This lift replaced a rope tow for the 2023-24 ski season.Partek built two lifts in 2023, one at Trollhaugen and the other at Mt. Southington, Connecticut.Unloading area.Side view of the top terminal.View down from the summit.Upper station with concrete retaining wall.Tower 2.Tower 1.Drive station with hydraulic tensioning.View up the short lift line.Partek quad chair.Upper station overview.View down at tower 3.Tower 2.Loading area.
I really hope partek is able to catch on as an at least somewhat major player in the US lift industry after skytrac got bought out by LPOA. I recall seeing a comment somewhere about how YAN lifts where very popular because they where cheap, and thats how mountains like schwitzer and killington could afford massive expansions, and in Killington’s case, many of which did not really make sense. Maybe partek could become like the YAN of the 21st century?
“The biggest thing Yan did was drive down the price of chairlifts, as they were quite often the cheapest option and forced the rest of the market to compete. To compare relatively similar detachable quads, Yan charged Sunday River $1.5 million to build Barker in 1987 (about $3.5 million today with inflation). In the past couple of years, Doppelmayr has charged Stratton and Saddleback about $7 million each to build Snow Bowl Express and Rangeley, respectively. These prices are what enabled mountains like Sunday River to afford massive expansions in the late 80s/early 90s and Sun Valley to afford seven high-speed quads in seven years. These days, Doppelmayr and LPA can offer only premium features with high margins due to the lack of low-end competition in the detachable market.”
-SkitheEast
I don’t mean to directly attack you, Bluebottlenose, but your comment posting about the cost of YAN chairlifts leaves out lots of truths and details that would completely change how your posting would be interpreted if the posting had more information. Like: two people died and ten people were injured, some of them severely, in the December 23, 1995 Whistler Quicksilver chair accident because YAN built detach chairlifts that failed to meet national safety codes, and government agencies looked the other way while operators kept them running. Whistler’s Quicksilver chair just happened to push the limits on the capabilities of YAN detachable technology so severely, that Quicksilver was the first one of 31 YAN detach quads built, to fail, Others, given time would be most certainly have failed too. As a result of buying YAN detachables, and needing to retrofit them six years later, Whistler went bankrupt and was bought by the owners of Blackcomb. In hindsight, where WB is now, maybe that was not a bad thing (the combo of Whistler and Blackcomb, not the accident) , but it hastened a process. Silverstar BC another buyer of two YAN detachables, almost went bankrupt, and many other operators came close.
This is what the manager of Whistler lift maintenance said about his YAN detachables at the end of their first operating season: Whistler had become the “unwitting recipients of a research and development project”
I remember riding the Whistler Quicksilver quad, in March 1995, the season before the accident. Scary as hell. Shame. My two cents.
Yea, and they also built those problematic aluminum sheaves. If Janek Kunczynski had listened to his engineers more, and took some more time to develop his detachable terminals, those tragedies would not have happened, and yan would probably be the dominant lift manufacturer in NA. I really wish we could have gotten to see that, but yan made some fatal mistakes starting in the 1980’s an their downfall was deserved.
He is right but he seems to understate the pure insanity that is Janek Kunczynski. He seemed to come up with conceptually good ideas and not flesh them out fully. His partner who ended up designing the replacement grips for the detachable which were used in the interim period. From what I read he actually seemed to care about taking time to fully flesh out the ideas. The hastiness of Janek killed the reputation and they were never able to recover, I do imagine if YAN had fleshed out their designs they would be a dominant manufacture today. Their lifts were designs which were advanced enough to have been released 5 years later and still been competitive. Even if their lifts were released in the early 90s they still had the advantage of low cost and simplicity. The ONLY thing holding them back was Janek himself.
Also the name of Janeks engineering partner was Les Okreglak. It should also be noted that FURTHER proof that it was Janek himself is that after Yan died he modifed the Angels Flight funicular in LA and that thing ALSO experienced catastrophic failures, this time even sooner. Guess who was working to engineer this on their own…. Janek
It is also interesting to note that Janek married the daughter of Alex Cushing (another “interesting character”) the founder of Squaw Valley, now Palisades at Tahoe. Notice that they were their first customer yet their partnership seems to have lasted up until the construction of the Gold Coast gondola “1983-1984 ish”. From what I read that absolute disaster essentially soured Cushing to Janek and they never partnered again after that. Its unsurprising but considering Cushings gung ho attitude towards lift safety I imagine that was a pretty big disaster on Janeks part and probably created some strange family dynamics. (all of this came from the book “Tale of Two Valleys”
Lift Blog 
I really hope partek is able to catch on as an at least somewhat major player in the US lift industry after skytrac got bought out by LPOA. I recall seeing a comment somewhere about how YAN lifts where very popular because they where cheap, and thats how mountains like schwitzer and killington could afford massive expansions, and in Killington’s case, many of which did not really make sense. Maybe partek could become like the YAN of the 21st century?
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heres that comment i was talking about-
“The biggest thing Yan did was drive down the price of chairlifts, as they were quite often the cheapest option and forced the rest of the market to compete. To compare relatively similar detachable quads, Yan charged Sunday River $1.5 million to build Barker in 1987 (about $3.5 million today with inflation). In the past couple of years, Doppelmayr has charged Stratton and Saddleback about $7 million each to build Snow Bowl Express and Rangeley, respectively. These prices are what enabled mountains like Sunday River to afford massive expansions in the late 80s/early 90s and Sun Valley to afford seven high-speed quads in seven years. These days, Doppelmayr and LPA can offer only premium features with high margins due to the lack of low-end competition in the detachable market.”
-SkitheEast
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There isn’t a single YAN customer who doesn’t wish they originally purchased something other than a YAN detachable.
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I don’t mean to directly attack you, Bluebottlenose, but your comment posting about the cost of YAN chairlifts leaves out lots of truths and details that would completely change how your posting would be interpreted if the posting had more information. Like: two people died and ten people were injured, some of them severely, in the December 23, 1995 Whistler Quicksilver chair accident because YAN built detach chairlifts that failed to meet national safety codes, and government agencies looked the other way while operators kept them running. Whistler’s Quicksilver chair just happened to push the limits on the capabilities of YAN detachable technology so severely, that Quicksilver was the first one of 31 YAN detach quads built, to fail, Others, given time would be most certainly have failed too. As a result of buying YAN detachables, and needing to retrofit them six years later, Whistler went bankrupt and was bought by the owners of Blackcomb. In hindsight, where WB is now, maybe that was not a bad thing (the combo of Whistler and Blackcomb, not the accident) , but it hastened a process. Silverstar BC another buyer of two YAN detachables, almost went bankrupt, and many other operators came close.
This is what the manager of Whistler lift maintenance said about his YAN detachables at the end of their first operating season: Whistler had become the “unwitting recipients of a research and development project”
I remember riding the Whistler Quicksilver quad, in March 1995, the season before the accident. Scary as hell. Shame. My two cents.
source:
https://www.coloradoskihistory.com/chairlift/yan2.html
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Yea, and they also built those problematic aluminum sheaves. If Janek Kunczynski had listened to his engineers more, and took some more time to develop his detachable terminals, those tragedies would not have happened, and yan would probably be the dominant lift manufacturer in NA. I really wish we could have gotten to see that, but yan made some fatal mistakes starting in the 1980’s an their downfall was deserved.
LikeLiked by 1 person
He is right but he seems to understate the pure insanity that is Janek Kunczynski. He seemed to come up with conceptually good ideas and not flesh them out fully. His partner who ended up designing the replacement grips for the detachable which were used in the interim period. From what I read he actually seemed to care about taking time to fully flesh out the ideas. The hastiness of Janek killed the reputation and they were never able to recover, I do imagine if YAN had fleshed out their designs they would be a dominant manufacture today. Their lifts were designs which were advanced enough to have been released 5 years later and still been competitive. Even if their lifts were released in the early 90s they still had the advantage of low cost and simplicity. The ONLY thing holding them back was Janek himself.
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Also the name of Janeks engineering partner was Les Okreglak. It should also be noted that FURTHER proof that it was Janek himself is that after Yan died he modifed the Angels Flight funicular in LA and that thing ALSO experienced catastrophic failures, this time even sooner. Guess who was working to engineer this on their own…. Janek
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Also I should add that he is still at it, now making desalinization equipment, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-kunczynski-4a682385/
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It is also interesting to note that Janek married the daughter of Alex Cushing (another “interesting character”) the founder of Squaw Valley, now Palisades at Tahoe. Notice that they were their first customer yet their partnership seems to have lasted up until the construction of the Gold Coast gondola “1983-1984 ish”. From what I read that absolute disaster essentially soured Cushing to Janek and they never partnered again after that. Its unsurprising but considering Cushings gung ho attitude towards lift safety I imagine that was a pretty big disaster on Janeks part and probably created some strange family dynamics. (all of this came from the book “Tale of Two Valleys”
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This lift actually serves some nice off-piste steeps for the Midwest looking to the right as you’re riding up.
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