Northstar Comstock Six-Pack: An Unflashy But Effective Upgrade

The new Comstock Express is Northstar’s second six-pack lift.

Background

For the 2022-23 season, California’s Northstar performed a major upgrade on one of its most popular lifts. This Tahoe-area resort replaced its popular Comstock Express quad, which dated back to 1989, with a brand-new high-speed six-pack, bringing a claimed capacity increase of nearly 50%. The Comstock Express is Northstar’s second six-pack; following this project, Northstar retains nine high-speed lifts in total.

This lift may not be the flashiest out there, but it does bring some practical benefits to what’s basically Northstar’s bread-and-butter terrain pod. However, certain elements of the installation did have repercussions on the terrain the lift serves.

The Northstar trail map, with the Comstock lift highlighted in red.

The Experience

The Comstock Express provides the primary lappable access to Northstar’s upper-mountain frontside terrain, and as a result, it’s arguably the most popular lift on the mountain (at least after guests have filtered up from the main base via the Big Springs Gondola). As a result, guests who have visited Northstar on weekends and holidays will notice a solid experience improvement from the upgraded lift. The approximate 50% increase in capacity has done wonders in moving guests up the mountain, and while lines are still a serious factor on weekends and holidays—and the lift doesn’t always load fully to capacity—the queues have been relieved quite a bit versus previous seasons.

The Comstock Express’s approximate 50% capacity increase has helped quite a bit with lift lines.

While more under the radar, the new lift also provides substantial reliability improvements versus the old Comstock lift. It’s not like the previous quad was falling apart, but it was over 33 years old at the time of its replacement, resulting in maintenance demands that were starting to impact day-to-day operations. While new lifts sometimes have teething problems, the Comstock six-pack’s first year of operations went fairly smoothly—and the lift should provide dependable service for decades to come.

Some may argue that the nearby Rendezvous triple lift should have been prioritized for a detachable quad replacement over the Comstock project. After all, such a replacement would have offered a second high-speed lift route for Northstar's upper-mountain front side. However, the reliability issue alone would have made it tough to justify leaving the Comstock lift in its current state. Furthermore, the added capacity of Comstock's six-pack seating helps reduce the number of guests who would opt for the slower Rendezvous lift in the first place.

Unfortunately, the Comstock six-pack installation did come at a cost, resulting in the loss of some of Northstar's most challenging in-bounds terrain. In order to create a sufficiently wide lift line, the trees on the upper portion of the lift line were removed, effectively merging Grouse Alley and Corridor runs. Corridor was arguably the most challenging zone at Northstar, and while the grade remains the same, the much wider footprint removes a lot of the technicality.

Northstar’s Grouse Alley and Corridor runs were merged as part of tree clearing for the new lift line, removing a lot of the technicality from these runs.

The few expert-level guests who visit Northstar may be slightly disappointed with the collateral damage, but most weekend and holiday visitors will notice the benefits of the faster-moving lift lines. The new lift provides a high-capacity, reliable uphill instrument for years to come.

Considering a ski or snowboard trip to Northstar this year? Check out our full Lake Tahoe ski resort rankings, as well as our comprehensive Northstar review. You can also check out our Northstar assessment in video form below.