8-Pack

Marc_C

Active member
Oh goody!
Debuting this season at Big Sky Resort in Montana, will be the United States first 8-person capacity ski chairlift. The high-tech and expensive ‘Ramcharger 8’, is a gigantic improvement for the resort along with an interesting development in the ski industry as a whole. While Europe already has many 8 person capacity chairlifts, the unprecedented lift at Big Sky is sure to garner some publicity.

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2018/08/26/are-8-person-ski-lifts-the-future/
 
That's a rather odd location for North America's first 8-pack. You would think it would be at an I-70 Colorado resort that's actually crowded. And if Big Sky wants to raise lift capacity, they should be looking at that 15-passenger tram that routinely has 35 minute lines on nearly any day with nice weather and decent coverage.

We have been on quite a few 8-packs in the Alps in the last two years, especially in Austria in 2017. See below.

As leaders in the ski resort field we Aussie's have had eight person chairlifts for ages now. :)
That can't be good for skier density given the modest scale of Aussie resorts. Sbooker's reference says that Perisher's 8-pack rises all of 105 vertical meters.

https://www.skiresort.info/ski-lifts/li ... hairlifts/

55 out of 94 of the 8-packs are in Austria. Next highest country is France with 12. Then Germany 6, Sweden 5, Norway and South Korea 4.

Les Deux Alpes is the only French ski complex with as many as 3. 8 Austrian ski complexes have at least that many, topped by Kitzbuhel with 7.

As with Perisher, some of the European 8-packs serve congested base areas with not that much vertical. The "industrial ski areas" we visited have the following number of 8-packs, but we only rode some of them:
Arlberg 2
Ski Welt 5
Kitzbuhel 7
Saalbach 4
Ischgl 4
Dolomites 2
Val d'Isere/Tignes 1
 
I didn't realize that the "V8" at Perisher only rises 300 odd feet. Lol.
But then again Perisher is not exactly our answer to Jackson or LaGrave.
 
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