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New Lift at Stoneham - Santa offers the ÉCLIPSE to skiers as a Christmas gift

This Saturday, on December 23rd, Santa Claus himself will deliver the Éclipse to Stoneham Mountain Resort's snow lovers. This new lift, a new fixed-grip quad chairlift with a loading conveyor belt, replaces the double lift La Bordée and the T-bar Le Chinook, respectively 50 and 32-year-old equipment. This investment will increase the speed of the ascent for this area, modernize the facilities of the mountain and better serve the skiable terrain, to the delight of skiers and snowboarders.

The construction was announced last June by Stoneham and was delivered on December 14th by the manufacturer Doppleymayr, after 7 months of hard work and close collaboration. Since then, Stoneham has been running a few tests and staff trainings to make sure all its teams (operators, mechanics, ski patrol, etc.) are familiar with the new installations and procedures. The lift has been operating part time for the past week and will continue to do so until its official inauguration on December 23rd. The skiers and snowboarders already love it.

The loading conveyor belt is a technology present in other resorts in Quebec (Bromont, Saint-Sauveur, Mont Garceau, etc.) and it has gained in popularity over the last years in the ski industry. It is the first one we get here at Stoneham, as well as the first one to be installed in the Québec region. When combined to the fixed-grip lift, the belt allows a faster trip because it is synchronised with the chairs' arrival. The new Éclipse gets skiers up the mountain in approximately 8 ½ minutes, with a top speed of 2,6 meters per second and a capacity of 1900 skiers per hour.

The name of the new lift has been selected on Stoneham's Facebook page. The fans had to choose between different names, all related to meteorological or astronomical phenomena as it is a tradition for all the lifts names at the resort. The Éclipse is certainly a cue to the full sun eclipse which occurred in august, during the heart of the lift's construction.

The official inauguration will take place on December 23rd and it will be done by Santa himself, who will be visiting us on this day with surprises for everyone there. From this moment on, the Éclipse will be operating full time, 7 days and 7 nights a week.

​Source : Stoneham Mountain Resort