Keystone Resort - River Run Gondola (Summer) - Ride Up

The River Run Gondola at Keystone Resort in Dillon Colorado, is an eight-person gondola that carries riders from Keystone Village to Dercum Mountain summit. It was manufactured by Doppelmayr CTEC in 2008, and is one of five detachable lifts that run to the summit of Dercum Mountain. It is also one of two lifts at Keystone that operate during the summer months, the other being the Summit Express quad. The History: Believe it or not, the River Run Gondola is actually the third separate gondola system to be installed in the alignment that exists today. Back in the early 1980's, Keystone was looking to drastically upgrade their lift system as well as expand the ski areas footprint. In 1983, Lift Engineering (Yan) won the contract to engineer and install three new lifts at Keystone in 1984. Prior to 1984, Yan had not constructed any gondolas (or detachable lifts for that matter), and only made fixed grip models. The gondola Yan installed was named “The SkyWay”, and was a six-person gondola with doors that opened automatically with a mechanism underneath each cabin. Also installed with the gondola, was a massive underground cabin parking structure underneath the top terminal - which is still in use by the current Doppelmayr lift today. “The Keystone Project” was considered a prototype, and was scheduled to be completed by early November 1983 but construction fell well behind deadlines. After the SkyWay opened and began service, the area's maintenance department noticed many non-critical operation glitches with the new lift. After the failure of the Teller lift in 1985, Keystone's management decided to close the gondola halfway through the winter season. The resort cited that the lift was unreliable and a liability to operate. Workers noticed unusual wearing of the detachable grips, which worried outside engineers. The final decision was to remove the entire system the following summer, and replace it with a different manufacturer. The decision to remove the lift upset Yan, as the firm lost $800,000 on the project because of development costs. A replacement came after just two years of its installation, when another six-person gondola was installed by Von Roll in 1986. The second gondola re-used both the bottom and top terminals, and ran without issues up until its demise in 2008. From 1984 to 2008, both the Yan and Von Roll gondolas started across from the village on the opposite side of the Snake River. When Keystone rebuilt the lift in 2008, the bottom terminal was moved to the village side of the river, and a bridge was built for skiers to cross during the winter to get back to the village. The Lift: The lift that runs today was manufactured by Doppelmayr CTEC (later Doppelmayr USA), and is the fourth separate gondola to operate at Keystone. It is a flagship lift at the resort, and runs often in both the winter and summer. When installed in 2008, it was the only UNI-G lift with Vision terminal skins in North America. The lift has CWA Omega IV cabins, European-style lifting frames, and a shared cabin parking terminal with the Outpost Gondola not too far away. River Run also features a mid-station where riders can load/unload in both directions three fourths of the way uphill, and facilitates a small learning area with two magic carpets at the mid-station and top area. Despite only having an hourly capacity of 2,400 riders an hour, the Summit Express also runs adjacent to River Run, and brings the total uphill capacity around 5,000 riders an hour out of the village, and with the Montezuma and Ruby lifts added in, brings the hourly capacity to Dercum Mountain at 11,600 riders per hour. River Run is one of three lifts used for night skiing as well, and operates for night skiing on select days of the week. Lift Info: Builder: Doppelmayr CTEC Year Built: 2008 Capacity: 2,400 riders/hr Vertical: 2,307 feet Length: 9,587 feet Design Speed: 1,000 feet per minute / 5 Meters per second Speed During Recording: 982 fpm / 4.98 mps Cabins: 125 Ride Time: 10.4 Minutes 0:00 - Bottom Terminal 0:44 - Lift Line 3:14 - Mid-Station 4:12 - Lift Line 11:17 - Summit Terminal