Vacationland — This is the winter of the small Maine ski area.
New lifts and other major projects are improving the experience of the smaller players in the Maine ski industry. While Saddleback, Sugarloaf, and Sunday River draw the headlines for their gnarly terrain and modern lifts, there’s a lot of charm with these smaller Maine mountains. This season, three new chairlifts are debuting in Maine. While two of these chairlifts are technically old chairlifts in new locations, these are still major improvements for these mountains.
Saturday saw two of these three new chairlifts open for the first time. BigRock Mountain opened the Sunrise Quad. The fixed-grip quad Doppelmayr Alpenstar chairlift has an initial uphill capacity of 1800 people per hour, a length of 3,450 feet, and a vertical rise of 932 feet. The Doppelmayr Alpenstar chairlift travels 450 feet a minute, with a total ride time of eight minutes. This multi-year project saw the non-profit Maine ski area undergo a significant fundraising effort in order to replace its summit chairlift and upgrade its snowmaking.
Over at Pleasant Mountain, the much anticipated Summit Express Quad also made its debut on Saturday.
This high-speed quad chairlift technically isn’t brand new, as it was the Jordan Express Quad over at Sunday River. It had a shorter shelf life over there due to problems faced by the wind, resulting in it being replaced by the Jordan 8. However, it underwent a significant refurbishment before being installed at Pleasant, making it of like new quality.
This chairlift replaced the Summit Triple, which formerly served as the North Peak Triple at Loon Mountain. The Summit Express Quad has a ride time of 4.5 minutes, a drastic improvement over the Summit Triple. While it doesn’t have a mid-station like its predecessor, it’s quicker to reach the summit than what it took to reach the mid-station. With this being Pleasant’s first high-speed detachable chairlift, it will drastically improve the guest experience at the Maine ski area.
The third “new” chairlift, Chair 3 at Lost Valley, will open later this season.
Image Credits: BigRock Mountain, Pleasant Mountain
