By Andrew Mitchell
Work crews broke ground on the $51 million Peak to Peak Gondola project on May 15, with the project scheduled for completion in December, 2008.
The excavation for the lift terminals on Whistler and Blackckomb are expected to be complete by mid-June, and construction on the main buildings complete. Tower 2 on Whistler and Tower 3 on Blackcomb are expected to be finished by the end of the summer. The towers are being fabricated in Austria and Quebec.
Towers 1 and 4 will be installed by June of 2008, and the lift and load testing should take place by November of 2008.
Despite the size of the project, the gondola requires a footprint of just 2.5 hectares for the terminals and towers.
Each cabin will have a capacity of 28 people, 24 seated, and there will be 28 cabins on the line.
The gondola breaks several records, including the longest free span and the biggest distance to the ground.
The Peak to Peak Gondola is not the final name for the project. Recently Whistler-Blackcomb hired IMG Canada to find a naming sponsor for the project.
