News

Replacing a Crossarm in the Middle of Winter

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Big White is a ski resort that lives up to its name.  Like many of its counterparts in British Columbia, the upper mountain gets pummeled by Pacific storms leaving trees and lifts looking like “snow ghosts” all winter.  On January 27th, Doppelmayr issued a service bulletin due to cracks found on the crossarms of depression towers of lifts in California, Colorado and New Hampshire.  Big White crews found damage to tower 14 of the Gem Lake Express and took the lift out of service on January 28th.

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A storm coats the Gem Lake Express in feet of rime January 27, 2016.  Photo credit: Michael Ballingall

More than 8,000 feet long and rising 2,300 feet, Gem Lake accesses a huge portion of Big White’s terrain.  The detachable quad lift was built by Doppelmayr in 1996 and has 24 towers.  Tower 14 sits about two thirds of the way up the line at 5,914 feet in elevation. Gem Lake has a parking rail for some of its 128 chairs at the bottom terminal but not for the entire line.

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Mountain operations folks making it happen.  Here, the Big White grooming team hauls a forklift to the site of the damaged tower.  Photo credit: Michael Ballingall

After the cracks on tower 14 were discovered, Doppelmayr fabricated a new crossarm in St. Jerome and shipped it from Quebec early last week.  Of course, the 20-foot long, 2.5 ton part got stuck in a winter storm of its own and ended up taking 119 hours to cross Canada. Meanwhile, Big White maintenance staff rigged the haul rope and removed the broken crossarm.

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Ski Bromont Lift Heavily Damaged in Overnight Fire

Peter Landsman2 Comments
Photo credit: Bromont Fire Department
Photo credit: Bromont Fire Department

The return station of a detachable quad burned last night at Ski Bromont in Quebec.  The 2003 Doppelmayr CTEC lift is called Versant du Lac or Lift 5.  More pictures of it can be found here.  This is the third such terminal fire in Eastern Canada in as many years.  The drive terminals of high speed quads at Mont Tremblant and Marble Mountain burned in 2014 and were subsequently repaired.  The good news for Bromont is the Uni-G terminal model is still in production so it shouldn’t be too hard to get a new one this spring.  Doppelmayr’s St. Jerome factory is less than two hours away.

Photo credit: CBC News
Photo credit: CBC News

https://twitter.com/mjohnst2/status/695067146490109956

https://twitter.com/Ski_Bromont/status/695071624958210048

Steamboat to Build High Speed Quad at Elkhead

Peter Landsman2 Comments
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Elkhead serves an important trail pod at Steamboat near the summit of the Silver Bullet Gondola.

Intrawest announced in its second quarter earnings call today that Steamboat will get its 8th detachable lift this summer, a high speed quad replacing the Elkhead chair.  The new lift will better serve beginner and low-intermediate skiers.  Intrawest CEO Tom Marano noted, “Elkhead services a high-volume area of the mountain and facilitates lunchtime and end-of-day egress from the popular beginner and intermediate terrain pods on the south side of the mountain.  The increased speed and capacity of this new lift will substantially improve the guest experience at Steamboat.”

Elkhead is a Yan fixed-grip quad built in 1984 with newer Doppelmayr line equipment.  At just under 2,500 feet, the current 5.8 minute lift ride will be cut to just 2.5 minutes with a detachable quad.  The existing chair rises 707 vertical feet at 425 feet/minute.  No word yet on which manufacturer will build the Elkhead Express but Leitner-Poma built the Christie Peak Express for Steamboat in 2007 and the Wildhorse Gondola in 2009.  This is the second major lift announcement from Colorado in recent weeks; Vail announced in December it’s replacing Chair 17 with a detachable quad this summer.  With stellar snow across the west, it might be a busy one for lift manufacturers.

News Roundup: Fansipan Legend Opens

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  • Contract awarded for India’s first urban gondola, to cost $24 million and open within two years.
  • Just a week after sanctions on Iran were lifted, Bartholet announces it’s building a gondola system on the resort island of Kish.  A definite upgrade from the salvaged Yan detachable installed last year in Isfahan (if you’re wondering, it made the journey from Silver Star, BC.)

News Roundup: Penkenbahn

Peter LandsmanLeave a comment
  • After several high-profile incidents, a good reminder from the NSAA that 86 percent of falls from chairlifts can be attributed to rider error.
  • Lots of questions surround last week’s skier-pushes-snowboarder-off-lift story from Aspen Highlands.  Police say even without an arrest made, the public is not in any danger.
  • Bravo to Bristol Mountain for actually pressing charges against a freeloading teen for theft of services.
  • Only at a tiny mountain in Maine would volunteer ski patrollers derail a double chair they are also responsible for inspecting.
  • An Austrian man is in a coma after the harness he was wearing around his neck became entangled with a platter lift carrier.  At least one lift operator may not have been at his or her assigned post.
  • Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe is for sale.
  • Fun Spot America near Orlando looks to add a gondola ride (thanks Jay T. for the tip.)
  • Dignitaries break ground at Laurel Mountain in preparation for a November re-opening.
  • A mix of public and private groups including Georgetown University are about to spend $250k to study a gondola linking Rosslyn, Virginia with Georgetown (one of Washington, D.C.’s highest-profile neighborhoods without a metro station.)
  • The Balsams Wilderness won’t re-open in 2016 after all.  A revised timeline has three new and two existing lifts spinning in late 2017.
  • This is our 200th post!

LST Ropeways to Launch Detachable Product This Year

Peter Landsman5 Comments
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The MND Group announced yesterday it will begin selling detachable chairlifts and gondolas from 2016 through its LST Ropeways subsidiary, becoming the first new entrant to the detachable lift market since CTEC in 1990.  Based in France, LST has built more than 550 lifts to date including a handful of detachable chairlifts utilizing grips from the defunct German company Wopfner.  Yesterday’s announcement outlines LST’s all-new detachable product for both mountain and urban applications.  The combined market, estimated by MND at $865 million over the next 25 years, has been a duopoly since Leitner and Poma joined in 2002.  Hence new competition is big news.

LST Grip
LST’s double-position detachable grip.

LST has spent more than $2.7 million to develop detachable technology that doesn’t require licensing from others.  The most important component of any detachable lift is the grip; LST chose a double-position grip that opens and closes only once at each terminal, reducing the number of cycles by half compared with a single-position grip (keep in mind a grip that stays open through terminals presents its own challenges.)  LST says its patented grip requires less force to open and close than competing models, reducing wear while allowing speeds of up to 6 m/s (1,181 ft/min) and requiring 15 percent less energy.  LST detachable terminals will be 70 feet long with 75 percent fewer tires compared with competing terminals.  While LST says its stations will be shorter than its competitors’, I believe the shortest LPA terminal is ~67 feet.  LST’s all-new carriers (both chairs and gondolas) “designed for comfort and safety” are forthcoming.

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News Roundup: Ice Heist

Peter Landsman1 Comment
  • Luckily Manning Park Resort was in on letting pro mountain bikers pretend to break into and operate one of their lifts.
  • When chairs can’t spin because there’s no one to staff them.
  • BMF opens its sightseeing aerial tramway in Puebla.  Its 35-passenger cabins were manufactured in Austria by Carvatech.
  • 12 year-old boy falls out of a chair at Wachusett, avoids serious injury.
  • Snowboarder accuses skier of shoving him off Aspen Highlands’ Loge Peak lift mid-ride in a story that goes viral.  Just one day later, the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office thinks they’ve identified a suspect.
  • Doppelmayr is building an 8-passenger gondola this spring at the Oakland Zoo to serve a $62 million expansion called California Trail.  The lift will have 7 towers, 15 cabins and open in late 2017.  The zoo will continue to operate its Safari Sky Ride triple chair that was built by SkyTrans.
  • DCC (Doppelmayr Cable Car) wins a $24 million contract to build its 10th cable-propelled automated people mover in underground tunnels at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

Vail Resorts Acquires Wilmot Mountain

Peter Landsman1 Comment

trailmapToday, Vail Resorts announced its acquisition of Wilmot Mountain near Chicago, adding to the company’s portfolio of regional resorts in the Midwest.  Vail bought Mt. Brighton near Detroit and Afton Alps near Minnesota’s Twin Cities back in 2012.  The addition of Wilmot brings Vail up to twelve resorts in Colorado, California, Michigan, Nevada, Utah and Australia. The company will announce specific improvements in March, but today’s release mentions bringing state-of-the-art lifts to Wilmot Mountain.  The ski area currently operates eight chairlifts – four doubles, three triples and a quad – built by Riblet, Hall and Borvig in the 1960s and 70s.  This is Vail Resorts’ fifth new ski area in three years and it will be interesting to see where they go next.

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News Roundup: Now That’s a Model

Peter Landsman6 Comments
  • Snowbasin will test solar-powered USB charging bars in five of its gondola cabins in partnership with Goal Zero.
  • Mt. Waterman in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Mountains reopens this weekend with 3 Riblet doubles operating for the first time in five years.  The mountain will honor all tickets and passes sold since 2011!
  • Two years after his 6-year old daughter fell from a chair, a New Jersey man sues Campgaw Mountain and the town/county it’s located in for “careless and reckless” operation of a ski lift.
  • Sugarloaf just can’t catch a break.  A power failure shut down most of its lifts for hours on their first Saturday with snow.
  • Did you know Doppelmayr operates a zoo with more than 400 animals at its headquarters in Wolfurt?
  • Speaking of Doppelmayr, their interactive installation map now displays 24 world record-breaking ropeways (click the red button on the bottom left.)
  • Somebody had to do it.  Spirit Mountain, Minnesota becomes the first to offer lift-served, downhill fat biking starting Sunday.
  • Whistler Village Gondola cabin #84 returns to its roots in the Alps as The Coffee Gondola.
  • What appears to be a Doppelmayr quad chair rolls back in China, screaming ensues.