A tower component failed on The Gondola at Winter Park Resort today, leading to a five hour rope evacuation. Photos show a rocker arm that connects two sections of a 16 sheave assembly cracked nearly in half. The affected assembly is located on tower 1 and holds the haul rope down on the heavy side of the lift, adjacent to the bottom terminal. A total of 174 guests were roped down by ski patrol, concluding at 6:00 pm. “At 12:15pm on December 21, 2024, the Gondola had a mechanical issue and immediately shut down as the system is designed to do so for guest safety,” said Winter Park in a statement. “At this time the Gondola is closed for repair and further inspection. All guests were safely evacuated thanks to our Patrol team.”
Leitner-Poma constructed The Gondola in 2018, providing a high capacity link between the Village at Winter Park and Sunspot. The lift is a workhorse, operating both day and night throughout the year. Each of the system’s 75 cabins can carry up to 10 passengers.
“A replacement part and crane have arrived, and repairs are underway,” Winter Park said on 12/22. “Once the repair is complete, the Colorado Tramway Safety Board will complete a thorough inspection process. Once we have approval from the Tram Board we will be able to re-open the Gondola. We do not currently have a timeframe for when that will be but are working to complete the repair and inspection as soon as possible while prioritizing the safety and wellbeing of our guests.” Both Arrow and Gemini also provide access out of the Village.
Lift Blog 
The most shocking thing about this incident is the fact that it didn’t happen in Quebec.
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Ironically, Quebec and quality control share the same abbreviation, QC.
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yikes. How many new pomas are there that might have these QC issues… in areas that matter more than a rocker arm.
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We don’t know if it’s a QC issue. We- industry types OR general public- who don’t work there don’t know anything yet. I would hesitate to speculate on a cause at this point.
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yeah, definitely. I just assumed it had to be QC since it was such an alarming and unusual failure.
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question…. Why are you talking about Québec? Is this part come from here?QC
merci :)
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@Marc
En anglais, QC, du moins parmi les nerds de l’ingénierie, signifie généralement contrôle qualité. (Désolé si mon français n’est pas à la hauteur, j’ai utilisé Google Translate)
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always look at everything while doing line work
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Never seen this happen.Metal Fatigue? .
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I hate to speculate, but I’d guess either that or sabotage, although sabotage would be unlikely being so close to the base area like that. Someone would’ve seen or heard something. Looking at the before picture, there doesn’t seem to be a weld there, and there is no rust. I’m surprised it is such a clean break, although I don’t have any personal experience with galvanized. I would think if it was a bad batch of metal that it would’ve failed at the weld next to it. Definitely unusual.
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Based on the picture the break looks like brittle failure through ~60% of the beam, then a ductile tearing for a few inches beyond the brittle section. That sheave rocker arm on tower one is under a massive amount of stress from the tension in the haul rope.
I spoke to a lift operator who was working a a different lift at WP today and he said that one of the theories being kicked around is that the haul rope was over-tensioned for the conditions (full ridership, 10 ppl in every cabin) and it simply over-stressed the beam.
Given the visible failure modes of the steel and the position of the fracture, the excessive-tension explanation seems plausible. Real bummer for WP and everyone who was planning to be here for the holidays, the odds of this part getting replaced before Christmas are low.
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Based on the image, the metal failed from stress or fatigue. Knowing the exact location on the lift, the *very heavy* cabins are immediately coming out of the terminal and quickly ascending. There is a lot of tension on that beam. This lift runs year-round too for long periods of time. This isn’t a quality issue from the manufacture. It’s unclear how long the Gondola will be down for (hopefully not too long because I’m skiing there next week lol). It’s also unclear if lift mechanics will be able to weld this temporarily until they get a replacement fabricated from LPA in Grand Junction.
Opinion: The media is using the word “malfunction” for this incident, which isn’t fair. The lift systems did what its designed to do and stopped the lift before the beam snapped completely, injuring guests and causing more damage.
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How on earth could you possibly rule out manufacturing defect just by looking at one picture? To me there are only two possibilities: The engineering was wrong (they miscalculated the stress loads) or the part was improperly manufactured (either mis-assembled or they used low-quality metal.) The latter seems FAR more likely than engineers screwing up this badly, because it would mean the shutdown of every other gondola Poma has installed.
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The beam that failed is in a very high stress location. There is a lot of vibrations and a heavy load in the beam due to the rapid ascent. It’s a fairly clean cut at the bottom of the beam but suddenly gets very jagged. I’m not 100% ruling out an MD, but it looks like a stress or fatigue related issue, given this lift is fairly young, only 6 years old.
TBF, I’m just a dumb spectator who has some autistic interest in heavy machinery and equipment.
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If this beam had broken all the way through what would have happened?
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Basically nothing would be different. The crack is so deep that the beam has essentially zero resistance to bending stress compared to before since its moment of inertia is so low now. You can notice that it is a brittle crack before it turns into a ductile tear about 60% through the beam. This is due to the bottom half normally being under tension stress while the top half is under compression stress, and when the brittle crack formed, that section that had the ductile tear suddenly went from under compression to under stress since the centroid was suddenly moved upwards, causing the different tear. The reason why the tear did not go through all the way is because it appears something was in the way preventing the beam from bending any further.
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so what I know of this is that not all parts are new to this operation. They used old parts from the past lift which was a 4 seater chair. But a lot of unclear situations that may never be fully understood. So from what I know it’s simple fatigue as that part would be upwards of 20 years old and should have never been considered for the new gondola operation.
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All parts were new and none were reused from the previous lift.
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I don’t know where you got that information, but this lift was all new. The previous lift was a (relatively) lightweight quad. Nothing from that lift would have worked on a gondola this size. The previous lift didn’t even *have* a 16C assembly. It had a 12C with a completely different design.
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Here’s what the predecessor lift had:
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That sucks. Right before Christmas week too. I learned to ski at Winter Park. Great mountain.
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Winter Park has an awesome mech crew and I guarantee LP is going to be all in on helping them get this resolved ASAP. don’t be surprised if this is back up and running before Christmas. (my opinion of course)
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LPA was on sight this afternoon, and supposedly a part has already been shipped from grand junction.
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This beam will get replaced rather quickly, but what about inspecting all the other towers? Will just a visual inspection satisfy requirements? Will the state regulators have to sign off before the lift can carry passengers again?
This is a fairly young lift for this kind of incident, and I’m sure a lot of lift mechanics are taking a really close look at these beams on all their lifts, LPA or otherwise.
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I honestly can’t give you an answer. I work at winter park in the lift department but not in lift maintenance, so we don’t get as much information. I do know a part was shipped earlier today, and that technicians from LPA and members from CPTSB arrived in the late afternoon.
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Not really young. It does get used heavily year round. Night and day.
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The combination of Texans and Snowboarders was too much for the beam to support.
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Because this happened in Colorado, where a competent Professional Engineer is now in charge of the agency (CPTSB) that regulates ski lifts, it is likely that a thorough investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the incident. That investigation should eventually result in a report that can seen by the public. Unfortunately, many States don’t have this level of oversight or openness for the public.
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Why can’t other departments function that efficiently? CDOT fired their engineer in charge of the department and replaced him with a political hire who has a masters in art history. No wonder we can never get potholes fixed in a timely fashion.
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I think mom and dad bought her the job.
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Interesting that the crack / fracture in the rocker tube is inline with the weld that holds the ridged conduit for the de-ropement wire. Sometimes the smallest heat affected zone from a weld can crack at a stressed location. I would guess there is between 13,000 to 16,000 pounds of up force on that 16 sheave assembly. The type of crack / fracture is somewhat hard to see in the picture.
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We noticed that as well. We have an identical tower, built the same year; I believe the load on the tower engineering sheet says 12k.
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Though a service bulletin has yet to be released, we were instructed by a Poma representative to look at all of our rocker arms, focusing on where the conduit is welded to the arm. Sounds like the initial assessment suggests that’s where the problem was
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Thanks’ for the valuable information. That conduit weld area certainly looked suspect??
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If I guess the dimensions and properties of the material used in the beam close enough (ultimate stress 1gpa, 250x200mm 8mm thickness 4.5m long) it should be able to handle about 50k pounds of force before failing. The type of crack is a brittle fracture until near the beams centroid, where it turns into a ductile tear
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Could have been a frozen secondary axle not allowing the even progression of movement throughout the hold down.
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As of this morning, a crane is on sight and a new rocker bar was shipped overnight from Grand Junction that is currently sitting at the base.
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When i first heard about this i thought it would be a while before they might get in up and running again, good on them for getting on it.
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Glad to see them getting on this ASAP
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Yes, its great to see. It should be opening tomorrow around noon. Incredible effort from winter park lift maintenance, Leitner Poma and the tramway board.
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Are you sure? WP lift & resort updates blog is saying the Gondola is not scheduled to run today…
https://blog.winterparkresort.com/lift-updates/
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Sadly things do happen to technology filled devices, Poma is very good at building complicated machinery with many QC steps involved. Looking at the break it did not happen at a weld so that’s a very big pass, no one was injured that’s a very big pass. I personally have ridden that lift up and back several times and even looked at the electronics used to drive and control it and it’s a very impressive package. The ride provider, builders, installers, cable splicers and start up technicians along with all the technology workers and supervisors are world class and I will continue to support them in this industry. Our company provides control upgrades to Winter Park and many other resorts, I would also like to say the Colorado State Tramway Board inspectors are some of the best in the world.
”Lift Maintenance, so even Ski Patrol has someone to look up to.”
Bill Taylor, principal
Verdad Group Llc
Control Systems Engineers
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https://x.com/liftblog/status/1870940238220079358
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As of 4PM today, the new rocker has been installed with sheaves on it, and the crane has left the base area.
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This sounds like a nightmare! Good thing no one was hurt.
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Cheap imported steel (metal)?
Maybe Leitner Poma has grown too quickly lately. Hopefully we don’t see anymore of this in the near future.
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Anyone who wants to make assumptions or accusations at this point as to to it being poor quality control or poor craftsmanship or poor quality of metal or whatever, please stop. Just stop. Grow up and mature a little. Just stop and shut up. Wait for the investigation.
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Unfortunately as the popularity of this site has grown, its seeing a lot more low-quality reddit-like $%@-posting.
There are are a lot of industry professionals who lurk and post here and actually make knowledgeable contributions.
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Can confirm the Gondola will reopen today!! Amazing work! https://blog.winterparkresort.com/gondola-updates/
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The Gondola has now reopened!! Thank you lift mechanics, CPTSB & Leitner-Poma for a speedy repair!!
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Not to mention the Colorado Tram Board for getting this inspected in time for the big holiday week.
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