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Research
A good example of what Big Sky’s
Ramcharger will look like is the
Flimjoch lift, installed at Ischgl,
Austria, in December 2016.

GOING BIG AT BIG SKY

NEW EIGHT-SEATER RAISES THE BAR ON NORTH AMERICAN CHAIRLIFT TECHNOLOGY

BY TROY HAWKS
his spring, Michigan-based Boyne Resorts Other notable features include new direct-drive technology,
chalked up another ski industry first when it and auto-unlocking safety bars that, once lowered by the
announced that “America’s Biggest Skiing” will rider, cannot be raised until the chair is in the upper terminal.
now be served by North America’s biggest chair- There’s also a loading carpet that raises and lowers for guests
lift. Currently being installed at Boyne’s Big Sky of varying heights. The Ramcharger 8 is more than 4,300 feet
Resort in Montana, with an anticipated opening long with 13 conical towers, another first for a US ski area.
T in early December, the new “Ramcharger 8” In terms of capacity, the chair will move 3,200 passengers per
high-speed Doppelmayr D-Line is the first such chairlift hour at about 16 feet per second, with a top capacity of 3,600
on the continent, and the most technically advanced passengers per hour with 8-second chair spacing. And the
in the world. lower terminal will feature a fully-integrated high-resolution
The Ramcharger 8, part of Doppelmayr’s new D-Line LED screen and in-terminal multimedia display providing
“next ropeway generation” series, will comprise 65 extra- current mountain conditions, videos, and more.
wide, ergonomically designed eight-passenger chairs—with The timing is ideal for Big Sky, which is positioning itself
heated seats. This is Big Sky’s second chair with heated seats as a counterbalance to the traffic jams along Interstate 70
(the recently installed Powder Seeker being its first), and in Colorado, offering expansive terrain without the long lift
it’s one of only about half a dozen heated chairs in the US. lines or the high-volume pass products. Big Sky has 24 chair-
Meanwhile the Ramcharger’s “Big Sky blue” bubble covers— lifts and 12 surface lifts. An eight-seater will move people out
also rare in the US, with less than a half dozen currently of the resort’s more congested Mountain Village base area and
in operation—are engineered to be wind resistant in gusts rapidly get them up the mountain for faster diffusion around
Courtesy of Doppelmayr 40 | NSAA JOURNAL | FALL 2018
the resort’s nearly 5,900 acres. (This includes neighboring
of up to 60 miles per hour.