This actually the upper terminal on the Slide Mountain side.View down the lift line.View up the line.Side view of the bottom terminal.Lift overview.Leaving the bottom station.Riding up the line.Tower 7.The second part of the ride is actually downhill.Arriving at the drive.Drive station relocated from Zephyr.
As a person who grew up skiing and still skis Rose, it does make sense to have it travel downhill due to the topography. The downhill section in question is rather narrow, faces south, and melts quickly in the spring. Having Chuter travel downhill gets to an access road the lift mechs use to get to the load point for Chuter from the Slide side. This road is snow packed from snowcat use and makes it a quick ski to the bottom of Zephyr. If it ended at the high point, there would be times in the season that there would not be enough snow to machine till it enough to make it skiable. This would then close off The Chutes because of lack of snow at the unload area when there is still snow to safely open up The Chutes. Thus, the unload point at the access road is easier to maintain.
Plus, the ridge point would only allow access to Miller Time and not the best part of The Chutes. The original plan was to have Chuter terminate at the top of Slide Mountain near the top terminal for Northwest, but environmental concerns ruled out having a lift go straight up the Chutes.
Other than in these photos, I have never seen a line of any sort at chuter. If anything I think they ought to remove some chairs from the line to potentially decrease the load on the motor moving all that mass around.
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Why does this lift need to go downhill instead of having the top terminal on the ridge?
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As a person who grew up skiing and still skis Rose, it does make sense to have it travel downhill due to the topography. The downhill section in question is rather narrow, faces south, and melts quickly in the spring. Having Chuter travel downhill gets to an access road the lift mechs use to get to the load point for Chuter from the Slide side. This road is snow packed from snowcat use and makes it a quick ski to the bottom of Zephyr. If it ended at the high point, there would be times in the season that there would not be enough snow to machine till it enough to make it skiable. This would then close off The Chutes because of lack of snow at the unload area when there is still snow to safely open up The Chutes. Thus, the unload point at the access road is easier to maintain.
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Plus, the ridge point would only allow access to Miller Time and not the best part of The Chutes. The original plan was to have Chuter terminate at the top of Slide Mountain near the top terminal for Northwest, but environmental concerns ruled out having a lift go straight up the Chutes.
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Other than in these photos, I have never seen a line of any sort at chuter. If anything I think they ought to remove some chairs from the line to potentially decrease the load on the motor moving all that mass around.
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I wonder if making the lift go downhill reduces the motor current load by anything significant.
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