Snow Ridge has had a tough year. An EF-3 tornado tore through the small Upstate New York mountain last August, damaging all four of the mountain’s lifts. A number of other ski areas, volunteers and resort staff joined forces to put the mountain back together all fall. North Chair, the final lift to reopen, just returned to service last Saturday. Unfortunately today the lift deroped on both sides of tower 6, causing two chairs to fall to the ground and four additional chairs to stack up on the light side of the tower. Thankfully none of the impacted chairs were occupied and no one was hurt. According to a post by Bob Bennett on Ski the Northeast Facebook Group, the mountain had just opened for the day and only one person had to be rope evacuated. The incident follows just two days after a significant deropement at Sunday River, Maine required 200+ skiers to be rope evacuated. No one was injured in that mishap either.
North is very old and contains parts from multiple defunct manufacturers, primarily Hall. According to New York Ski Blog, the double chair was just inspected and cleared by the State of New York to operate on February 16th. It was not immediately clear why safety systems designed to stop a lift after a deropement failed to do so for at least four chair lengths this morning.
Lift Blog 
I would place a large wager that this chair might be permanently shut down after this incident. Definitely won’t turn anymore this season.
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WOW, what a conglomeration of old Hall carriers. Looks like the deropement circuit didn’t work so well🤦♂️ New York has a tramway inspection and permitting authority. It will be interesting to see if they make there investigation public. Pictures like this are embarrassing for the whole ski industry.
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Glad no one was hurt. May she rust in peace. I like seeing those Roebling sheaves turning.
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I’ve posted a full explanation of the incident on our website. I am thankful no one was injured and we look forward to resolving the issue this summer.
https://snowridge.com/news/north-chair-incident/
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Thanks for the detailed explanation.
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We appreciate the full story of this incident. I am very glad this wasn’t a failure of the safety switches, this is a great demonstration of why every sheave train on every lift is wired up. Expensive lesson not to ignore them in this case.
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Probably one of the best example that could be given on what not to do. Never bypass and run anything without knowing the exact cause and physically monitoring the location.
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I would like to add that North’s OEM is not defunct, it is SkyTrans Mfg.
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