The History:
After expanding Sunday River throughout the 1980s, former owner of Sunday River, Les Otten, decided to build the mountain's final expansion. This expansion would be all the way to the skier's left on the mountain and quite a ways away from the White Cap base area. He would name this new area the Jordan Bowl. This project was completed in two stages. The first stage of the expansion opened in 1994 with the Jordan Bowl Express and 4 trails off of that lift. In order to access the new area riders had to ride the Jordan Mountain Double connector lift from the base of the Aurora Peak Quad to the base of the Jordan Bowl Express. This setup only lasted one year though as the second stage of the expansion was completed in 1995. The second stage included connector trails to and from the Jordan Bowl rendering the Jordan Mountain Double useless as long as the Jordan Bowl Express was not on wind hold. It also included a new advanced terrain area called Oz. This new area included a Doppelmayr fixed-grip quad, appropriately named the Oz Quad. Since 1995, no drastic changes have been made to the area. Since all of the advanced Oz trails can be accessed from the Jordan Bowl Express, the Oz Quad only runs on busy weekends and holidays giving it some of the least operating hours of any lift in the east. When it is open though, it is nice to have a lift directly serving the Oz trails, especially since lines at Jordan Bowl can get quite long. As part of Sunday River's 2030 capital improvement plan, the Jordan Bowl Express is planned to be replaced in the near future with a newer, higher capacity lift. Once Jordan Bowl has more capacity I suspect that Oz will become even more redundant and may possibly operate less.
The Lift:
The Oz Quad is one of not too many 90s Doppelmayr fixed-grip quads in the East. It uses a rare Doppelmayr bottom drive and tension terminal that is only found on a few other lifts in the entire country. One of these lifts is the Metro Quad at Jay Peak, VT which was formerly the Green Mountain Quad at Sugarbush. Oz also uses EJ carriers, early 90s lifting frames, Doppelmayr sheaves, and a Doppelmayr monopod fixed return. Capacity is rated at 2,400 p/h, but I suspect it is lower due to the lift's chair spacing. Its design speed is 475 ft/min and it seems to run at about 425-450 ft/min.
8 окт 2024
