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Lookout Mountain work at Lake Placid's Whiteface will be finished in time for winter.

"The work's going fine," Whiteface General Manager Jay Rand said. "We flew in all the towers. The helicopter work was delayed a little bit because they were deployed to hurricane areas, but the towers are all up now."

The fixed-grip chairlift is 4,125 feet long, can move 1,700 people an hour, and has a vertical drop of 1,560 feet.

Rand said Bruce McCulley, assistant mountain manager, has been working closely on planning and execution of the project that, this winter, will see a new triple, an intermediate trail, and two expert trails.

The intermediate trail will be more than two miles long, with snowmaking coverage.

"It  goes almost to the base of the entire area. It's a big trail, a real wilderness experience for people, with great views of Wilmington right into Vermont," Rand said.

Halfway down the trail, an expert run cuts back down to the base of the lift. Both trails will have snowmaking. A second expert trail has been cut down the face of the area, without snowmaking, Rand said. He also said a new glade has been opened up off the intermediate trail

"We're excited about this work," he said.

His staff also is finishing up a new pump house.

"With budget cuts, we had to take on a lot of the work with in-house staff," Rand said.

Those cuts factored into the decision of which trails to equip first with snowmaking.

"The intermediate trail serves more of the public, and it also enables us to get manpower and equipment up that way if there's any kind of emergency on the lift," Rand said.