Dayton, Washington — What started as a summer full of promise for Ski Bluewood has become a bizarre situation for the ski area, as a difficult partner has caused them to delay their chairlift project by a year.
Yesterday, Ski Bluewood announced that the Skyline Express chairlift project won’t be completed in time to open for the 2025-26 season.
The core reason behind the delay is a dispute with the lift broker. For context, the high-speed quad chairlift was originally from a ski area in Austria. While the Washington ski area has recieved most of the parts, other parts are being held by the supplier. This has resulted in Bluewood taking legal action against the broker. Due to the need to demolish the old Skyline chairlift to complete the new-to-them lift, the ski area has decided to delay the project by one year. The new goal is to open the chairlift during the 2026-27 season. This will also likely delay the beginning of mountain biking operations, which were scheduled to start in the summer of 2026.
A significant amount of construction on the project has occurred, with the tower pads being dug out, concrete pouring beginning on the new tower locations, and work on the future terminals commencing. Work for the remainder of this offseason will include completing the excavation of tower pods, concluding the concrete pouring for the lift towers, and continuing work on the top and bottom terminals.
Despite the hurdles, there are still some new things to look forward to next winter. The most notable is the installation of a snowmaking system. Previously, Bluewood was without any snowmaking capabilities. This new system will allow Bluewood to make snow on the lower mountain, where coverage has been an issue at the beginning of prior winters. Other improvements planned include the introduction of night skiing, a base lodge renovation (featuring a new restaurant and patio), terrain regrading, and a full season of Bluewood’s new food truck, the Bluewood Pizza Project.
Image Credits: Ski Bluewood
