Park City to Build Second Gondola out of Canyons Village

Park City’s Red Pine Gondola may soon get relief from a second out-of-base cable car.

Earlier this week, Utah’s massive Park City Resort announced plans to fund a new 10-passenger gondola out of its Canyons Village base. The new Sunrise Gondola will indirectly replace the Sunrise double chair, starting at the same base but rising to the mid-mountain Red Pine Lodge. As with the neighboring Red Pine Gondola, the new lift will allow for downloading at the end of the day.

While no concrete timeline has been announced for the new lift yet, it’s expected to be completed within the next three years.

Our Take

The Canyons side of Park City has only gotten more and more busy, and especially with new parking restrictions on the Park City side of the resort, the Canyons Village has struggled to handle the crowds with its current capacity. 

The new Sunrise Gondola should provide much-needed lift relief out of the Canyons Village base, and will make things a lot more convenient for those staying in the area where the Sunrise lift is located. The lift is certainly being designed with village hotel guests and residents in mind, and its secluded location means that Park City will need to do some work in the base village to point visitors in the new lift’s direction and spread out crowds.

An inset of the Canyons side on Park City’s trail map, with the expected Sunrise Gondola lift line highlighted in red.

This gondola will essentially run parallel to the Red Pine Gondola after leaving the base area, also rising to the Red Pine Lodge. Some might argue that the lift should service a different area, such as the top of Tombstone, which would make getting to southern parts of the resort more convenient. However, doing this would make the lift inaccessible to beginners—something the hotel and condo associations in Canyons Village certainly would not be happy with. Moreover, the Canyons side does not offer any skiable beginner terrain down to the village, and the Red Pine Gondola could really use some assistance in terms of downloading capacity at the end of the day.

Ultimately, this new lift won’t magically fix Canyons’ weird, indirect lift setup and Park City’s navigational difficulties. But any additional capacity out of the Canyons base will be a good thing, and we’re looking forward to seeing how it shapes up over the next couple of years. The Canyons side also sits outside jurisdiction of the Park City Planning Commission, so we doubt this lift will be cancelled last minute, unlike two projects that infamously got the axe last winter.

Considering a trip to Park City next winter? Check out our comprehensive mountain review, as well as our full Utah and Rockies ski resort rankings. You can also check out our Park City review in video form below.