Leitner-Poma won the bidding to replace both lifts out of Copper’s Center Village in 2018.American Eagle is a combination six place chairlift and eight place gondola.Long LPA terminal with three masts.Lift overview.Operator house at the return.Gondola loading zone.View back down the lift line.Arriving at the drive terminal.There is a small cabin/chair maintenance building.Gondolas unload on the downhill side of the top terminal.This was the very first in North America with a direct drive. Three others opened within a few weeks.Side view of the top terminal.Upper terminal seen from below.Towers 19 and 20 with Storm King visible in the background.View up the lift line.Lower part of the lift.Another view up the long lift line.The bottom terminal in the village.Gondola maze area.Towers 1 and 2.A Sigma Diamond cabin.A cabin nears the lower station.Riding up the line.Upper station overview.Huge generator for backup electricity.Wooden under skin.Tower 19 and both carrier styles.View down the line.Middle section of the lift.Lower lift line view.Looking uphill at tower 10.There are special rollers on the inside of the cabins to keep them level in the chair load/unload zones.Combo assemblies on tower 8.Another view up the lift.Tower 6.There are four chairs for every one cabin.Lower terminal seen from above.Because the gondola section runs slower than the rest of the terminal, chairs appear to stack up.Ski racks on a cabin.View from the drive terminal.The upper station seen from above.Another view of the drive station.Tower 12.Side view of the return with its sister lift in the background.The lift line seen from I-70.
There are four fewer towers on the chondola than there were on the high speed quad, 20 towers instead of 24. And yeah, that line sag is pretty large since tower 8 on the quad was about halfway between the current chondola’s towers 7 and 8:
You also see this with the final climb, as the span between towers 14 and 15 covers what was originally handled by two combi towers, towers 17 and 18:
I’ve noticed a ton of sag in every large L-P detachable lift I’ve ridden that was built in the last 8ish years. I’ve never seen a Doppelmayr detachable (ever) with that much sag. I’ve seen long spans on Doppelmayrs, but never that much sag. All of L-P’s bubble chairs in the east have the same sag as AMEagle, and I don’t think it’s just stretch in the haul rope because all 3 of them have been like that since they opened.
it doesn’t have anywhere near as much as Sunburst, Bluebird, Snowdon, Eagle, and Flyer. Every comparable lift build by Doppelmayr has considerably less sag.
American Flyer had a rather large amount of sag in some parts of the lift line for the first year due to the weight of the bubble chairs. Two points were so problematic that they added infill towers this year between towers 16 and 17, and between towers 22 and 23.
Both times I’ve been to copper with this lift built, it went down for mechanical issues. The problem is is backs up the flyer real badly. It was pretty bad last time because it was a super busy ikon base pass blackout date(copper is one of the few places in Colorado that doesn’t have blackout dates). The bright side of that is I got the Excellerator lift to myself!
Copper’s Master Plan from 2011 called for an infill lift that would allow someone to get from American Flyer and points west to Solitude Station without using American Eagle, bypassing the Center Village.
One thing I forgot to mention is that American Eagle has some issues on the 6 chairside. The lift operators make people load 3 chairs instead of 4 because there is a problem with the sensor.
Btw the Inline loading for Flyer kind of helped, but it still stops a lot though. They left the bubbles outside on the line and they had frost all over them.
I saw some bad stuff happen at the base of the flyer. A kid getting launched off the thing right when he got on somehow. A ski patrol getting hit by a chair trying to get across to the other side and getting pinned to the ground, and just beginners not knowing how to ski and falling.
So are there 120 chairs and cabins overall on the lift. How many of those are cabins?
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24… one cabin for every 4 chairs
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There was one thing I noticed when I rode American eagle is the line sag between tower 7 & 8. Is the sag suppose to be normal or not?
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There are four fewer towers on the chondola than there were on the high speed quad, 20 towers instead of 24. And yeah, that line sag is pretty large since tower 8 on the quad was about halfway between the current chondola’s towers 7 and 8:
You also see this with the final climb, as the span between towers 14 and 15 covers what was originally handled by two combi towers, towers 17 and 18:
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I’ve noticed a ton of sag in every large L-P detachable lift I’ve ridden that was built in the last 8ish years. I’ve never seen a Doppelmayr detachable (ever) with that much sag. I’ve seen long spans on Doppelmayrs, but never that much sag. All of L-P’s bubble chairs in the east have the same sag as AMEagle, and I don’t think it’s just stretch in the haul rope because all 3 of them have been like that since they opened.
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Ramcharger 8 has a decent amount of sag
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it doesn’t have anywhere near as much as Sunburst, Bluebird, Snowdon, Eagle, and Flyer. Every comparable lift build by Doppelmayr has considerably less sag.
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American Flyer had a rather large amount of sag in some parts of the lift line for the first year due to the weight of the bubble chairs. Two points were so problematic that they added infill towers this year between towers 16 and 17, and between towers 22 and 23.
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The Eagle’s profile is such that it doesn’t really need the extra towers. 8 on the old lift in particular was fairly neutral.
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Both times I’ve been to copper with this lift built, it went down for mechanical issues. The problem is is backs up the flyer real badly. It was pretty bad last time because it was a super busy ikon base pass blackout date(copper is one of the few places in Colorado that doesn’t have blackout dates). The bright side of that is I got the Excellerator lift to myself!
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And not to mention even with inline loading, the flyer still stops a lot.
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Copper’s Master Plan from 2011 called for an infill lift that would allow someone to get from American Flyer and points west to Solitude Station without using American Eagle, bypassing the Center Village.
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One thing I forgot to mention is that American Eagle has some issues on the 6 chairside. The lift operators make people load 3 chairs instead of 4 because there is a problem with the sensor.
Btw the Inline loading for Flyer kind of helped, but it still stops a lot though. They left the bubbles outside on the line and they had frost all over them.
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I saw some bad stuff happen at the base of the flyer. A kid getting launched off the thing right when he got on somehow. A ski patrol getting hit by a chair trying to get across to the other side and getting pinned to the ground, and just beginners not knowing how to ski and falling.
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I assume a lot of those things are things that are more attributable to human error than to the lift itself.
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