An unoccupied chair fell from Bittersweet’s new Snow Flyer lift today according to a post on Reddit. It appears one of the lift’s communication lines became entangled with several chairs, causing one of them to detach from the haul rope. No injuries were reported and the lift was evacuated by ski patrol and closed. Weather at the time was unsettled with high winds and snow.
Snow Flyer is just over one year old. The Leitner-Poma detachable quad rises 319 vertical feet with 40 chairs.
Lift Blog 
sounds like someone did not do a good job of inspecting the chairlift.
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Or they had wind and didn’t realize it…
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No no no no blame first ask questions later
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Or if you read the article you can see that the comms cable got stuck in the chair which caused it to detach. Probably from the wind. You should read and then sprinkle some common sense into your reply.
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All the overhead cables are required to be monitored. Meaning if they break the lift stops. If the cables are not tensioned properly or an anchor point breaks. The cables can become entangled with the grip or carrier. Of course wind can make the situation worse. Nothing will stop the lift automatically until the wires or fiber in the overhead cable are separated.
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That would make things difficult if the comm line broke, as it would inhibit the terminals talking to each other to evac the lift efficiently and safely. Hopefully there was cell service or they had radios to coordinate everything.
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You’re on the right track. Maintenance departments routinely practise ‘dead-stick’ evacs where we do everything manually. No one I know uses cell phones though. They’re too unreliable in these situations.
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I saw a picture on Facebook earlier that shows a derailment occurred during this incident as well.
https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/418538495_10226692888047065_3449783029639715033_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg&_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=c42490&_nc_ohc=d1aGczojGfgAX-qDJL1&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&oh=00_AfAM9EGbLq1ZuZ7PJ1WB1RWHH7_QAXchyJTsDM1fg1LIdQ&oe=65A9437E
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If they used a self support (figure 8) telephone cable on the towers and it wasn’t tensioned properly, the sag could swing into the lift cable/chairs in high winds and cause this outcome.
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Or it was the high winds, and ski patrol did their job and everything turned out OK
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The ultimate goal in any situation like this is, identify what caused the comline entanglement and prevent reoccurrence.
If you put it back the way it was, the wind will blow again and reoccurrence is likely.
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Look at pictures 2 and 3 on https://liftblog.com/snow-flyer-bittersweet-mi/. That downhill comm wire looks like it has way too much slack on it. Also, Why do the wires run down to the station support instead of up to the top of the station? Wouldn’t them being routed to the top completely remove the chance of this issue happening?
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I have no idea why LPA does that, but I know Doppelmayr never routes com lines up a station support unless its a buried com line. This incident would also never happen on a doppelmayr lift built after 2013 since Doppelmayr smartly put a bit of R&D into its com line design and has been putting tensioned bollards on its lift towers that can adjust the tension on the com line during different conditions. A clear example is the new 6 pack at Stowe
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LPA terminates to the station support because the terminal has passive tensioning, which means it can be moved. Regardless, this is not where the entanglement occurred, it happened below the top tower. Hope this helps.
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Out of curiosity, how do you know where the entanglement occurred?
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‘Below the top tower’.
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Yeah good observation. Looking at similar LPA installations, they have the same termination points on the upper terminals. Although the picture of the Bittersweet lift the downhill side line (probably the fiber) has a lot of slack in it, say compared to the picture of Jackson Hole Thunder.
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A couple things I noticed from my 33 years of comline installation experience and never installed a LPA one so ?? for the gallery. I noticed there are sometimes weights on that last span to the terminal on LPA lifts and guessing to keep comline from bouncing to much. Do not notice them in these photos of top station. Also I like to mount comline in center mounting positions to allow for more clearance between the chairs for swinging. It seems like one of the ones at the top in photos is in the outer bracket but not sure.
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no wonder Snow Flyer is shut down
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