One more season of Northback ?

I heard a good rumor about the new chair at Crystal. Last weekend I was visiting a friend of mine who runs a business up at Schweitzer. While I was there I struck up a conversation with a regional rep. for the Doppelmayr company (Schweitzer just installed a new Doppelmayr over the summer). The thoughts of the rep. were that the new Northway chair at Crystal would not be done in time for this upcoming winter and that the Crystal management was "delusionaly optimistic" about completing the lift on time. He said he had talked to "his guy's" at Crystal the day before our conversation and that the crew at Crystal was talking to management about getting to a good stopping point before winter set in and resuming construction next summer. The rep. said that because there are no summer roads that access the area of the new lift, everything (trees, const. materials, etc.) needed to be hauled in and out using the heli, and that Crystal only employed one heli. I guess the good news is that for our higher priced passes there is a possibility we may get one more season of northback freshies. Personaly, I hope that the snow falls early this winter and thing's pan out this way.                                         

Here's an interesting thread from TGR with a number of comments by a young skier who's apparently doing some kind of school project on the northback chair.

www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.p...&highlight=northback