Mount Bachelor Replacing Skyliner Lift With Six-Pack for 2023-24 Season, Repairing Existing Quad for Upcoming Winter

Mount Bachelor’s Skyliner lift in February 2021.

Background

Mount Bachelor will replace its aging Skyliner lift with a high-speed detachable six-pack for the 2023-24 season, as per a press release from the resort. The existing Skyliner high-speed quad, which has been out of commission since mid-January due to bull wheel damage, will be repaired for the upcoming winter. The Oregon resort cited manufacturer backlogs in its inability to replace the lift until 2023.

According to a Bachelor spokesperson, the new Skyliner six-pack will increase the pod’s capacity by 50%.

The Skyliner chair chiefly services below-treeline intermediate and freestyle terrain. Parking is available near the lift, although there is no public base lodge in the vicinity. While the current lift has been down, the resort has implemented operational accommodations to account for the lift’s outage, including relocating its Woodward terrain parks and running shuttles from the Skyliner parking lot, among other adjustments.

Our Take

Skyliner is not the busiest lift at Mount Bachelor, but with the old lift on its last legs anyway—the current chair is more than three decades old—a six pack replacement certainly won’t hurt. Hopefully, the higher capacity in the area will take some of the pressure off of the Pine Martin and Sunrise lifts, which start at Bachelor’s two true base lodges, serve similarly difficult terrain, and see long lines during peak times. With the nearby town of Bend growing rapidly, we view Bachelor’s decision to go with a six-pack as a smart long-term investment. We only expect the mountain to become more and more popular over the coming years, and it will need the lift capacity to manage.

Skyliner is not Bachelor’s only high-speed quad from the late 1980s to have had issues recently. The Outback lift, of a similar vintage, was forced to run at a slow speed for almost the entire 2020-21 season. We’re expecting to see a replacement for that lift in the near future, although with the nearby Northwest lift providing service to all the same terrain as Outback, it’s possible a replacement is not a high priority.

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