6 thoughts on “Chair 6 – Mt. Baker, WA

  1. Skier's avatar Skier April 24, 2025 / 11:34 am

    what kind of terminal is this? it doesn’t look like a traditional dopp-ctec terminal from that time. is it a Yan?

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    • pbropetech's avatar pbropetech April 24, 2025 / 12:25 pm

      It isn’t a traditional D-CTEC, nor is it Yan (given that Yan went out of business ten or so years before this lift was built). It’s a Garaventa CTEC custom Mt Baker-only terminal built big enough to hold two giant diesel engines. If you check out the chair 8 page, you’ll see the Riblet they modelled after. We called it the Borg. Chairs 3/4 and chair 5 also have one.

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      • BB17's avatar BB17 April 24, 2025 / 2:51 pm

        To me it sort of looks like the tri-leg structure is derived from other Doppelmayr CTEC models like the Galaxy II, but the motor room is obviously larger. I’ve always thought that the Galaxy II was descended from an older CTEC return tension model (I think it was called the Aurora?), and that elements of that tri-leg design eventually made their way into Doppelmayr’s current Tristar terminal. But I could be way off and just grasping at straws here based on their design similarities.

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        • pbropetech's avatar pbropetech April 24, 2025 / 2:56 pm

          It probably was. We wanted twin diesels when we bought chair 5, so they built us a motor room to accommodate. I’m sure they didn’t completely reinvent the wheel, though, so they probably put it on something they already had.

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        • BB17's avatar BB17 April 24, 2025 / 3:09 pm

          @pbropetech Gotcha. Out of curiosity, do you know if Mt. Baker approached Leitner-Poma as well as Doppelmayr CTEC about building these lifts? Curious if LP was also willing to create a custom design that could’ve accommodated the two diesel engines (maybe it would have been an enlarged Alpha terminal or something). Then again, the ski area may have also wanted a height-adjustable return for this lift, something that I don’t think LP has ever done, at least on fixed-grip lifts.

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        • pbropetech's avatar pbropetech April 24, 2025 / 8:37 pm

          I don’t recall for certain, but I don’t remember Poma being a part of the discussion. I left Baker right after we decided on Garaventa. That was right before the merger, so Doppelmayr was still a separate entity. It took them until chair 1 to buy a full Doppelmayr.

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