A chair fell in the LaVelle double chair’s loading area at Montana Snowbowl Sunday, the resort’s third day of operations for the season. “Earlier today, an incident occurred on LaValle chairlift that required us to temporarily halt lift service,” Montana Snowbowl said in a statement posted to Facebook. “We are grateful to report that no injuries occurred. Our maintenance department was able to inspect the lift and ensure it was safe to operate. LaVelle was then reopened to the public for the remainder of the afternoon.”
LaVelle Creek is a 1984 Riblet double. The incident is the latest in a string of unfortunate mishaps involing Riblet lifts at Snowbowl. In March of 2023, a Riblet chair hit a tower and broke apart on the TV Mountain lift, causing a child to fall. The Forest Service sent a notice of noncompliance to the resort, preventing the lift from operating until it was repaired for the following season. Prior to that incident, the Grizzly lift was rope evacuated due to a power outage in February 2021. Another chair fell from the LaVelle lift in January 2020, requiring a rope evacuation.
Snowbowl plans to close midweek this week and reopen on Friday, December 20th.
Update: Montana Snowbowl issued a second statement on Monday clarifying why the chair detached from the haul rope: “Yesterday, an empty chair collided with a lift operator, causing it to swing abnormally and subsequently become dislodged. This was a highly unusual and isolated incident. No one was injured, and the lift was thoroughly inspected and confirmed safe before resuming operations later that day.”
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Maybe Snowbowl will do the responsible thing and replace their lifts soon. 49 replaced Bonanza after a similar chair detachment and the new lift is great.
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Umm … Or maintain your equipment? 49 also has an older riblet (Chair 4) in fantastic operating condition (not including paint 😂). Mt.spokane also has much older riblets in perfect condition (they only installed a skytrac because the state wouldn’t let them install a riblet as a “new install”). Riblets are solid if cared for. When not, sketchiness is the result (Think chair 4 at silver).
Side note, Bonanza was NOT a riblet. It was an SLI lift with modified/adapted riblet clips… so definitely not “factory”… I’d say it was mainly replaced because it was a double, long, and SLOW AF. The base area could get a little backed up on a busy day.
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This is what happens when these ski ⛷️ resorts keep using Old Dangerous Out of date Chairlifts. Riblet Company is out of business. I say go new or ☝️Go Out Of Business. You are gambling with your guests lives.
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Paul, you have no idea what you are talking about. Please refrain from commenting on this site.
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Riblet chairlifts of this era (and ANY era) are perfectly safe, there are plenty of Riblets of this vintage still operating without issue.
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Read my response to another completely out of touch dude above. Riblets are solid, especially when maintained. Just at local resorts, riblets are still spinning at 49, Spo, Silver, Lookout… And then Summit at Snoqualmie, Stevens, Baker, White pass…
You get my point … Shut up!
(Mt.Spokane has a riblet with tapered towers dating back to the 50s, it’s an absolutely beautiful machine. They tried to keep the mountain all riblets but the state said NO… Many local were very sad).
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Also, “Riblet” may be out of business, but in name only. Find their old address and look at what operates at that location today. Tramway Support… I wonder what they do? 🤯
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riblets only went out of business because they didn’t develop a high-speed chair. There’s a reason they were the industry leader for 50+ years
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every chair lift old or new requires the same maintenance. Every year 20% of carriers are removed from the line including the grip or clip to be cleaned and NDT tested and reassembled. NDT testing is critical to find cracks so something like a carrier snapping in half would NEVER happen.
I hope the resort is properly staffing and funding they’re lift maintenance department. If maintained properly Riblett chair lifts are very safe. Only incidence I have heard of a clip detaching from the hail rope has been due to wind ripping the chair up and over the rope. In that kind of wind a chair would not be open to public
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Will be interested in reading the incident report.
Contrary to the peanut gallery, this isn’t inherently indicative of a broader problem, but it is concerning if it means they aren’t doing required non-destructive testing per ANSI. The fact that this isn’t their first (or second!) case will have USFS asking questions.
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There are many smaller ski areas that are using older lifts, most of them without issue. I for 1 am grateful for these hills as they are still affordable to the average American. Not everyone can fork out $200-$300 bucks for a lift ticket. I have skied over 135 ski areas, and now days I prefer the small ones for the rates, the lack of crowds and the experience. Big ski areas have had incidents as well with their fancy new lifts. Incidents happen.
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lol yah at Snowbowl you can pay 80 bucks for a day pass or 800 for a full pass and you can ride on a 40 year old peice of crap chair. What a bargain. Snowbowl can keep it. the owners suck. Everything on that mountain is a hazard and it is very expensive to ski there.
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laugh all you want, let’s see you operate a ski hill in this day and age including maintain, pay the staff their proper wages, and all else that goes into running a mountain and hope to make a profit afterwards. You won’t be so quick to laugh and judge then.
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id like to know what broke/failed. Was a screw stripped, and the nut eventually worked it’s way off? Or are these the grips that are intertwined in the haul rope? Did the duckbill portion fail or crack? Did a different weld crack or fail?
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A skier who wasn’t very familiar with how the chairs operate went in on the employee only side of the fence, went behind the bull wheel and in the path of incoming chairs. The lift operator pushed him out of the way and was struck by the chair, which caused the chair to swing, strike the first tower, pendulum it’s way to the outside and be completely horizontal and pop from the line.
This skier had been a problem earlier in the day and had already been talked to by ski patrol.
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Thanks for the account. This video from Bogus Basin shows how a Riblet clip can be ejected given certain forces (lift was being removed and may have been under less than normal tension).
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development country with nuclear weapons and Internet access. The rest especially Skilift infrastructure has not been seen in Europe for 30 years. With 10 times better equipment 1/5. Of us ski passes , incl. Apre ski and restaurants which offer more than nachos and greasy fat burger junk food.
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Can you rewrite that in a way that I can actually understand what you are trying to say? I think you’re trying to say, “america bad, europe good” but failing.
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There are mountains in America with very modern detachable equipment, and there are smaller local mountains in Europe with older lifts. It’s not black and white.
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you are all debating the chair but if you ski at Snowbowl you know it’s Snowbowl! They don’t take care of the mountain and if we are lucky the forest service will shut them down so someone can buy the mountain who cares about the town, their patrons and the mountain in general. It’s such a waste for all of us to have to travel to ski when we have a mountain in town, but it’s so expensive and poorly run we are forced to boycott
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Second statement from Snowbowl: “Yesterday, an empty chair collided with a lift operator, causing it to swing abnormally and subsequently become dislodged. This was a highly unusual and isolated incident. No one was injured, and the lift was thoroughly inspected and confirmed safe before resuming operations later that day.”
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Riblet lifts, particularly those designed and built in the 60’s and 70’s, are quite inferior to fixed grip lifts more recently built by Doppelmayr and LPOA/Skytrac. The insert clip design is not used by any other lift manufacturer for a reason and it’s not because of a patent. Almost all of these lifts would be replaced by their owners if they could afford to do so. The nostalgia for these lifts baffles me but I suppose it is similar to some people’s feelings toward old cars. Replacement of these lifts should be encouraged and applauded. Relocations of used Riblet lifts, which requires they be redesigned to meet the current Ropeway Standard as new lifts, should be banned in the US.
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This. The only reason regulations haven’t been passed to outlaw Riblets is that, like many other industries in the US, the ski industry effectively regulates itself and outlawing Riblets would likely be a death blow for an overwhelming majority of the smaller resorts that still operate them.
The above comments make it clear how effectively the US ski industry has obscured the short comings of this aging equipment from the public.
As illustrated by Peter’s animation above, Riblet carriers can be dislodged by hand and damage the haul rope in the process. Need anyone really say more?
And this is from someone who grew up riding Riblets, loves the vibe of the smaller local resorts that still operate them, and is sickened by the soulless nature of the larger corporate areas.
However, part of growing up is learning to acknowledge truths that we’d rather not see. I’ve grown up; now it’s time for the ski industry to grow up too.
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An addendum to the ‘they can be dislodged by hand’ statement: yes- but only if the lift has been detensioned. Under normal rope load, it takes a decent amount of force applied at the right angle to make this happen. I’m not saying it can’t- clearly it can and has, but circumstances out of the ordinary must be present.
I’ll paraphrase what a fellow mechanic said regarding this incident: Riblets are inherently safe, IF well-maintained and operated properly. They are a product of an older engineering mindset and are definitely out-of-date, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they need blanket replacement.
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Agree, and anybody that’s been around Riblet lifts for any length of time knows that this is NOT an uncommon occurrence at a loading station. This happens mostly in a misload situation.
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One of the biggest issues with the old center poles is they are becoming more of a rarity to guests. These lifts used to be the norm for everyone to learn to load. Now everyone is getting so used to the ease of loading on the detachable, and loading carpets, you throw an old fast paced swinging double into the mix for a inexperienced guest and/or operator it can be a disaster waiting to happen. Many of the later 80s and 90s bail style Riblet chairs have very little issues.
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I remember speaking to a person who installed chair lifts while riding a lift at another hill in the area. The bowl had tried to hire him to install the “newest” lift and offered to pay him a bare minimum wage and a season pass. lol.
he elects to not ski there.
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