The art and science of Utah Olympic Park’s helicopter chairlift installation

Chairlift construction is underway at Utah Olympic Park, making a show against the pop of fall colors. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — The Utah Olympic Park installed chairlift towers on Sunday amid the colorful leaves, with the help of a helicopter to do the heavy lifting. New ski runs have been carved out of the mountain and snowmaking pipes/ponds are going in for the UOP’s expansion. When the ‘Park’ was acquired by the State of Utah, a decade prior to hosting the 2002 Olympics, and then by the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation (UOLF), the expansion was always in the big-picture blue prints.

Colin Hilton, the C.E.O. of the UOLF and member of the Salt Lake 2030/2034 Olympic Bid Committee told TownLift, “Having the chairlift towers installed today is a huge milestone and we’re super excited about all the progress.”

The UOLF manages not only the UOP, but also the Utah Olympic Oval and the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center.

Recreating visitors at the UOP got a bonus look at the process as it flew pass after pass, in five minute intervals for hours. The clear blue skies and lack of wind made for a perfect landscape for construction.

The following list represents the order in which the UOP has been built out: 

1. Freestyle aerial summer pool
2. Nordic ski jumps/chairlift
3. Bobsled/skeleton/luge track
4. Freestyle aerial winter hill/chairlift
5. Alpine slide
6. Zip lines
7. ropes courses
8. Residences dormitory
9. Moguls/alpine courses/chairlift
10. Current expansion

The current expansion will be utilized for training, national, and international competitions for a handful of private ski teams and won’t be available for public skiing.

Each of the brief video clips attached were taken from different vantage points within the 375 acre uniquely world class facility and of different stages in the helicopter chairlift progression. They zoom in on the nuts and bolts of the complicated and potentially dangerous operation. Depicted are the details of hoisting, flying, lowering and attaching chairlift parts to the waiting workers on the ground.