Skiers and snowboarders had to be roped down from the Giant Steps Express at Brian Head yesterday following a tower deropement. The incident occurred on the heavy side of tower 1, immediately adjacent to the bottom station. Witnesses reported the lift was nearly full and the rope evacuation lasted a number of hours. “At approximately 12:05 pm the Giant Steps Express chairlift experienced a mechanical issue that resulted in a lift evacuation,” the resort said in a statement. “Mountain operations teams quickly responded and safely evacuated all guests without incident or injury in less than 2 hours.”
Giant Steps is a Doppelmayr CTEC high speed quad manufactured in 2005. The UNI-GS series detachable originally operated at Tamarack Resort in Idaho before being installed at Brian Head in 2014. The incident is the third deropement leading to a rope evacuation in the last four days. On Thursday, the Aurora Quad at Sunday River de-roped near the bottom terminal and 200 plus riders were roped off. Then on Saturday, a deropement caused chairs to fall from the North Chair at Snow Ridge, New York, leading to another evacuation. All three lifts remain closed today.
Lift Blog 
I wonder what caused this one. 🤔
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what caused the two others this week?
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the USA had some very bad luck with deropements recently
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That took quite a bit of force!! It’s one thing for the rope to end up in the rope catchers on the sheave assembly, but an other to fly up and get retained by the secondary cross arm catcher. Can’t see the carrier up uphill of tower 1 from the picture, but no grip is going to be happy crashing though the upper rope catcher. This would be a good time to put permeant hold down anchors to use.
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Some chatter on social media that it may have involved a misloaded patrol toboggan.
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Yep, hearing the same thing from a good source.
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Brian Head’s webcam sort of caught it. Looks and sounds quite violent. There does appear to be a patrol toboggan involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKcdPKS8kj0
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Interesting that the other carriers in the terminal are also swinging pretty aggressively after the stop.
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We are getting some very strong winds here in Colorado yesterday and today, wondering if they had the same yesterday in utah.
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A depress de-roped at my local ski area this weekend as well… Only they brought in a snowcat to use as a deadman and had the tower re-roped and the lift running within 40 minutes. Much faster than a lift evac.
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Yes a piece of equipment works well depending on the load. The best way is to have permeant concrete anchors in place under the hold down sheaves. On a single point pick it would probably take around 8,000 pounds of pull down force to get that rope back on the hold down sheaves.
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I found footage of the incident, the main webcam got a really good shot of it. I’ve sent the video off to Peter.
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3rd deropement and I’ve got you Babe playing in the background. Groundhog’s day I deed.
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Lift reopened today.
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Sonny Bono’s ghost?
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