Bottom terminal and lift line at Creekside base.Poma Omega gondola terminal.View up the line during Olympics construction.The top drive station with cabin maintenance facility.
After doing some digging I found that these are Sigma “Space 6” cabins. By searching “Cabine Espace 6” you can get quite a few results for gondolas that used these. Here’s a few that I’ve found so far:
I’ve never seen a Doppelmayr/CWA gondola with pins. The two in North America with Gangloff cabins (Whiteface and Tremblant) have them however.
The CWA cabins tend to have a guide rail on the inside like Loon has. Gore has a Poma gondola with CWA cabins and it has the Doppelmayr style rail system while Killington (also Poma) has the pins on the bottom.
There are numerous Doppelmayr gondolas with omega cabins and pins. Outpost at Keystone and the gondola at Mont Sainte anne and excalibur at W-b are examples. Whistler village and stratton are both lwi gondolas built by poma with pins.
No. There were other factors in play, and the grip was probably poorly designed, but but spring pressure was in line with any other type of detachable grip. It would have to be. Unfortunately our Yan big book of knowledge doesn’t have detaches in them (since we never had any) or I could tell you numbers.
I am always surprised they still have zero redundancy for this lift. It is 25 years old and cannot handle the Creekside traffic alone. It is also not an issue of throwing too many bodies on the trails, as the entire western part of the mountain is underdeveloped with zero lifts in the Peak to Creek area.
100% agree that they should replace this lift ASAP. I would suggest a 10 Pax Gondola (like the Blackcomb Gondola) with a mid station at Ravens Nest and extend it to Roundhouse.
I wonder if they could repurpose the Creekside gondola as a HSQ to install the Franz HSQ? I mean it was installed after Harmony HSQ. AussieRob do you know if that would be possible?
As someone who stays at the Creekside area at whistler, I would definitely love something like this instead of the Orange gondola they currently have on their master plan. Having access to the roundhouse would mean easier summer sightseeing trips if they decided to run it in the summer. I kind of doubt they’d do something like that though.
This lift really needs to go. Not only is the capacity not enough, but it’s extremely uncomfortable and the cabins aren’t in very good condition. One of the worst major lifts at WB in my opinion.
The whole right side of Whistler is also in need of capacity upgrades, I liked what they did on Blackcomb by repurposing an older HSQ further up the mountain and punching up a new Gondola. Perhaps a Gondola 8 up to Raven’s Nest to replace Creekside, a new HS6 to Roundhouse where Big Red currently is, and repurposing Big Red as Franz’s Express since it isn’t too old.
I would love to see that as I know that’s something they have in their master plan. Gotta get some more pictures of the current gondola before it gets ripped out though :(
There is nothing left of the old Yan in the Creekside Gondola, and it has no height adjustment. It is a chair lift terminal with Gondola cabins on it. Spacing has never been good on that lift.
People are talking about capacity and the lift upgrade. One thing to keep in mind is that when this was built the plan was also to run lifts from creekside up the right side to Bagel Bowl and then back down to Funtion Junction area. The idea was Vancouver day trippers would park there.
Lift Blog 
Were any other Poma gondolas built with this model of gondola cabin?
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Zephyr Express at Winter Park had this model of cabins for taking people up to Sunspot at night.
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Zephyr express is no more sadly
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After doing some digging I found that these are Sigma “Space 6” cabins. By searching “Cabine Espace 6” you can get quite a few results for gondolas that used these. Here’s a few that I’ve found so far:
https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tcd6-de-la-cote-2000-poma-1913.html
Even one used as a bus stop!
http://web.archive.org/web/20210520213006/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiCHNGeX0AAbdQL?format=jpg
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I’m pretty sure Kanin in Slovenia has the exact same model of cabin also used as a bus stop. It is in downtown Bovec.
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What is the black spike on the bottom of each cabin for?
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Pin for the ground level rails in the terminals. Now with level walk in boarding, the entire cabin is the pin.
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Interesting. None of snowbasin’s doppelmayr gondolas aren’t level and have no guide rails or pins. Did only POMA use pins?
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I’ve never seen a Doppelmayr/CWA gondola with pins. The two in North America with Gangloff cabins (Whiteface and Tremblant) have them however.
The CWA cabins tend to have a guide rail on the inside like Loon has. Gore has a Poma gondola with CWA cabins and it has the Doppelmayr style rail system while Killington (also Poma) has the pins on the bottom.
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There are numerous Doppelmayr gondolas with omega cabins and pins. Outpost at Keystone and the gondola at Mont Sainte anne and excalibur at W-b are examples. Whistler village and stratton are both lwi gondolas built by poma with pins.
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An interesting one to note is Gondola 19 at Vail, a 1996 Garaventa CTEC with CWA X12 cabins. They have level walk-in loading and pins on the bottom.
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Original Quicksilver express:
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Yan’s detachable terminals were very minimalistic compared to the closest equivalents Doppelmayr and Poma made to them.
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So were the spring pressures on their grips too. ;)
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No. There were other factors in play, and the grip was probably poorly designed, but but spring pressure was in line with any other type of detachable grip. It would have to be. Unfortunately our Yan big book of knowledge doesn’t have detaches in them (since we never had any) or I could tell you numbers.
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I am always surprised they still have zero redundancy for this lift. It is 25 years old and cannot handle the Creekside traffic alone. It is also not an issue of throwing too many bodies on the trails, as the entire western part of the mountain is underdeveloped with zero lifts in the Peak to Creek area.
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100% agree that they should replace this lift ASAP. I would suggest a 10 Pax Gondola (like the Blackcomb Gondola) with a mid station at Ravens Nest and extend it to Roundhouse.
I wonder if they could repurpose the Creekside gondola as a HSQ to install the Franz HSQ? I mean it was installed after Harmony HSQ. AussieRob do you know if that would be possible?
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As someone who stays at the Creekside area at whistler, I would definitely love something like this instead of the Orange gondola they currently have on their master plan. Having access to the roundhouse would mean easier summer sightseeing trips if they decided to run it in the summer. I kind of doubt they’d do something like that though.
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My understanding is that the lift is getting replaced next summer with an 8 person gondy.
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This lift really needs to go. Not only is the capacity not enough, but it’s extremely uncomfortable and the cabins aren’t in very good condition. One of the worst major lifts at WB in my opinion.
The whole right side of Whistler is also in need of capacity upgrades, I liked what they did on Blackcomb by repurposing an older HSQ further up the mountain and punching up a new Gondola. Perhaps a Gondola 8 up to Raven’s Nest to replace Creekside, a new HS6 to Roundhouse where Big Red currently is, and repurposing Big Red as Franz’s Express since it isn’t too old.
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With Big Red becoming a six pack, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the existing quad being repurposed for replacing Franz’s and the Whistler T-Bar.
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I would love to see that as I know that’s something they have in their master plan. Gotta get some more pictures of the current gondola before it gets ripped out though :(
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if you look closely at the top terminal of this lift you can see the Yan height adjustments
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The top terminal is all Poma. What are you seeing that makes you think that?
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look at the height adjustments one of the two look like Yan
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Looks no different than any other Poma Challenger gondola terminal.
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There is nothing left of the old Yan in the Creekside Gondola, and it has no height adjustment. It is a chair lift terminal with Gondola cabins on it. Spacing has never been good on that lift.
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People are talking about capacity and the lift upgrade. One thing to keep in mind is that when this was built the plan was also to run lifts from creekside up the right side to Bagel Bowl and then back down to Funtion Junction area. The idea was Vancouver day trippers would park there.
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I hope they eventually do that buildout. It would be really cool!
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