Castle Mountain celebrates 60 years with debut of high-speed chairlift

Posted on January 8, 2026 by admin

By Justin Seward
Southern Alberta Newspapers

Castle Mountain Resort is celebrating its 60th year and skiers will notice a new addition to hill open come the new year.

The ski resort will be introducing a new to them high-speed chairlift which will be called the Stagecoach Express.

Castle came to an agreement with Banff’s Sunshine Village on taking the Angel Express quad chairlift from them after they uninstalled it in January 2024 and it was shipped to Castle Mountain over the summer of 2024.

A master planning document gave formal recognition to the notion of installing the lift in 2017.

Castle has worked on installing it over this past year.

“It will be Castle’s first high-speed chairlift,” said Cole Fawcett, Castle Mountain Resort sales and marketing manager.

“And long story short, (guests will) enjoy about a six-to-seven-minute ride time… it’ll  be the shortest ride time of any lift at the resort.”

The other notable feature is it will be Castle’s first lift with four seats.

“The big thing really is that this lift opens up so much more terrain,” said Fawcett.

“We’re actually increasing the number of trails by over 20.”

The high-speed lift will be located in the Mount Haig area of the resort.

“It’s going to be in our former cat skiing area that we used for more than 15 years,” said Fawcett.

To access the new high-speed lift, skiers will jump on the Huckleberry chairlift and  then ski down a connecting run to the new lift’s base.

“Then that new lift will lift them higher up on to the shoulder of Mount Haig where there (will) be an abundance of intermediate and advanced terrain to ski and ride,” said Fawcett.

The chairlift will help Castle keep up with its competitors who have installed new lifts and created new terrains in recent decades.

“We really are trying to make sure that we’re competitive in the ski and snowboard landscape,” said Fawcett.

An opening date is still undetermined but the resort is aiming for early 2026 at the end of January.

“I think it’s a major milestone especially with some of the trials and tribulations that Castle… has had over the decades,” said Fawcett, on the resort getting to 60 years.

“There’s been a lot of ups and downs through the years and I guess to a certain extent that would be true of any ski resort or any winter-based recreation organization. But I think Castle’s had more than its fair share of hardships. So really happy to be here and really happy to be debuting a transformative expansion for the resort.”

There is other 60th anniversary events in the works for later in the season.