resorts located in the Wasatch mountains collected the largest totals, typically this is something that the likes of Alta would be extremely happy about however as they are building a new lift in the off season this is both a blessing and a curse. The significant snowfall has been great to get the all important base ready however in these conditions its nearly impossible for the lift construction crews to finalise the work required on the new Sunnyside six pack chairlift.
A BlackHawk helicopter delivers a lift tower for the new Sunnyside six-pack lift | Photo: Rocko Menzyk Looking at the latest Alta ski area blog post they have announced that the global supply chain issues have lead to delays and the new chairlift will not open along with the rest of the resort in November. They are hoping to have the lift turning in the grand opening of the holiday season which is closer to Christmas, this is typically when the ski resort operations tend to ramp up and when majority of the terrain across the resort is able to open up to riders. As the new Sunnyside lift is replacing both the existing Sunnyside triple and Albion double this could have a small impact to their beginner terrain offering, without these two lifts the only beginner terrain available will be off the Snowpine chairlift and a collection of surface lifts found in and around the base area of the resort. Alta’s current opening day is set for November 18th. They expect to have the Collins Gulch open, meaning the Collins and Wildcat chairlifts will likely be operating. Currently, uphill travel is open during the daytime, but it’s prohibited between 6 pm and 7:30 am.
