Lift Accessed Bike Parks In Australia | Why do chairlifts run in some places and not others?

There is nothing quite like riding a chairlift. Absolute masterpieces of engineering and technology, they are to the ski industry what cheese is to a fondue shop.

Lift-assisted bike parks are a newer innovation, where this massive winter infrastructure is adapted to get riders up the hill faster and in more comfort and style than a shuttle uplift. In many cases, the lift ride is as enjoyable as the descent.

Here in Australia, chairlifts are a novelty, and of the three ski resorts that also operate bike parks during the summer, they can be divided into the one that spins, the one that used to spin and the one that never has.

Why is that?

There’s obviously quite a lot more to it than just flicking a chairlift on and pulling Jerry off the cash register at the cafe to help people load bikes.

So to find out, we caught up with the folks at Thredbo, Buller and Falls Creek.

The one that runs | Thredbo Resort

If you google Thredbo Mountain Bike Park, the headline of the top result says “Australia’s Only Lift Access Mountain Bike Park.” The bike bark has been serviced by a chairlift for over 30 years and is the feather in the cap of the ski resort in the Kosciuszko National Park.

And the last two words of that sentence — which would normally elicit a groan of despair from trail builders, advocates and the like — are the reason Thredbo can operate the way it does.

Thredbo’s parent company, EVT, holds the head lease for the area around the Resort in the National Park. It’s based around a 50-year term, and according to Tim Windshuttle, Thredbo MTB Business & Mountain Events Manager, it was re-upped around 2007.

“We struck a deal with National Parks so that we have the head lease for this area, for the lift operations and the village. We have a full sewage treatment plant which is owned and operated by us, we do all of the waste removal — all by EVT employees,” he explains. “We’re sort of like a mini council, and then businesses in the village — restaurants, hotels, lodges, cafe and retail shops — they’re subleases of Kosciuszko Thredbo.”

A whole town managed by the lift company

This is THE key differentiator between Thredbo and the Victorian resorts, as it means the entire Resort, from the land and big infrastructure like the lifts, and to a lesser degree, the roads, shops and the like, are all managed by EVT.

In Victoria, you have Alpine Resorts Victoria (ARV), which runs the bike parks and manages the land inside the boundaries of the Resort. Then you have Buller Ski Lifts at Mount Buller and Vail at Falls Creek that own and operate the actual chairlifts and manage the land the ski runs are on.

So, while all of the lifts are owned by separate private companies, at Thredbo, it all falls under one umbrella, whereas at the other two, it’s two that don’t always have the same goals.

For Thredbo, while they essentially are the local government in their area, that doesn’t give them unlimited scope to do whatever they want, and there are still rules as to when the lifts can run and when the bike park can operate.

“We go through an extensive environmental approval process involving the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure and National Parks and Wildlife Service to ensure an appropriate balance between guest needs, environmental concerns and operational requirements” says Windshuttle.

Sightseeing your way to an uplift | Hikers helping riders get up the mountain

Three decades ago, when someone took a bike up the chairlift to ride it back down the access roads at Thredbo, they were able to do that because the lift was already running. As Windshuttle explains, because of the walk from the top of the Resort out to Mount Kosciuszko, there is a chairlift spinning every day of the year, whether the mountain bike park is open or not.

“That is the big thing that sets us apart and got us to where we are now. We weren’t spinning the chair lifts just for mountain biking; there is always that hiking market.

For Buller or Falls to go and start a lift they don’t have the hiking market we do with Kosciuszko at their doorstep with such a large attraction,” he says.

There are other examples of similar infrastructure in Australia running with a focus on hiking and sightseeing, where mountain bikes are also allowed. The Arthur’s Seat Eagle in Red Hill is one such example, and it is open to mountain bikers. Given that the gondola only services one trail that is entirely separate from the rest of the singletrack on Arthur’s Seat, mountain biking is hardly the core tenant of what keeps The Eagle spinning.

Windshuttle tells us that over the holiday period, they saw as many as 1,200 hikers per day ride the lift to walk out to Kozi and back — he notes that figure is during peak season, and they had lovely weather. This is in addition to the hundreds of riders riding the mountain bike park daily through the holiday season

Of course, those lift passes don’t exist in isolation and while hiking or biking is what attracts folks to the Resort, they are also eating, drinking and potentially even staying in the village. And there are also other things to do in town, from the pool and waterslide at the rec centre to the alpine coaster, golf, skate park and more. While all the Aussie ski resorts, we’re talking about here have invested in the green season, frankly, Thredbo is head and shoulders above the rest.

If you contrast the village in Thredbo during the summer to Falls and Buller, it’s absolutely vibrating. The chairlift and what it serves arguably gets folks in the door whether they’re on two feet or two wheels.

The lift also allows the Resort to physically serve more people. While the lift runs a bit slower during summer, the number of people they can move up the mountain is dependent on factors like weather, the ratio of foot to bike passengers, and how many times the lift slows or stops. Windshuttle tells us they could move approximately 1,000 riders per hour across the MTB lift network if they had the riders. However, the most they have ever done is 600 per hour, which was through the holiday period just gone by.

On the other side of the table, having a robust business year-round has drastically reduced the seasonality of Thredbo’s workforce. Windshuttle tells us in when Thredbo took over the operations in 2012, Thredbo had about 100 staff across the resort, and that has more the doubled since then giving over 200 staff jobs for 52 weeks of the year.

Loading bikes onto the lift | How hard can it be?

Back in the old days, riding a lift with your bike took a bit of an acrobatic manoeuvre to load the chair.

“Up until 2014 or 2015, we didn’t have racks, we were doing the old school, inside pedal on the seat, then put the bike back into you, put the bar down and lean the bike forward. It would sort of lock into place, but obviously, as we started to grow, work, health and safety became more important,” recalls Windshuttle.

Bike parks around the world have various solutions for transporting bikes up the hill, and for Thredbo, all its lifts are made by Doppelmayer — which has its Australian base in Jindabyne. Thredbo uses various styles of bike racks across their lift network with each design best suited to that chairlift. 

Windshuttle tells us when they first installed them in 2015 on the Kosi Chair, there were a few growing pains as far as getting the angle right to ensure folks of all sizes could load their bikes.

With the Gondola, Doppelmayer actually had to design something specifically for it. While the Merrits Gondola was only constructed four years ago, it can take years for approvals and designs to be signed off, and when all of that was happening, mountain biking was not what it is today.

For Cruiser and Kosciuszko Chairs, to provide enough time to pull your bike off before the chair starts to head back around the bullwheel, Thredbo constructs an extension of the unloading deck each summer.

“We’ve really got to make sure whatever we’re doing is not affecting winter operations too much — winter is still our main business,” he explains.

How many staff does it take to run a chairlift for the bike park?

Beyond the actual chairs themselves, the machinery that pulls the ~3km long steel haul rope of Kozi Chair at roughly 10kph uphill with bikes and people on board is extremely complex to operate, and there is a heck of a lot more going on than just the lift operators helping you load and unload your bike.

Windshuttle explains that the four to five staff members you see stationed at each chair are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

“In addition to that, we are watching the weather constantly…if there are winds or lighting in the area, we’re watching different radar and wind reports — every chairlift also has its own weather station,” he says.

Windshuttle says this is why they go on bike hold before foot passenger hold, as the bike has more surface area, its more affected by the wind.

They also need to ensure there are a number of engineering staff on duty at any time to be on call for faults and mechanical issues that may arise.

“We employ a large team of professional, electricians, and fitters to ensure that all of the lifts are operating safely, and efficiently,” says Windshuttle

This does not take into account bike patrol, trail crew and the numerous other staff that are on the mountain throughout the day.

But all of that is worth it to EVT and Thredbo and Windshuttle, and beyond just the marketing value of the tagline of Australia’s only lift-assisted bike park, he speculates the bike park wouldn’t be able to become what it has without it.

The One That Used to Run | Mount Buller

I still have fond memories of riding the chairlift at Mount Buller, holding my bike in my lap and cruising up the North Side Express for another lap on ABOM. Unfortunately, that is nothing more than a rose-coloured memory, as in 2017, Buller Ski Lifts made the difficult decision not to spin the lift through the summer months.

The chairlift was a huge draw card and what Buller was known for,” says David “Danger” McCoombe, Resort Operations Manager at Mt Buller and Mt Stirling.

However, there is a crucial distinction to reiterate here: Buller Ski Lifts is owned by the Grollo family and is a private company. Buller Resort Management, recently absorbed by Alpine Resorts Victoria (ARV), is more or less like the local council. These two entities come together to run Buller and are entirely independent of one another.

“Buller Ski Lifts is the biggest commercial operator at Mount Buller, employs the most people and are responsible for operating lifts and a range of other businesses on-mountain. Whereas ARV, looks after resort operations in general, such as public amenities, roads and gate access, to name a few,” says Florian Tabelander, Summer Activities Manager at Buller Ski Lifts.

ARV is the entity responsible for the mountain bike park, maintaining and building new trails. Buller Ski Lifts actually owns all of the lift infrastructure and a large amount of assets throughout the village, and operates on Crown Land — not National Park as is often incorrectly attributed — that is leased from ARV.

Glen Jacobs from World Trail tells us that when they first started doing work for Mount Buller in the late 2000s, the conversations with Buller Ski Lifts were more or less ‘If you have enough trails and enough clientele, we’ll run the lift.’

“Not all of the trails got put in for different reasons — funding and this and that. They ran the chairlifts for a while and then said no more,” he tells Flow.

As McCoombe explains, back in the day, the gravity trails were actually under the purview of Buller Ski Lifts being within their lease. However with ARV managing the wider trail network, it understood the drawcard of gravity riding. After the lift shut down, it made sense for resort management to take over, and an MOU was put in place for the maintenance and management of the downhill trails and to engage a shuttle provider.

Swirling rumours | Will the chairlift at Buller start back up?

Over the past few years, a rumour has been circulating that Buller Ski Lifts was considering turning the lift again. As it would turn out, Evan Winton from Contour Works had been in the ear of the lift company asking why the infrastructure was just sitting there.

“I was out there digging, looking at the chairlift, thinking, how is this not running?” Winton recalls. “So I just started asking the questions. And then two years ago, it sounded like it was happening.”

Tabelander says BSL has looked extensively into running the lift again but has struggled to find hard numbers to gauge the actual demand for it.

“I know that Contour Works and ARV have put in a lot of resources and have done a great job maintaining those trails and rebuilding them towards what the modern rider wants. But in the end, we don’t have any new (gravity) trails. Since we shut the lifts it’s the exact same network.

What we need to know is, is the lift such a big draw card that it has a measurable impact on the amount of riders coming to the destination?” Tabelander explains.

Building in a ski resort brings with it certain constraints

Part of that is because of some of the constraints that come with building in a ski resort. There are some restrictions on where they can dig, as much of the snowmaking infrastructure is below ground. As McCoombe explains, they have to be mindful of where things are put to ensure a machine cutting in for a berm doesn’t hit a water main or a high-voltage powerline.

There are also conditions on the size of the features that can be left over winter as BSL will groom a ski run with as little as 20cm of snow on it.

“We do have key areas that we knock down and rebuild each year, but without a full-time dedicated trail crew, that’s as much as we can sort of squeeze in. It’s not a matter of just flipping a sign (for summer). It’s the brush cutting, the chainsawing and the raking that we have to do across the whole network. We just don’t have the capacity — people think we could just knock down and rebuild A-Line every year. We just don’t have those sorts of resources,” he says.

Tabelander notes that while new trail networks are popping up, mountain biking is growing in a larger context. But it isn’t an organised sport like football or cricket and it’s difficult to show in black and white whether rider numbers are increasing. Also, anecdotally, in the case of Buller you have a pretty quiet vibe around town.

We should note that it’s not just BSL that has taken notice of this, and All Terrain Cycles has decided not to operate its store front in the village this summer.

McCoombe concedes that Buller does get a bad rap for how dead the village feels and that there isn’t much else to do up there. But if the lift was running anyway like Thredbo, there is the opportunity to capitalise on the sightseeing and hiking aspect as well.

“There’s definitely more people coming for sightseeing. We’re seeing a lot more cultural and language-diverse groups of new Australians flocking to the mountains. So there’s this whole new demographic that is starting to explore outside the cities and come check out the mountains,” says McCoombe.

“The more people we can draw into the resort with the chairlift (for sightseeing), the mountain bikers also benefit by having extra food and beverage and other facilities available,” he says.

And to the Resort’s credit this has been a focus for Buller, with Buller Ski Lift’s new Via Ferrata and a push for more of the restaurants and cafes to run through the green season.

The challenge of loading bikes onto the Northside Express

But again, spinning the lift isn’t just a matter of flipping a switch. Same as Thredbo, the old hold-onto-your-bike-and-make-sure-your-inside-pedal-is-up won’t fly anymore, so the lifts would need to be retrofitted with bike carriers.

The layout of the Northside Express, where you jump on at a mid-station in the valley, presents a further challenge as some bike carrier solutions, like the ones you see at Thredbo, aren’t likely to work.

With that said, Winton tells us he’s gone down quite a rabbit hole on this and found a hook system that would likely work, and someone from the Grollo family had even mocked up a prototype and bolted it onto one of the lifts. Even still, BSL is wary of the investment needed to fire up the lifts.

“With the rise in electricity costs and labour costs over the years, just running that lift for a day is significantly more expensive than it used to be,” Tabelander said. “I don’t want to disclose any numbers, but to make it feasible or just pretty much cover costs, it would need to be a whole lot more riders than we’re getting at the moment.”

When asked about the cost of spinning a chairlift for a day, Thredbo also declined to share any figures.

Visitation to Buller | Will the the chairlift attract the masses to Buller?

Regardless, BSL would have to cover all of that cost, and there is a risk in it. If they clean out the kitty to run the lift for the bike park and it doesn’t work, they have to wear that loss. This, compounded by the truncated winters of the past few years, has left the lift company’s risk tolerance is low.

But there is a population of five million people about three and a half hours away.

“I think it can be hard to attract people here, but I’ve just kept saying to them (BSL), if you don’t do anything, how are you going to get people here? If your infrastructure is just sitting there, it’s a small investment for a company of that size,” says Winton.

McCoombe notes that while skiing often gets written off as something just for clientele of a certain socio-economic status, there are a whole lot of regular people whose livelihood is based around the success of the ski industry.

“Without BSL pouring all of their money back into investing into the ski area, the flow on effect is not just their company, it’s all through Mansfield and the whole area. So, while absolutely everyone wants a chairlift for mountain biking, you can see why they are keen to focus on winter. That’s the core of the business and supports a hell of a lot of other businesses. If they falter or make the wrong decision, that will hurt a lot more than just BSL,” he says.

There is also Blue Dirt, which currently holds the license for uplifts in the park. Blue Dirt in itself is something that attracts riders to Buller based on its reputation for fantastic service and the multi-destination season pass it offers for shuttles.

If BSL were to start up the Northside Express tomorrow, that would put ARV in an awkward situation. McCoombe was not across the details of the license, however there would be some implications.

ARV would also need to work out a solution for shuttling folks backup from Mirimbah when they ride the Alpine Epic or the Delatite River Trail, and it’s difficult to say whether just operating an uplift there would be viable for Blue Dirt or whether another solution would be needed.

That One That Has Never Run | Falls Creek

Like Mount Buller, Falls Creek is split into two operations: Alpine Resorts Victoria, which runs the bike park and manages road clearing, waste removal, public works and the like year-round, and Falls Creek Lifts, which is owned by Vail.

After weeks of back and forths and questions passed on to Vail, we learned that it would not be making a comment and did not wish to be contacted any further. However, David Leathem, the Head of Visitor Experience at Falls Creek, did get back to us to discuss why things run the way they do at the Resort.

Funny enough, Falls Creek is home to the first lift ever installed in Australia back in 1957, however the lifts have never run here for the bike park. Vail took over operations in 2019, from British conglomerate Merlin Entertainment, which purchased it from Living Leisure Australia, who took over from Alpine Enterprises Group and so on and so forth.

Historically, the chairlifts at Falls Creek have never run during the summer, bar a few years when they spun during the Easter Festival.

Similar to Buller, ARV is responsible for the trail maintenance, upgrades and new builds, while Vail Resorts owns and operates the ski lift infrastructure and ticketing, trail grooming during the winter, ski school, and a selection of ski rental and retail outlets throughout the village. With that, for any trail work that goes through the area that Vail leases (i.e. ski runs), Leathem tells Flow they are consulted on any work done in that area as a stakeholder.

Like Buller, there are constraints to trail building in the Resort around snowmaking and lift infrastructure, and the new DH trail at Falls will be the first to have features that will need to be knocked down each winter and rebuilt for summer.

Chairlifts are great, but are the best solution at Falls Creek?

When World Trail designed the trail network, it was in the hope that ARV (known as Falls Creek Resort Management at the time) and Falls Creek Lifts could work together.

“We weren’t contracted by the lift company, we were contracted by the Resort, and everybody was hoping with their fingers crossed they would run (the chairlift). But if you’re at a ski resort, why wouldn’t you design the trails around the chairlift?” says Jacobs. “They’re not cheap things to run, but people in Australia don’t really get to ride chairlifts — it’s definitely a draw card.

However, as Leathem points out even if the lifts were to run, they would still need some definition of shuttle uplift.

“The Falls Creek Mountain Bike Park was designed not to rely on only one type of operator and provides options for growth within the mountain bike park, not only for future trail development but for opening up opportunities to a broad range of business operators.

Currently, uplift access is available to the summit (highest points of the MTB trails) down to Howmans Gap (lowest point of the MTB trails). There is no ski lift infrastructure in place at Howmans Gap, and there were no plans for this infrastructure to be in place when the original trails were built.” he says.

While the lifts can get you to the top of the Resort, Flowtown and Skyline, which end at Howmans Gap, are some of the most popular trails at Falls Creek. While you can pedal back up on Packhorse or up the road, most people don’t come to Falls Creek to pedal, and some definition of a shuttle service would be needed.

Can surface lifts drag bikes up a mountain?

Given that ARV at Falls is not responsible for the lifts, they, too, were not able to provide any figures as to what it would cost to spin any of the chairs. On top of that, the only straight shot from the village to the summit is International, which is a poma lift —  for those not well-versed in skiing, this is a glorified rope tow.

Simon French, the man behind Dirt Art and Maydena Bike Park, tells Flow they had investigated a surface lift to replace busses at Maydena as part of its 2023 master plan. Ultimately, as he put it, the results of that investigation showed Maydena didn’t quite have the volume yet, among other factors.

“There are a bunch of systems that have merit, and some guys are doing a cool ground-based lift system that leverages off a poma/T-bar — Easy Loop is their name. It’s a system that hooks over the top of your stem and basically pulls the bike up the hill. It’s a good system and significantly cheaper than a chairlift (to build and run),” he says.

“For a family or kids, it gets a bit daunting. It’s a good system and it works, but it’s also a big ask for someone to get pulled up on their bike. If they have a crash, the bike keeps getting dragged along. It definitely has merit in the right context. I’m not sure Falls Creek is that context,” French says.

While there are solutions to make these surface lifts into bike haul solutions, they can be tricky because you have to stay upright on your bike to use them and have some constraints on the grades and terrain in which they can be used. That means Falls (or really Vail) would need to fire up two chairs — Gully and Summit — which would double the staffing requirements in addition to the running cost, rack and terminal upgrades and the like.

In the case of Falls Creek, the chairlift simply does not service the network all that well. With the lay of the land, where the trails are and where the lifts stand, for the time being, it seems to be better to service by shuttles.

On a nice sunny day, lift service mountain biking is the end all be all. However, it’s far from as simple as just firing up the lifts and letting it rip. We’d love to see all of the resorts being able to have the chairlift as an option for uplift, but these are big, complex and expensive pieces of machinery to run. And while it’s a shame to see the lifts sit there all summer, sometimes they aren’t the best solution for the bike park.