By Harley Nefe
There was a lot to celebrate during the Village of Sugar Mountain’s SugarFest this past weekend, including a ceremonial grand opening of Sugar Mountain Resort’s new Oma’s Meadow high-speed, four-passenger, detachable chairlift.
On the morning of Saturday, December 10 at 10 a.m., people gathered at the lift to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony and to enjoy champagne. The new Oma’s Meadow chairlift is Sugar’s fifth chairlift installation and marks nearly $20 million in overall infrastructure investments over the past seven years.
Gunther Jochl, president and owner of Sugar Mountain Resort, said at the event, “Naturally, Oma’s Meadow needed a new lift, and it is only fitting to have this beautiful lift.”
He further said, “I think we have a really nice piece of machinery here, and we’re really excited. People are really looking forward to it too.”
Jochl explained how it took long hours and lots of hard work from many people to landscape the area and reconfigure where the lift is. Around a hundred truckloads of dirt were moved to make construction a reality.
“Last time, the bottom of the lift was in the middle of the slope, and the get on was in the way,” Jochl said. “We moved the lift over and leveled it out, so the whole thing is going to be much more comfortable. Now, you can get down easily, and it’s sitting a little diagonally, but that’s really the best way to put it because it would have been in the way or you couldn’t have gotten off nicely.”
In addition to the new lift, Sugar Mountain Resort has more snow guns, so they are preparing for the opening of Oma’s Meadow slope.
“It’s going to be an awesome slope,” Jochl said. “Thank you to everybody who worked on this.”
Photos by Ken Ketchie
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