Leitner-Poma built a high capacity six pack to replace an older Poma detachable quad for the 2023-24 season.The new lift follows roughly the same alignment as the old.Contour loading area.Lower station with parking for all carriers.The parking rail.View riding up.Looking back down along the lift line parallel with the old Blue Chair.Upper lift line.Breakover towers with night lighting.View back down from the summit.Unloading area at the summit.Drive station.Another view of the top terminal.Upper station with namesake Mt. Hood in the background.LPA six place chairs.View down at tower 16.Flat section of the lift line.Large hold down tower.Steep section of the line.Tower 9.T8.Lift line overview.Lower lift line in the base area.T1.Bottom station area.Return station seen from Stadium Express.Another view of the base station.Lift overview.
I think high speed six packs with dense chair spacing like this are very rare nowadays. I can only really think of a few other six packs installed in the past decade with this kind of chair spacing, like the Colorado SuperChair, Avanti Express, and Mountaintop Express.
Most of the time, new high speed six packs seem to max out at 3,000 pph (Breck’s other LPA six packs, or the Northwoods Express) to 3,200 pph tops (Skyliner 6, the American Flyer, etc.).
Thats also just classic Meadows with abysmal lift line management. I’m absolutely shocked they did not install any sort of queueing gates with this lift.
they need to visit Alyeska. I visited for an upper mountain powder day which meant pretty much everyone was lapping the one mid-capacity upper mountain hsq. At my home Mammoth, it would have been a 20 min line, and 30 min on a busy PNW pow day at most mtns. It never got past 5 min, because the line managers were militant.
On your phone? Talking to your group? Messing with gear? Pass in the wrong pocket? The lifties immediately pointed their literal giant stick at the next singles or prepared group. Every chair had 4 people on it, no matter what, and it only stopped a few times all day. They were loud and aggressive and it worked. And in the end, everyone was happy because the line kept getting annihilated by a yelling man with a stick.
Problem is always the clientele, not the people running the line. Lifties managing the line sometimes can help a little but there’s only so much they can do if there’s an abundance of clowns. Meanwhile KT-22 is completely unmanaged iirc and sends up hundreds of full chairs in a row. Bigger chair=bigger load issues too since people can’t count to six, which is why I personally can’t stand the fancy new 8 packs gaining popularity.
@ somebody Agreed, although I don’t think people can even count to three. Not to mention the snowboarders (if I hear I CAN’T RIDE THAT WAY one more time Ima learn to vomit on call) at the front of the line who duck back and force two double loads instead of one quad, or whatever similar option of your choosing on this here six-pack would be.
Alyeska lifties have been pointing those sticks at people for years. We always called them lightsabers. They’re loud and authoritative. People messing around get yelled at. It is a tried and true method of lift line management and quicker navigation
I also recommend anyone at any mountain doing line management get a stick, dont use it to hit people but when the queue gets rowdy use a ski pole, umbrella or a net stick (I think snowbirds were SPM poles). Once I got the stick I stopped having complaints from management about queue management and lift lines were cleared so much faster. I went from seeing Gadzoom have 45min to 1 hour lines to maybe 30 minutes. Customers seem to hate having queue management but it really is the only way to avoid lines
also to respond to sombody, 100% correct, the ONLY lift at snowbird I could say that with 100% certainty couldnt handle the crowds it recieved it was mineral basin.
I agree with another commenter, the mismanagement of the line causes a lot of the loading issues this lift sees. If they had an attendant directing traffic all the time, and used the queueing gates that are installed, I believe it would stop less.
Case in point is weekend mornings/days, when the line is actively managed. The lift has had a big impact on crowds during those times vs. last season, and it’s common to make it a whole ride without a stop.
I have skied the NEW SIX PACK at Meadows since it’s inception. I have skied at Meadows at least the last 20 years. I have a new name for the new lift and that is “STOP SIX”. I does not matter if it is day or night, the “STOP SIX” stops on the clock every 4or5 minutes. Yea, that is what I would expect after forking over $12million USD. Yea, the Portland Bone heads are part of the problem. Leitner/Poma technical service and Meadows Management apathy drive the “STOP SIX”. Should I send in my resume to complete this installation?
For the record, the stopping issues are a mechanical issue due to a decision poma made during manufacturing and construction.
the queuing gates are left open because when they do actually run, there are more stops and more people getting hit by chairs. They are left open to reduce stops and misloads.
Poma made design decisions against the recommendations of the meadows maintenance team and it’s resulted in a poorly functioning machine.
Why did they get carrier parking for this lift when on one of their instagram posts from a while ago I saw the chairs for this lift parked inside the bottom terminal.
Short answer, so they can pull all the chairs off the line. It does have terminal parking, I don’t know if they park all the chairs every night but the bottom parking structure supports what physically can’t be stored in the terminals (36 chairs on the rail/30 chairs in each terminal).
Could they remove ten or so chairs, increase the chair spacing thus expanding loading intervals to reduce miss loads?….they sure could.
As for the ignorance in the past few comments above, the lift was built exactly as Meadows wanted. There’s a video on YouTube with the GM explaining all the quirkiness behind the design. For those who haven’t witnessed a 6 pack running 3,600 pph for greater than 4 hours without a stop, it takes about 5-7 decently experienced employees and militant load board obedience. There’s as much responsibility on the rider as there is the staff.
This is completely Mount Hood Meadows fault for not doing the configuration that Leitner Poma recommended for this lift. If they had done what Leitner Poma recommended, this lift wouldn’t have been as quirky as it is.
can you elaborate? The biggest issues I’ve seen are related to the lack of active queue management, which comes down to understaffing. Curious how MHM’s spec varies from LP’s recommendations.
I believe that Leitner Poma suggested that capacity be lower for easier loading for the lift but Mount Hood Meadows did not listen to Leitner Poma’s recommendations and made it a very high capacity six pack and as a result of this, their much less likely to load a chair to capacity unless they were to run the lift at reduced speed. The benefits of having a lower capacity is that it gives skiers and riders much more time to load a chair properly at normal speed. One thing Meadows could do in the future is they could do is make this lift have in line loading, add a loading carpet, or maybe just lower the capacity or this lift, maybe that would help reduce misloads for this lift, and as you mentioned before, Mount Hood Meadows is very bad when it comes to managing their queues properly.
So just chair spacing? That’s easily adjusted. Personally I haven’t felt it was any more difficult to load than other detachable lifts.
The lack of queue management is consistent with MHM ops prior to this lift. There are some lifties on staff who can manage that queue, and some who can’t, but it’s total bedlam when they don’t staff the line at all.
MHX went on a 3 hour maintenance hold today. Now, there’s a carrier with a mangled bar out on the bottom parking rail, and commenter(s) on Meadows’ social media posts are claiming to have seen it fall off the lift. Has anyone heard anything about this?
In an Instagram post comment, Meadows replied the following: “Yesterday snowshed from the parking rail slid off and landed on an empty chair coming into the terminal. It took lift maintenance more than 45 minutes to get the chair unstuck. Patrol started evacuating the chairs and once we got the chair unstuck we started the lift again and guests were able to offload as normal.”
From their response, it doesn’t sound like it fully fell off, but was damaged enough that it couldn’t enter the station and they had to remove the chair to keep operating the lift.
Lift Blog 
Nighttime video of the lift:
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I think high speed six packs with dense chair spacing like this are very rare nowadays. I can only really think of a few other six packs installed in the past decade with this kind of chair spacing, like the Colorado SuperChair, Avanti Express, and Mountaintop Express.
Most of the time, new high speed six packs seem to max out at 3,000 pph (Breck’s other LPA six packs, or the Northwoods Express) to 3,200 pph tops (Skyliner 6, the American Flyer, etc.).
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Because it doesn’t work. They could not keep it moving yesterday.
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Thats also just classic Meadows with abysmal lift line management. I’m absolutely shocked they did not install any sort of queueing gates with this lift.
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Well they do have gates, but they are almost never turned on.
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they need to visit Alyeska. I visited for an upper mountain powder day which meant pretty much everyone was lapping the one mid-capacity upper mountain hsq. At my home Mammoth, it would have been a 20 min line, and 30 min on a busy PNW pow day at most mtns. It never got past 5 min, because the line managers were militant.
On your phone? Talking to your group? Messing with gear? Pass in the wrong pocket? The lifties immediately pointed their literal giant stick at the next singles or prepared group. Every chair had 4 people on it, no matter what, and it only stopped a few times all day. They were loud and aggressive and it worked. And in the end, everyone was happy because the line kept getting annihilated by a yelling man with a stick.
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Problem is always the clientele, not the people running the line. Lifties managing the line sometimes can help a little but there’s only so much they can do if there’s an abundance of clowns. Meanwhile KT-22 is completely unmanaged iirc and sends up hundreds of full chairs in a row. Bigger chair=bigger load issues too since people can’t count to six, which is why I personally can’t stand the fancy new 8 packs gaining popularity.
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@ somebody Agreed, although I don’t think people can even count to three. Not to mention the snowboarders (if I hear I CAN’T RIDE THAT WAY one more time Ima learn to vomit on call) at the front of the line who duck back and force two double loads instead of one quad, or whatever similar option of your choosing on this here six-pack would be.
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Alyeska lifties have been pointing those sticks at people for years. We always called them lightsabers. They’re loud and authoritative. People messing around get yelled at. It is a tried and true method of lift line management and quicker navigation
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I was nice to everyone with my stick, people sometimes just dont listen
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I also recommend anyone at any mountain doing line management get a stick, dont use it to hit people but when the queue gets rowdy use a ski pole, umbrella or a net stick (I think snowbirds were SPM poles). Once I got the stick I stopped having complaints from management about queue management and lift lines were cleared so much faster. I went from seeing Gadzoom have 45min to 1 hour lines to maybe 30 minutes. Customers seem to hate having queue management but it really is the only way to avoid lines
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also to respond to sombody, 100% correct, the ONLY lift at snowbird I could say that with 100% certainty couldnt handle the crowds it recieved it was mineral basin.
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About a third of the chairs actually get parked in the top terminal with the remainder on the parking rail and in the bottom terminal.
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I agree with another commenter, the mismanagement of the line causes a lot of the loading issues this lift sees. If they had an attendant directing traffic all the time, and used the queueing gates that are installed, I believe it would stop less.
Case in point is weekend mornings/days, when the line is actively managed. The lift has had a big impact on crowds during those times vs. last season, and it’s common to make it a whole ride without a stop.
LikeLike
I have skied the NEW SIX PACK at Meadows since it’s inception. I have skied at Meadows at least the last 20 years. I have a new name for the new lift and that is “STOP SIX”. I does not matter if it is day or night, the “STOP SIX” stops on the clock every 4or5 minutes. Yea, that is what I would expect after forking over $12million USD. Yea, the Portland Bone heads are part of the problem. Leitner/Poma technical service and Meadows Management apathy drive the “STOP SIX”. Should I send in my resume to complete this installation?
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you should ski more often to get a larger sample size in your opinions
a lift op told me they do lengthy, 5-7 minute slow runs, to do ramp work
you ever work at a ski area or on a lift, ya, didn’t think so…
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Yeah, you sound like a regular at meadows. ENTITELED. New lifts always have problems bud. Don’t blame anyone other than your janky ski resort bud.
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For the record, the stopping issues are a mechanical issue due to a decision poma made during manufacturing and construction.
the queuing gates are left open because when they do actually run, there are more stops and more people getting hit by chairs. They are left open to reduce stops and misloads.
Poma made design decisions against the recommendations of the meadows maintenance team and it’s resulted in a poorly functioning machine.
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Are you aware of, or are you able to elaborate about, what those decisions were? Very curious to hear but understand if you can’t share.
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Why did they get carrier parking for this lift when on one of their instagram posts from a while ago I saw the chairs for this lift parked inside the bottom terminal.
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Short answer, so they can pull all the chairs off the line. It does have terminal parking, I don’t know if they park all the chairs every night but the bottom parking structure supports what physically can’t be stored in the terminals (36 chairs on the rail/30 chairs in each terminal).
Could they remove ten or so chairs, increase the chair spacing thus expanding loading intervals to reduce miss loads?….they sure could.
As for the ignorance in the past few comments above, the lift was built exactly as Meadows wanted. There’s a video on YouTube with the GM explaining all the quirkiness behind the design. For those who haven’t witnessed a 6 pack running 3,600 pph for greater than 4 hours without a stop, it takes about 5-7 decently experienced employees and militant load board obedience. There’s as much responsibility on the rider as there is the staff.
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This is what I thought as well. I was hoping to get the comment above my last one substantiated, but it does not look like that will happen.
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This is completely Mount Hood Meadows fault for not doing the configuration that Leitner Poma recommended for this lift. If they had done what Leitner Poma recommended, this lift wouldn’t have been as quirky as it is.
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can you elaborate? The biggest issues I’ve seen are related to the lack of active queue management, which comes down to understaffing. Curious how MHM’s spec varies from LP’s recommendations.
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I believe that Leitner Poma suggested that capacity be lower for easier loading for the lift but Mount Hood Meadows did not listen to Leitner Poma’s recommendations and made it a very high capacity six pack and as a result of this, their much less likely to load a chair to capacity unless they were to run the lift at reduced speed. The benefits of having a lower capacity is that it gives skiers and riders much more time to load a chair properly at normal speed. One thing Meadows could do in the future is they could do is make this lift have in line loading, add a loading carpet, or maybe just lower the capacity or this lift, maybe that would help reduce misloads for this lift, and as you mentioned before, Mount Hood Meadows is very bad when it comes to managing their queues properly.
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So just chair spacing? That’s easily adjusted. Personally I haven’t felt it was any more difficult to load than other detachable lifts.
The lack of queue management is consistent with MHM ops prior to this lift. There are some lifties on staff who can manage that queue, and some who can’t, but it’s total bedlam when they don’t staff the line at all.
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A very high capacity six pack; what a contrast to Timberline’s fleet of low capacity HSQs
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MHX went on a 3 hour maintenance hold today. Now, there’s a carrier with a mangled bar out on the bottom parking rail, and commenter(s) on Meadows’ social media posts are claiming to have seen it fall off the lift. Has anyone heard anything about this?
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In an Instagram post comment, Meadows replied the following: “Yesterday snowshed from the parking rail slid off and landed on an empty chair coming into the terminal. It took lift maintenance more than 45 minutes to get the chair unstuck. Patrol started evacuating the chairs and once we got the chair unstuck we started the lift again and guests were able to offload as normal.”
From their response, it doesn’t sound like it fully fell off, but was damaged enough that it couldn’t enter the station and they had to remove the chair to keep operating the lift.
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