Guess who's back...
Here's a video I took of the new High Peaks Quad today.
I was dismayed to see such a negative reaction to a brand new lift, one that was very much needed as discussed here for years, so I'm coming back to defend it.
I fully support the replacement of the lift and all the associated trail work. Not only is the new lift faster, more comfortable, and higher capacity, but it also goes back to the true summit, greatly improving mountain access. Since the new lift is higher off the ground than the old in many parts, the views are better.
For the naysayers, do you really think they could've built a new lift while leaving Dark Side Glades undisturbed? They couldn't. The line needed to be widened for the quad gauge towers. Heavy equipment also needed to be used to dig the footings, and they had to remove the old ones. They also were on a very tight schedule, so of course the result was going to be messy and need to be cleaned up. It sounds like they have realized this and are going to clean it up next summer. So now that we've got those facts out of the way, do you think they should've have replaced the lift at all? Do you remember the multi-week closures the old lift had on multiple occasions, the rope evac on MLK Weekend? Do you understand that a 54 year old double chair with very low capacity was not suitable to be the only summit access without using the gondola? There comes a time when every lift outlives its service life and needs to be replaced. Do you still drive the same car you did 54 years ago, if you were even alive then? And for those who claim this is going to overcrowd the Dark Side, you're out of your mind. 12 years later and how many causal skiers do you think even realize that Burnt Ridge exists? There's a gondola, a high speed quad, and a new fixed grip quad right at the base area. Those people are going to stay there and not "take over" the Dark Side. The widening of Cloud happened because the wider lift eliminated the trees between Cloud and the old lift, so it made sense to make it all a trail. They also needed it because now there's two quads serving the summit instead of just 1 and a double that ended further down.
