This lift was originally a Yan high speed quad that got new terminals, grips and chairs.Unloading ramp.Leitner-Poma added queuing gates and new chairs to the Grand Summit Express, already Yan-Poma hybrid, in 2008.This lift is just like the Yan-turned-Pomas at Sunday River, Killington and Pico, which were all sister resorts under American Skiing Company at the time.Bottom terminal with Yan structure and Poma technology/enclosure.The top terminal and breakover towers.Another view of the unload station.Looking up at the top terminal.Tower 19.View down the line.Middle part of the lift.View up from near the base terminal.
Correction: the loading conveyor was added in 2008, but the new chairs didn’t come until 2011 when the Bluebird was installed. Note the post-2010 LPA logos. If they were out on 2008 they would have the Poma spinoff one (whatever it was called)
When I was there in January, they locked the gates open and disabled the carpet, covering it with snow. I assumed they’d just remove it after the season, but I guess not. It’s the only detachable with a loading carpet in the east.
Yeah, they covered it with plywood and then snow. They removed the gates around last december. I though they were done with it, but they replaced the gates, since that was the problem. People kept sliding right through the gates on the carpet too early.
This lift is technically a Yan. The terminals just look like Poma because it was retrofitted by Poma in the 90s when everybody realized yan HSQs weren’t safe. Since Poma retrofitted this lift, they made the terminal enclosure look like their own. There’s still a lot of Yan stuff underneath that enclosure, so Peter made a judgement call to call this a Yan. If you look at Yan HSQs out west (like Frenchman’s at Sun Valley), they have Doppelmayr enclosures, because they were retrofitted by Doppelmayr. Then there’s Mammoth and June, who had their lifts retrofitted by Doppelmayr but built their own enclosure to save money. The towers on all these lifts stayed as the original Yan design (as the towers were perfectly safe), except some of the sheaves were replaced (but that’s a story for another time).
It does have to do with the clearance. Compare Grand Summit’s…
…to both of the ground-up Poma high speed quads:
It’s also very present on the DoppelmaYan conversions. Compare Sun Valley’s converted lifts…
…to a ground-up high speed quad of the same vintage:
There are only Yan retrofits where the chairs don’t have longer hangar arms, and those are the ones where the terminals were also entirely replaced, instead of just being retrofitted with a new skin: the Big Red Express, the original Emerald Express (Doppelmayrs), and the Carpenter Express (Garaventa CTEC).
Does Mount Snow or Vail Resorts ever have plans to move this lift? I don’t know how busy Mount Snow (I’ve never been) gets so I don’t know how needed this lift is at base with Canyon and Bluebird going out of base, I don’t know if its unnecessary or needed.
I don’t think it would be a good decision to move this lift and I doubt Mount Snow’s management wants to either. It’s a 34-year-old frankenlift detachable whose original manufacturer was Yan. It breaks down more often than most other lifts at Mount Snow and I don’t think it can run at its design line speed of 1,000 fpm anymore.
I remember hearing somewhere that Bluebird was originally going to replace Grand Summit Express which would be moved to replace the Sunbrook quad, but the reason they didn’t do that is because the long, slow Summit Local Triple would remain as the backup lift to the summit. I think they made a smart decision by keeping both base-to-summit lifts detachable by replacing Summit Local with Bluebird and refurbishing GSX as it reduces wait times and ride times due to relatively high capacity and line speed.
On weekends, Mount Snow is known for being very crowded (though one can avoid the crowds if one knows where to go). This lift is great to have on those days as an alternative to waiting upwards of half an hour in line for Bluebird, and sometimes gets a medium-sized line itself. Plus, it being parallel to Bluebird allows for redundancy if either of the two lifts break down. Overall I wouldn’t say it is unnecessary and I think it would be a net loss for Mount Snow if they removed it without replacement. However I do think they should consider replacing this lift with six-pack in the near future because, as I mentioned, it is getting pretty old.
I would think that the chairs and towers could be reused for another installation. The towers weren’t what failed on Yan detachables and I don’t think the Yan towers would cause any problems. Replacing the tower heads should be all that’s needed for a relocation of this lift.
We’ve seen only one case of a Yoppelmayr getting reinstalled in a different alignment, and that was Whistler replacing Emerald with a high speed six pack, with the high speed quad being used by Blackcomb to replace Catskinner. The Catskinner Express kept the Spacejet terminals and chairs, but received all-new towers from Doppelmayr.
In a case like Grand Summit, the chairs would be reusable by LP for another fixed grip or detachable, but the terminals would have to be replaced in their entirety for maintenance purposes.
We went to Mt Snow on Saturdays with my school ski club back in the early 2000s. I never once rode the Grand Summit Express … the line was always a massive hoard of people. Instead, we would get on the Summit Local triple, which while incredibly slow had far shorter wait times. I haven’t been back since the six-pack was installed, but I’d hope the quad is now a short wait. We’d mostly avoid the main base and ski either the double in Carinthia or Sunbrook. The Canyon lift was somehow even more crowded. And the Carinthia detach was only slightly better.
“Pentagon” chairs. If you look closely, they are more angular than the teardrop chairs. These were Yan’s original HSQ chairs, before the teardrop ones. Also, I love flat terminals like this!
Basically, the teardrop chairs came in around the early 1990s.
Those teardrop chairs also used to have those double slat metal backrests (kinda similar to Riblet’s) which made them look slightly unusual since pentagon chairs were more common with them.
I haven’t ridden this lift in a few years so I may be misremembering, but I believe that each catwalk has 3 small rollers that allowed it to pivot around the tubular crossarm. These rollers were on the side of the catwalk facing towards the tower tube. I vaguely recall that the individual bearings for the rollers looked pretty rusty when I was last there, and I’m not sure if the catwalks are still free to rotate due to that rust or possibly being welded in place. I’ve certainly never seen the catwalks on towers 19, 24 and 25 noticeably rotate.
Definitely smart to have another high speed lift here along with Bluebird. This lift is so long but I prefer this lift over Bluebird any day. I don’t know if Grand Summit and Bluebird have the same line speed? It definitely looks a lot like the Superstar lift at Killighton.
Lift Blog 
Correction: the loading conveyor was added in 2008, but the new chairs didn’t come until 2011 when the Bluebird was installed. Note the post-2010 LPA logos. If they were out on 2008 they would have the Poma spinoff one (whatever it was called)
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The poma logo was the swoosh.
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As of yesterday, the loading carpet was used with new gates for the first time in a year and a half.
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When I was there in January, they locked the gates open and disabled the carpet, covering it with snow. I assumed they’d just remove it after the season, but I guess not. It’s the only detachable with a loading carpet in the east.
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Yeah, they covered it with plywood and then snow. They removed the gates around last december. I though they were done with it, but they replaced the gates, since that was the problem. People kept sliding right through the gates on the carpet too early.
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I love the black terminals. Gives it a cool look
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Wtf why this lift has towers from yan and lift from poma
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This lift is technically a Yan. The terminals just look like Poma because it was retrofitted by Poma in the 90s when everybody realized yan HSQs weren’t safe. Since Poma retrofitted this lift, they made the terminal enclosure look like their own. There’s still a lot of Yan stuff underneath that enclosure, so Peter made a judgement call to call this a Yan. If you look at Yan HSQs out west (like Frenchman’s at Sun Valley), they have Doppelmayr enclosures, because they were retrofitted by Doppelmayr. Then there’s Mammoth and June, who had their lifts retrofitted by Doppelmayr but built their own enclosure to save money. The towers on all these lifts stayed as the original Yan design (as the towers were perfectly safe), except some of the sheaves were replaced (but that’s a story for another time).
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i just gotta say, lietner-poma’s carrier design is pretty cool!
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The hangars look really long. Maybe has to do with the yan terminal skin clarence? I assume they are custom to fit the yan structure.
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It does have to do with the clearance. Compare Grand Summit’s…
…to both of the ground-up Poma high speed quads:
It’s also very present on the DoppelmaYan conversions. Compare Sun Valley’s converted lifts…
…to a ground-up high speed quad of the same vintage:
There are only Yan retrofits where the chairs don’t have longer hangar arms, and those are the ones where the terminals were also entirely replaced, instead of just being retrofitted with a new skin: the Big Red Express, the original Emerald Express (Doppelmayrs), and the Carpenter Express (Garaventa CTEC).
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This lift only has 25 towers if you consider the integrated depression sheaves on the bottom terminal to be a tower. Otherwise it has just 24 towers.
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Does Mount Snow or Vail Resorts ever have plans to move this lift? I don’t know how busy Mount Snow (I’ve never been) gets so I don’t know how needed this lift is at base with Canyon and Bluebird going out of base, I don’t know if its unnecessary or needed.
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I don’t think it would be a good decision to move this lift and I doubt Mount Snow’s management wants to either. It’s a 34-year-old frankenlift detachable whose original manufacturer was Yan. It breaks down more often than most other lifts at Mount Snow and I don’t think it can run at its design line speed of 1,000 fpm anymore.
I remember hearing somewhere that Bluebird was originally going to replace Grand Summit Express which would be moved to replace the Sunbrook quad, but the reason they didn’t do that is because the long, slow Summit Local Triple would remain as the backup lift to the summit. I think they made a smart decision by keeping both base-to-summit lifts detachable by replacing Summit Local with Bluebird and refurbishing GSX as it reduces wait times and ride times due to relatively high capacity and line speed.
On weekends, Mount Snow is known for being very crowded (though one can avoid the crowds if one knows where to go). This lift is great to have on those days as an alternative to waiting upwards of half an hour in line for Bluebird, and sometimes gets a medium-sized line itself. Plus, it being parallel to Bluebird allows for redundancy if either of the two lifts break down. Overall I wouldn’t say it is unnecessary and I think it would be a net loss for Mount Snow if they removed it without replacement. However I do think they should consider replacing this lift with six-pack in the near future because, as I mentioned, it is getting pretty old.
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I would think that the chairs and towers could be reused for another installation. The towers weren’t what failed on Yan detachables and I don’t think the Yan towers would cause any problems. Replacing the tower heads should be all that’s needed for a relocation of this lift.
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We’ve seen only one case of a Yoppelmayr getting reinstalled in a different alignment, and that was Whistler replacing Emerald with a high speed six pack, with the high speed quad being used by Blackcomb to replace Catskinner. The Catskinner Express kept the Spacejet terminals and chairs, but received all-new towers from Doppelmayr.
In a case like Grand Summit, the chairs would be reusable by LP for another fixed grip or detachable, but the terminals would have to be replaced in their entirety for maintenance purposes.
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We went to Mt Snow on Saturdays with my school ski club back in the early 2000s. I never once rode the Grand Summit Express … the line was always a massive hoard of people. Instead, we would get on the Summit Local triple, which while incredibly slow had far shorter wait times. I haven’t been back since the six-pack was installed, but I’d hope the quad is now a short wait. We’d mostly avoid the main base and ski either the double in Carinthia or Sunbrook. The Canyon lift was somehow even more crowded. And the Carinthia detach was only slightly better.
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Yes is needed on Christmas and MLK but otherwise it is rarely used unless the six or four are down
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Grand Summit almost always operates on weekends and holidays and sometimes on busier weekdays as well, depending on the demand.
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I meant to say every weekend i know this mountain as a matter a fact I have skied over 30 times in one season at this mountain
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The bottom terminal when Poma retrofitted these Yan high speed quads the bottom terminal of this lift used to be flat
With green color.
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And The Teardrop Chairs.
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“Pentagon” chairs. If you look closely, they are more angular than the teardrop chairs. These were Yan’s original HSQ chairs, before the teardrop ones. Also, I love flat terminals like this!
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Basically, the teardrop chairs came in around the early 1990s.
Those teardrop chairs also used to have those double slat metal backrests (kinda similar to Riblet’s) which made them look slightly unusual since pentagon chairs were more common with them.
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The pancake terminals, while they certainly look cool, must have been a maintenance nightmare.
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I found a photo (probably from the late 80s) of this lift’s top terminal before the Poma modifications:
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20160308182841/http://www.mountsnow.com/our-media/blog/kellys-blog/new-blog-1684/
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Do those catwalk rockers have bearings or bushings to help them pivot?
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I haven’t ridden this lift in a few years so I may be misremembering, but I believe that each catwalk has 3 small rollers that allowed it to pivot around the tubular crossarm. These rollers were on the side of the catwalk facing towards the tower tube. I vaguely recall that the individual bearings for the rollers looked pretty rusty when I was last there, and I’m not sure if the catwalks are still free to rotate due to that rust or possibly being welded in place. I’ve certainly never seen the catwalks on towers 19, 24 and 25 noticeably rotate.
One of the rollers can be seen in this photo (different lift, same or similar design): https://skiliftblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/img_8239.jpg
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Yan-Poma hybrids (Yomas? Yamas?) make me happy. The wierder (sic) the better.
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Definitely smart to have another high speed lift here along with Bluebird. This lift is so long but I prefer this lift over Bluebird any day. I don’t know if Grand Summit and Bluebird have the same line speed? It definitely looks a lot like the Superstar lift at Killighton.
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A few years ago this lift was struck by lightning and was broken for two weeks.
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