Holiday Valley To Open 27th November, Announces New Chair For 21-22 Season

Holiday Valley’s Director of Mountain Operations, Steve Crowley, announced  that the Holiday Valley snowmaking crew plans to fire up the snowmaking system to take advantage of the predicted cold temperatures. It will be a limited run on Yodeler, Mardi Gras and the Candy Cane loop. They will also be testing the system in several locations throughout the resort.

The goal is to make stockpiles of snow in the core area, and also to test the system and prepare for the next wave of cold temperatures. The target opening date of the 2020-21 season is Friday, November 27, weather permitting.

The resort has announced plans to construct a new chairlift in 2021. The new lift is a state of the art high speed detachable quad chairlift that will replace the fixed grip Yodeler Quad, built in 2001. The new lift will be supplied by Doppelmayr USA, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Including installation, the cost of the new Yodeler High Speed Quad is $4 million.

As compared to the existing lift, the chairs travel uphill at a much faster rate, but they detach from the cable and go slower for loading and unloading, making it much easier for skiers to get on and off the lift. Holiday Valley currently has 3 other detachable chairlifts; Mardi Gras, Tannenbaum and Morning Star.

The existing lift will be in service for the upcoming winter season, 2020-21, but preliminary site work has already begun. The Holiday Valley Mountain Crew has cleared the alignment of the new lift and a profile is being conducted to calculate the placement and height of the towers in relation to the grade of the slope and engineering of the top and bottom terminals. The bulk of the lift construction will take place during the summer of 2021 and it will be operating for the 2021-22 winter season.

The new lift will have a slightly modified alignment with the top of the lift moving west. This change will allow a lower tower height at the unloading area and make it easier for skiers and snowboarders to navigate to the various slopes at the top. The new unloading area will actually be located where the Mountaintop Warming Hut is now, and that building will be moved east toward Yodeler slope.

According to Dennis Eshbaugh, Holiday Valley’s President and General Manager, “We have thought long and hard about scheduling this new lift. It gives our customers a great improvement to look forward to, but also reassures our staff that the current COVID situation will eventually be over and we need to keep looking to the future.”