The Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park Gondola, is a short gondola system that travels from the bottom of Glenwood Canyon to the center of the Glenwood Caverns Adventure theme park. It is located in Glenwood Springs Colorado. In this video, I ride from the top station to the bottom station, which ends within the Glenwood Springs valley. The Gondola services the entire theme park, and is the only way of transport guests to and from the city of Glenwood Springs.
Lift Info:
One of the more unique lifts in Colorado, the Glenwood Gondola one of a couple lifts built for summer operations only, and serves no ski terrain in the winter. The lift is the third iteration of uphill travel in this alignment, following a Riblet double chairlift, and a pulse gondola. The current version of the "skyride" was manufactured by Leitner-Poma in 2019, and re-uses much of the old pulse gondola equipment when disassembled in 2018. This includes some of the line gear, towers, and parts of the top and bottom stations. There was also one more tower added during the rebuild in 2019, which was tower #18. As far as capacity goes, the gondola has matched uphill and downhill capacity, with around 1,000 riders per hour. Despite having such a low capacity, more cabins are not needed at Glenwood as most guests only use the gondola once or twice a day access the the park. It should be mentioned that the gondola is listed as an extra expense on top of riders fee into the park, so not many guests would want to lap a 50$ mode of transportation. I was lucky enough to get on for free during the day I was filming, as Gondola rides were free during the month of June.
*Lift Info:*
Builder: Leitner-Poma
Year Built: 2019
Capacity: 1,000 riders/hr
Vertical: 1,352 feet
Length: 4,449 feet
Design Speed: 600 Feet Per Minute / 3 Meters Per Second
Speed During Recording: 492 fpm / 2.5 mps
Chairs: 44
Ride Time: 8 - 9 Minutes
