Lift Blog

Timberline Lodge & Ski Area on Mt. Hood posted the following statement on Facebook Thursday afternoon after an empty chair fell from one of its high speed quads.

At approximately 1:45pm today there was a mechanical malfunction on the Magic Mile chair lift. A chair detached from the cable on the downhill side of the lift. The chair lift was not occupied. No customers or staff were involved in the incident. All guests were offloaded in a timely manner. The Magic Mile will be closed until further notice, pending a thorough investigation involving the lift manufacturer and a 3rd party lift engineer. Timberline Lodge thanks all guests on the lift for their patience and apologizes the inconvenience. We are compiling all details of the incident, which will be posted as soon as possible.

Poma built the Magic Mile in 1992 to replace a Riblet double.  The lift is 5,472′ long, rises 1,089′ and has Poma’s TB-41 grips. Much of this lift operates above tree line, so both its terminals are housed inside buildings that can be buttoned up during storms.  Magic Mile also has indoor parking for all its chairs and grip maintenance bays at the bottom terminal.

Almost exactly a year ago, an empty chair fell from a Doppelmayr detachable quad at Mt. Bachelor in a similar incident which was later blamed on component failure.

Update 4/2/16: Magic Mile has re-opened and Timberline posted the following update this afternoon.

This is a communications update regarding the Magic Mile chairlift malfunction, which we reported on March 31. The lift has been inspected by an independent chairlift engineer along with representatives from the US Forest Service. It was determined that failure of a key component of a carrier grip occurred, resulting in the detachment of an empty chair on the downhill side of the lift.

RLK and Company chairlift technicians followed the recommendations of the chairlift engineer and performed comprehensive inspections and testing on the entire chairlift. It has been determined that the chairlift conforms to industry standards, and is now operating.

Update 5/1/16: We’ve learned Magic Mile’s safety systems worked as designed and this incident was a combination of component failure and operator error.