JH Tram - 3 replacement options
Temporary lift to be put up next year; outside funding still needed for jigback replacement.
By Michael Pearlman
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort officials unveiled three replacement options for the legendary aerial tram Tuesday, saying their priority is to obtain outside funding to construct a new top-to-bottom tram.
Earlier this year, the resort said it would decommission the landmark ski and tourist lift at the end of next summer season. The announcement produced an avalanche of speculation about a replacement for the 55-person jigback tram.
"We're striving for tram replacement," resort spokeswoman Anna Olson said Tuesday. "We're going for gold."
Instead of a new tram, now estimated to cost $25 million, resort officials could build a gondola from the base to the summit of Rendezvous Mountain or construct a shorter tram that would run from the top of the Bridger Gondola to the peak.
In the interim, the resort will install a surface lift next summer to provide access to the summit for the winter of 2006-07. The lift will be either a T-bar, which holds two skiers, or a single-person Poma lift, and is estimated to cost $1 million. It will run along the skier's left side of Rendezvous Bowl just south of the East Ridge Traverse and be accessed from the top of the Sublette chairlift.
"We're calling that a temporary lift," resort President Jerry Blann said. "It's not the ultimate solution for what we want to do."
Blann said the resort's board of directors has identified three permanent alternatives dubbed options A, B and C for getting skiers to the 10,450-foot summit of Rendezvous Mountain after the resort retires its 40-year-old tram next September. Officials cited safety worries about the tram as the reason for its retirement.
Option A, the preferred option, would replace the existing lift with an 80-passenger, top-to-bottom tram that would run along the existing tram line. The new tram would have an enclosed top terminal with a restaurant and would carry 520 skiers per hour, up from the current capacity of 400 skiers per hour.
Option B is to construct a top-to-bottom gondola costing $15.6 million along the same route. The gondola would have 37 eight-person cabins, but each cabin would be able to carry only six passengers due to high winds that regularly batter the upper mountain. In addition, engineers have estimated that winds would keep the new gondola from operating 20 percent of the time.
Option C would involve constructing a 45-passenger tram from the top of the Bridger Gondola across the Headwall to the summit of Rendezvous. The estimated cost is $16.6 million. Blann said Option C would be a complicated and time-consuming undertaking because it would require amending the resort's master plan and a new environmental study from the U.S. Forest Service.
Outside funding needed first
Blann said although the board of directors prefers to build a new tram, it has agreed that the resort will not pursue construction without outside funding assistance. The resort's owners, the Kemmerer family, are committed to investing at least $5 million in the new tram, according to Blann.
"The tram is our history, so we're focusing our energy on that," Blann said. "We're going to exhaust our options on that before we examine alternatives."
To navigate the web of possible funding options at the local, state and federal levels, the resort has formed an advisory committee, informally dubbed the "Tram Team," of about a dozen people. Members of the committee include Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce board president Sean Love, Teton Gravity Research ski filmmaker Dirk Collins, a Teton County commissioner, town councilor and Washington, D.C. lobbyist.
"It's an advisory committee that will meet when necessary to form plans and provide counsel on the best way to go forward to raise funds," Olson said.
In recent weeks, Blann has met with representatives of U.S. Sens. Craig Thomas and Mike Enzi and U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, all R-Wyo., for initial discussions about potential funding sources. The resort is investigating a range of possibilities, including grants and low-interest loans, but isn't willing to bring in private investors.
"There's a lot of ideas that have been circulated around the community, but we want to keep it simple," Blann said. "Other solutions that involve outside parties create operational issues. The Kemmerers are not interested in [bringing in] other investors."
According to Blann, since purchasing the resort in 1992 the Kemmerers have put up $56 million for improvements, with an average annual return of only $27,000. Cash outlays funded construction of the Thunder, Teewinot and Apres Vous chairlifts, the Bridger Gondola, Bridger Center and Cody House, and the purchase of several property management companies to form Jackson Hole Resort Lodging.
"The dilemma we have here is that we have all kinds of needs already," Blann said. "You add $25 million to that, and it doesn't work."
Without the aerial tram to whisk guests from the base area during the 2006-07 winter, the resort plans to increase the capacity of the Bridger Gondola. Plans call for adding 14 cabins to the gondola, increasing uphill capacity from 1,800 to 2,400 skiers per hour.
Last summer, the resort began construction of a $9 million restaurant at the top of Bridger Gondola. The resort aims to open the new restaurant in the summer of 2007, when it plans to offer gondola rides to summer visitors. The tram is a significant source of summer revenue for the resort and carried more than 100,000 riders to the summit in 2005, a record year.
"The tram is a major draw in the region, and we can't not offer a lift experience during the summer," Olson said.
To free capital to complete the restaurant, Blann said the resort is selling a three-acre parcel of slopeside land it owns uphill from the Cody House. The property is listed for more than $10 million, and completion of the new restaurant is contingent on selling the property and strong winter revenues.
Willing to be patient
Olson acknowledged that the resort could face a significant decrease in skier days without the tram next winter, but pointed out that Jackson Hole has worked hard in recent years to develop a customer base that's not as reliant on the presence of the tram. With other major projects at the resort taking years to complete the recently approved expansion of the base village, for instance Olson said officials are prepared to be patient in their quest to build a new iconic lift for the resort.
"We're not just going to take the easiest option; we're going to take our energy and resources to go for the option we truly want," she said.
Hmmm...maybe we could 'borrow' the old tram..
and install it from Moose Creek up to the top of Taylor.
I sure would use it...I live across from Moose Creek!
I don't think Jerry Blann would notice...much.
In the same way that the Waltons own wal-Mart..
but they are not wal-mart, they own wal-mart.
It is a function of the 'corporate veil'.
