New gondola for Plan de Corones / Kronplatz

4th September 2009, by Chris Gill

Top of the dome

Park yourself on a smart leather seat, warmed nicely for your ride up the mountain…

Plan de Corones / Kronplatz ski area in the Italian Dolomites is gaining a luxury new gondola for 2009/10. The 10-seat Marchner gondola will replace a fast chairlift that had become oversubscribed, boosting capacity to 3,000 skiers per hour. It’s key selling point is apparently as the ‘world’s first’ gondola of its kind - although visitors to Ischgl will already be familiar with heated seats inside the smaller Fimbabahn lift. And Lech was one of the first resorts to enjoy heated chairlifts. The new gondola serves the mountain from 1555m on the Valdaora side of the slopes, and has a new top station.

Plan de Corones / Kronplatz is somewhat unique in offering slopes on a distinctive ‘cone-shaped’ mountain, with most of its main lifts converging on Concordia 2000 - the summit area. It’s an underrated intermediate area that is close to resorts around the Sella Ronda, and linked to neighbouring San Vigilio di Marebbe. Here, a chairlift previously closed due to avalanche damage in 2007 is expected to reopen this season. The Cianross six-pack serves a couple of lower slopes, which will again be accessible for skiing and boarding.

• dolomites
• new lifts
• kronplatz
• plan de corones

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