Bottom terminal.Lower station looking up the lift line.Looking up the lift line.Hold down tower 7.Approaching the top terminal with Mt. Rainier in the background.Top terminal in the summer.The upper terminal tucked into a hillside.Upper station turnaround.View down from the summit.Middle part of the lift line.This lift has a very interesting profile with ups and downs.Lower lift line.The first two towers.Side view of the bottom station.Green Valley.Loading area.Tower 4.
This lift is great and all, but I miss the old Riblet. It had a standard old-school load ramp (i.e., don’t drop the rope to the skiers, make the skiers sidestep up to the rope) and I recall many years where we had enough snow to have to ski *down* to the load board.
I got to build the that ramp on the latest closing day they have had in a long time. 14 July. (or was it 11 July? Anyway.) I and some patrollers made it with some ice blocks from the bottom of West Face and anger and some pulaskis. Last day on rear entry boots, coincidentally. Good times.
A couple winters after we built New 3, I was back at Crystal as an Liftie and, first day on 3, wondered why we were running it at 4 metres. Rather than doing the correct thing and calling Tony in Maintenance, I just turned it up to 5 metres. He musta been close by, cos almost immediately I heard a sled widen on ‘er and pretty quickly hee jumps off plumb breathless-like and was all DON’T RUN ‘ER FULL SPEED WE’LL DEROPE. Which I thought was funny cos, well, why would whoever did the profile get it that wrong? Turns out towers 4/5/6 (the most intersting part of the “interesting profile”) were loaded wrong. At 5 metres, loaded chairs would stay a little light off the end of tower 4 cos inertia, sink a little later than they normally would after a breakover, rise back up, drop, and be rising again at the end of the sheave train on tower 5 instead of sinking like any normal support tower. At speed, under load, the wave frequency was just wrong. This in turn, after it had a chance for the amplitude to grow, tower 5 would effectively whip the rope off tower 6. The solution was to run at 4 metres and to shorten tower 5’s sheave train, both of which disrupted the wave frequency and all would be fine. One would think that they could have known, give old 3’s huge span and subsequent Riblet dive, that they would need to pay close attention between Stockholders and Grubstake. Apparently they did not.
I remember riding this lift 2 years ago with 90+ mph winds at the summit. They closed rex and the gondola but Green valley is fairly protected and kept running. Had ice building up on my face sheld 1/2 an inch thick
Lift Blog 
This was one of the last Spacejet terminals made by Doppelmayr, as they started making Uni G’s the following year
LikeLike
LikeLike
This lift is great and all, but I miss the old Riblet. It had a standard old-school load ramp (i.e., don’t drop the rope to the skiers, make the skiers sidestep up to the rope) and I recall many years where we had enough snow to have to ski *down* to the load board.
LikeLike
I got to build the that ramp on the latest closing day they have had in a long time. 14 July. (or was it 11 July? Anyway.) I and some patrollers made it with some ice blocks from the bottom of West Face and anger and some pulaskis. Last day on rear entry boots, coincidentally. Good times.
LikeLike
I rode this lift yesterday, and it has 50 chairs.
LikeLike
A couple winters after we built New 3, I was back at Crystal as an Liftie and, first day on 3, wondered why we were running it at 4 metres. Rather than doing the correct thing and calling Tony in Maintenance, I just turned it up to 5 metres. He musta been close by, cos almost immediately I heard a sled widen on ‘er and pretty quickly hee jumps off plumb breathless-like and was all DON’T RUN ‘ER FULL SPEED WE’LL DEROPE. Which I thought was funny cos, well, why would whoever did the profile get it that wrong? Turns out towers 4/5/6 (the most intersting part of the “interesting profile”) were loaded wrong. At 5 metres, loaded chairs would stay a little light off the end of tower 4 cos inertia, sink a little later than they normally would after a breakover, rise back up, drop, and be rising again at the end of the sheave train on tower 5 instead of sinking like any normal support tower. At speed, under load, the wave frequency was just wrong. This in turn, after it had a chance for the amplitude to grow, tower 5 would effectively whip the rope off tower 6. The solution was to run at 4 metres and to shorten tower 5’s sheave train, both of which disrupted the wave frequency and all would be fine. One would think that they could have known, give old 3’s huge span and subsequent Riblet dive, that they would need to pay close attention between Stockholders and Grubstake. Apparently they did not.
LikeLike
I remember riding this lift 2 years ago with 90+ mph winds at the summit. They closed rex and the gondola but Green valley is fairly protected and kept running. Had ice building up on my face sheld 1/2 an inch thick
LikeLike