Loveland Ski Area has closed its two oldest chairlifts – Lifts 1 and 6 – following discovery of similar problems at each. Lift 6 is a 1977 Lift Engineering double chair that closed in the middle of the day on Sunday, January 15th due to a problem at the top terminal. Lift 1 is a 1981 Lift Engineering triple that operated until an inspection found the early stages of a similar issue today (interestingly, Lift 1 opened as a double chair before being upgraded with larger chairs a few years later.)
“We are dedicated to safe lift operations and have decided to close Lift 1 to immediately perform the necessary repairs,” Loveland said in a statement this evening.
While Loveland’s social media posts do not specify what is wrong, they say repairs to Chair 1 should take about two days with Lift 6 taking longer. Both chairs are bottom drive/bottom tension, so the list of things that could go wrong up top is limited. In the meantime, the mountain is offering $51 discounted tickets.
View of Eglise Mountain earlier this season with new trails cut over the past two summers. The expansion will include at least three new lifts.The Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana will likely build not one, but three new lifts this summer as it adds Eglise Mountain to its expansive roster of ski terrain. The second section of a future two-stage gondola, along with a detachable bubble quad chair and new beginner triple chair are all slated to debut in time for the Club’s 17th winter season next year.
Doppelmayr USA will build the new lifts and already poured many of the tower and terminal footings last summer. The upper section of the 8-passenger Eglise Gondola will debut first, with the lower stage to be added when the 550,000 square-foot Village Core is substantially completed. That project, located adjacent to the Warren Miller Lodge, is also underway and currently the biggest construction project in Montana. A dedicated building in the village will eventually house the new gondola’s base terminal, not far from the Lodge lift.
Heavenly’s Comet Express remains closed following a Jan. 1st rope evacuation, apparently due to a gearbox issue. This is one of the reasons Vail Resorts is replacing its fleet of 1980s-vintage detachable quads.
Ski Area Management‘s lift construction survey dropped this week. Highlights from its outlook for 2017:
“We’re off to a strong year for ’17, there are lots of people asking about lifts…It’s very positive compared to the previous two years.” – Jon Mauch, Senior Sales Manager at Leitner-Poma
“There’s a lot of enthusiasm about what could happen under a Trump administration. People expect deregulation and a more business-friendly climate.” – Mark Bee, President at Doppelmayr USA
“We’re seeing lots of requests quotes, lots of major modifications and retrofits…It’s all being driven by the age of the existing lift infrastructure.” – Carl Skylling, General Manager at Skytrac
I’ve already identified 29 new lifts likely to be built in 2017, pacing well above the last few years for mid-January.
Whitefish Mountain Resort will make a big lift move this summer, relocating Chair 5 from Ptarmigan Bowl to become a new East Rim lift. Chair 5, also known as Glacier View and at times High Five, has not seen public operation since 2014/15 due to its redundancy with the Big Mountain Express and will better serve skiers in the North Bowl. The $1.2 million project will cost more than double what the ski area paid for the original CTEC installation in 1981. Whitefish Mountain Resort has contracted with Skytrac to make the move.
Approximate location of the new East Rim chair looker’s right on the front side of Big Mountain.
“We are pleased to continue what has been a decade of steady improvements at Whitefish Mountain Resort with the re-position of Chair 5 to better utilize our lift infrastructure and improve the guest experience as we celebrate our 70th anniversary,” Whitefish Mountain Resort CEO Dan Graves said in a press release. Although technically it does not open any new terrain, the East Rim lift will create a new pod between Chair 1 and T-Bar 2. The new lift will rise 814 feet with a slope length of 2,540 feet and capacity of 1,600 skiers per hour. It will sport a new electric motor, drive, brakes, hydraulic tensioning, rebuilt gearbox and added restraining bars in the new location.
Chair 5 at Whitefish will be moved East to North Bowl.
Whitefish has been all in on lift shuffling lately, acquiring the former Moab Scenic Skyway lift in 2006 and installing it as Easy Rider. The original Glacier Chaser Express quad moved to become the Swift Creek Express in 2007, the same year old Easy Rider became Elk Highlands. In 2011, Whitefish installed the Bad Rock triple which was relocated from a resort in Pennsylvania. The 2014 addition of the Flower Point triple came from Kimberley, BC. The new East Rim triple is scheduled to open in December 2017. You can find out more about the history of Chair 5 and the new lift on the Whitefish Mountain Resort blog.
Portland’s next Transit on Tap talk on Jan. 24th features the story of the Portland Aerial Tram. The lift turns ten with a celebration planned for Jan. 28th.
A veteran mechanic dies after falling from a catwalk at Killington’s Skyeship Gondola.
Yesterday’s New York Timesdaily 360 video comes from the world’s largest urban gondola system.
The Snowflake lift at Breckenridge, CO is the only lift of its kind, making a 45-degree turn.Breck has been on my bucket list for a long time. Not because of the skiing, necessarily, but because its collection of 23 lifts is among the most unique anywhere. Nowhere else can you find so many lifts with turns (5), lifts that cross other lifts (4), not to mention North America’s only double-loading detachable and its highest elevation chairlift. This weekend I made a break for Breck and the three other Colorado Vail Resorts to see what Epic is all about.
Even with the option to ski back to town via the Four O’Clock ski run, the BreckConnect is an immensely popular transportation solution.I’ll start with the BreckConnect Gondola, which first connected one end of town to Peaks 7 and 8 in 2006. The Leitner-Poma gondola is free and operates both winter and summer. Locals I talked to can no longer remember life without it. Although it has two mid-stations each with an angle change of more than 40 degrees, the entire system operates with one haul rope. It’s way cooler than taking a bus from the parking lot.
The Peak 8 SuperConnect links Peaks 9 and 8 with an angle station in between.Continue reading →
For the first time in 24 years (and post-Lift Engineering) an electrical or mechanical problem has led to a fatality on an American ski lift. The Quickdraw quad at Granby Ranch will re-open Tuesday after the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board reached an interim operation agreement with the ski area. The news comes almost two weeks after the December 29th accident, in which a mother and her two daughters fell from a chair. Unfortunately, the agreement notes that a “rare dynamic event” due to issues with the electronic drive/control system caused the riders’ fall. Environmental factors, weather and/or rider behavior were not to blame.
A chair struck this tower Dec. 29, 2016, causing three members of a Texas family to fall 25 feet. One died.
The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees the tramway board, conducted extensive testing in addition to interviewing witnesses and engineers over the past 10 days. Mother Kelly Huber and her two children were riding chair number 58 when it came into contact with tower 5 due to irregular line dynamics. The lift had been load tested less than four weeks prior, on Dec. 5th.
The operation agreement with the CPTSB is stringent. Quickdraw’s electronic drive must be disconnected (this particular lift has two diesels – auxiliary and evacuation.) Lift mechanics, operators and ski patrollers all must perform a line check prior to operation each day. Additional visual line and ground checks will be required to be documented every two hours. For the first three days, the lift will only be permitted to move 600 feet per minute, even though the diesel auxiliary is rated for up to 900 fpm. After two additional days at 700 fpm, Granby Ranch will be permitted to operate the lift at 800 fpm for the rest of the season. Presumably this summer the lift will get a completely new drive.
The operation agreement is not a final report and does not identify any acts or omissions leading up to the accident, but merely outlines the conditions under which the lift can re-open. In a press release dated today, Granby Ranch echoed its condolences to the family of the victims and affirmed its commitment to safety. “The Quick Draw Express has been operating safely at Granby Ranch over the 16 seasons since its installation,” the company noted. “Granby Ranch has followed all prescribed protocols in operating the lift.”
We haven’t heard the end of this one. Hopefully the final report will provide some insight into how this type of event can be avoided in the future.
Update 1/10/17: Apparently a third-party company installed a new ABB drive last summer that ramped up and/or down too quickly, leading to the dynamic event.
Lift Blog 
