This gondola came used from Squaw Valley. Both stations were inside buildings at Squaw so Lake Louise custom fabricated terminal skins to match their Leitner detachables.Bottom terminal with maintenance rail.Bottom terminal at the ski area base.Top terminal with vault drive from below.Unloading platform on the roof of the vault drive building.Breakover towers just before the summit.View down the line.Lower section of the line.Another view of the base.The below-treeline portion of the line.View up this very long gondola.View up the line from the base area.Top terminal under cover.Breakover towers.View down from near the summit.Middle part of the lift line.Lift line.View toward the namesake Lake Louise.A support tower.View up the line.Lower lift line.Lift overview.
36 thoughts on “Grizzly Express Gondola – Lake Louise, AB”
CollinJanuary 19, 2018 / 4:59 pm
It looks like the towers are Leitner rather than the original Poma ones from Squaw Valley. Why would they have not reused them? Line gear appears to still be Poma.
These seem to be the original Poma towers, with a modified tower head to match the other Leitner detachables on the mountain. If such a great effort was made to match the Leitner terminals, why not the towers too?
These are Poma towers consistent with the late 80s/early 90s designs. It appears that they had permanent lifting hooks welded on the ends of the original gantry frames- when we wanted to lift the rope on those kind of towers we had an insert we’d slide into the box tube to attach our rigging to. Modifying the towers in this fashion means one less thing to bring with you (or forget) while doing tower service. It’s probably coincidental that the modifications match the Leitners- they may have copied them because it was an easy model to use.
Every lift profile is different and when towers can be reused, they are. Otherwise, new towers need to be fabricated. In addition, some of the old towers may have been Yan/LE due to the POMA gondola replacing a two year old installation at Squaw.
Poma definitely reused the Yan towers at Squaw Valley. Poma towers were always bolted onto the footings, so there would’ve been no reason to cut it off like that when they could’ve just unbolted it. In that case, the Yan towers would’ve been scrapped, and new towers used at Lake Louise which are pre-merger Leitner.
I also wonder if it still has the original chain driven contours from Squaw, or if they were replaced with tires when the lift was reinstalled.
Not necessarily. All Pomas at Copper through 1989 had embedded towers because the install crew was more familiar with Yans. It’s possible that happened at Squaw.
Honestly, the lifting frames that were installed with the relocation to Lake Louise don’t look all that different from the lifting frame design Leitner-Poma has used on their chairlifts and gondolas since 2012. They look like high speed six pack lifting frames but without the extra cross bracing:
What an unusual mode of operation, with the cabins/chairs completely coming to a stop and the bell announcing when it’s going to start moving again. Never seen that before.
Correction to myself, hangar arms and ski racks are taken from the cabins and a new hangar arm with a Leitner SA-4 grip is attached to the cabin, they swap again in the fall.
I think this lift was the Super Gondola that operated from 1985 to 1998 which would mean this is a Performant model gondola. Wonder how it is holding up… 1985 is old for a detach.
There is no such thing as an “Alpha-Falcon” which has been mentioned multiple times on the blog. There is the Alpha Evolution which is what the coney glade/pioneer express was, then there’s the performant, which is what American flyer and the Colorado superchair was, and currently the Stratton gondola.
Sorry, bad formulating from me, Alpha Performant is with a seperate Alpha drive on chairlifts, Performant is like this with vault drive Gondolas, Since this is Poma from 1985 with the vault this indicates it is a Performant.
‘Performant’ (Performance) refers to the detachable mechanism and terminal enclosures that was paired with the TB-xx grips between 1985 and 1987. They had either a vault or a separate Alpha drive. Alpha-drive detachable lifts were also called the Alpha Evolutif, because they were meant to be a fixed-grip option that could ‘evolve’ to a detachable lift. To my knowledge only the original F-lift at Breck and chair 3 at Ajax went this route; other Alpha-drive detaches in North America were built that way from the beginning. 1988 terminals did not have a model name that I’ve found. Starting in 1989 they built the same mechanisms inside the Competition terminals, which gave way to the Challengers and Competition 900s (which utilised TB grips but had an updated detachable mechanism) in the early 1990s.
To further clarify (or add to the confusion, your choice)- my prints for the Flyer only called it the Performant if they were in French. If they came from Grand Junction and were printed in English, they simply said ‘detachable mechanism’ :) So there’s that.
So, from what I understand, Performance is the detachable mechanism built by Poma from 1985-1988. Alpha performance is for chairlifts with an attached Alpha drive, while Alpha evolution is a fixed grip that became detachable (think Ajax express at Aspen)?
What kind of Omega cabins are these? Judging by the way they open, I’m guessing Omega Is or IIs, but I don’t know. If anyone knows, please let me know. Thanks!
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It looks like the towers are Leitner rather than the original Poma ones from Squaw Valley. Why would they have not reused them? Line gear appears to still be Poma.
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These seem to be the original Poma towers, with a modified tower head to match the other Leitner detachables on the mountain. If such a great effort was made to match the Leitner terminals, why not the towers too?
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These are Poma towers consistent with the late 80s/early 90s designs. It appears that they had permanent lifting hooks welded on the ends of the original gantry frames- when we wanted to lift the rope on those kind of towers we had an insert we’d slide into the box tube to attach our rigging to. Modifying the towers in this fashion means one less thing to bring with you (or forget) while doing tower service. It’s probably coincidental that the modifications match the Leitners- they may have copied them because it was an easy model to use.
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PBROPETECH is correct, permanent lifting hooks were welded on the original Poma equipement.
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Every lift profile is different and when towers can be reused, they are. Otherwise, new towers need to be fabricated. In addition, some of the old towers may have been Yan/LE due to the POMA gondola replacing a two year old installation at Squaw.
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Poma definitely reused the Yan towers at Squaw Valley. Poma towers were always bolted onto the footings, so there would’ve been no reason to cut it off like that when they could’ve just unbolted it. In that case, the Yan towers would’ve been scrapped, and new towers used at Lake Louise which are pre-merger Leitner.
I also wonder if it still has the original chain driven contours from Squaw, or if they were replaced with tires when the lift was reinstalled.
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Not necessarily. All Pomas at Copper through 1989 had embedded towers because the install crew was more familiar with Yans. It’s possible that happened at Squaw.
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The chains were converted to tires
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Honestly, the lifting frames that were installed with the relocation to Lake Louise don’t look all that different from the lifting frame design Leitner-Poma has used on their chairlifts and gondolas since 2012. They look like high speed six pack lifting frames but without the extra cross bracing:
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In the summer this lift is a Chondola
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No Glacier runs as a Chondola with cabins borrowed from this lift.
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Somewhat confusing… it seems like they rename Glacier to Grizzly during the summer?
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What an unusual mode of operation, with the cabins/chairs completely coming to a stop and the bell announcing when it’s going to start moving again. Never seen that before.
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Big Mountain Express at Whitefish operates the same way in the summer time minus the bells signaling when the chairs/cabins will start moving again.
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Most detaches I have seen have a start bell at the terminals that sounds before the lift starts.
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Probably since you can see bears from the lift.
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how do they even swap the grips, or can they just fit the cabins and hanagar arms onto the letiner grips?
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I think they have extra hangar arms and grips for the cabins, or they just borrow the grips from the chairs that are being unused during the summer.
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Correction to myself, hangar arms and ski racks are taken from the cabins and a new hangar arm with a Leitner SA-4 grip is attached to the cabin, they swap again in the fall.
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I love those custom terminal skins.
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Same, They definitely look better than the trashy looking Challenger terminals Poma was building at the time
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Was this lift an Alpha performance?
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I think this lift was the Super Gondola that operated from 1985 to 1998 which would mean this is a Performant model gondola. Wonder how it is holding up… 1985 is old for a detach.
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It has a vault drive, so its not a performant (assuming that by performant you mean an alpha drive), unless it was converted when it was relocated
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Its performant/Alpha-falcon with vault drive
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There is no such thing as an “Alpha-Falcon” which has been mentioned multiple times on the blog. There is the Alpha Evolution which is what the coney glade/pioneer express was, then there’s the performant, which is what American flyer and the Colorado superchair was, and currently the Stratton gondola.
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Sorry, bad formulating from me, Alpha Performant is with a seperate Alpha drive on chairlifts, Performant is like this with vault drive Gondolas, Since this is Poma from 1985 with the vault this indicates it is a Performant.
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To clarify-
‘Performant’ (Performance) refers to the detachable mechanism and terminal enclosures that was paired with the TB-xx grips between 1985 and 1987. They had either a vault or a separate Alpha drive. Alpha-drive detachable lifts were also called the Alpha Evolutif, because they were meant to be a fixed-grip option that could ‘evolve’ to a detachable lift. To my knowledge only the original F-lift at Breck and chair 3 at Ajax went this route; other Alpha-drive detaches in North America were built that way from the beginning. 1988 terminals did not have a model name that I’ve found. Starting in 1989 they built the same mechanisms inside the Competition terminals, which gave way to the Challengers and Competition 900s (which utilised TB grips but had an updated detachable mechanism) in the early 1990s.
To further clarify (or add to the confusion, your choice)- my prints for the Flyer only called it the Performant if they were in French. If they came from Grand Junction and were printed in English, they simply said ‘detachable mechanism’ :) So there’s that.
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So, from what I understand, Performance is the detachable mechanism built by Poma from 1985-1988. Alpha performance is for chairlifts with an attached Alpha drive, while Alpha evolution is a fixed grip that became detachable (think Ajax express at Aspen)?
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According to this article (which calls this lift a chairlift), the Gondola was in good shape when purchased, and only had 8 years of user hours on it.
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You should post your Lake Louise history video on the main LL page – it was really good!
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Agree, it was a good video, Funny the article calls it a “chairlift”.
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What kind of Omega cabins are these? Judging by the way they open, I’m guessing Omega Is or IIs, but I don’t know. If anyone knows, please let me know. Thanks!
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I think their Omega 1’s or Omega 2’s. 1’s and 2’s have half-height windows, so that’s how I know.
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I really love the terminal skin cover. I think Leitner’s detachable terminals are just very visually pleasing.
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