Gondola Gap! B.C. Opening Up Lead on Seattle

Readers of The SunBreak will know that here the gondola enjoys most favored status, in terms of public transportation (nothing personal, Monorail.) Nothing smooths out hilly terrain like an aerial tram, and ski-bum Seattleites are already familiar with their high capacity.

Yet proposing their use outside of ski slopes always comes with a chuckle factor. So here’s a non-skiing item where a gondola will link two sightseeing attractions — a precedent that Seattle, as it refocuses its waterfront around car traffic, might be interested in.

Up in B.C., our Squamish correspondent alerts us to “B.C.’s top new attraction for 2014”; the Sea to Sky Gondola is due to open next May, and begin ferrying a hoped-for 200,000 sightseers annually from Howe Sound to the mountains of Shannon Creek, or vice versa. 20 Swiss Doppelmayr gondolas will carry up to 600 people per hour, taking 7 to 10 minutes to traverse about 2,800 vertical feet.

Visitors can park down below, then take a trip upward for the views, for a walk across a more-than-300-foot suspension bridge spanning a ravine, or for access to back country trails. Up top, there’ll be a lodge with food in case the alpine-style air and promenade stirs the appetite or thirst.

The $22-million development is aimed at outdoors adventurers drawn to the area by attractions like Shannon Falls; it also lets people leave their cars behind, rather than clogging twisting roads up into the mountains.

Seattle gondola boosters have taken this thinking a step further, proposing a system to be used by tourists and commuters alike, since everything is up hill from Seattle’s waterfront, including the city’s hot-spot Capitol Hill. Yet nothing from the waterfront takes you directly there.