Arriving at the top station.Lower terminal and towers 1-3.View up the line.Top station with drive and parking rail.Breakover towers.Bottom terminal at Mid-Vail.Looking up from the base.Lower station from above.View back down the line.
Tower 6, the intermediate depression tower just above the bottom, was reused from the old Hunky Dory quad, and I think that also extends to the tower foundations (explaining why the towers are so closely spaced).
Are we really sure that Hunky Dory was even a yan? It’s listed as that everywhere, but upon closer inspection, that looks more like a re-used dopplemayr tower. And besides, why in the same year that the orient dopp HSQ went in would Vail decide to do a one-off installation with yan over 12 years since their last yan installation?
On second thought, when put alongside a picture of one of Beaver Creek’s Garaventa CTEC high speed quads that repurposed towers from a Doppelmayr triple, it does look like a Doppelmayr tower joint:
It’s kinda odd to tell if it was a Yan because tower 6 looks like a Doppelmayr tower tube and all the other towers look like normal CTEC towers with Yan ladders.
Tower 6 must’ve looked like this when Hunky Dory was an FGQ:
It would help if there were some pictures out there of Hunky Dory. There were seven years between Hunky Dory being built and it being replaced with the Wildwood Express so there have to be some pictures.
Come next year, this will feel like the oldest lift in this section of the mountain, since all of the lifts immediately around it will be Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr lifts that are 20 years newer than it.
When I initially skied Vail in the late 1970s, #3 was a Riblet double chair with bail style chairs and slatted seats, It was likely one of the original lifts installed in 1962. During this time there was a Yan triple chair serving #4 lift line the chairs were early/mid 70s style Yan chairs similar to those on Argentine, Bar UE, Mountain Chief, Blackjack, etc except triple- wide. I could kick myself for not getting a picture but I was a little kid back then and didn’t think of it. In 1985 when Doppelmayr built all of those HSQs, the former #4 lift, the Yan triple moved to #3 line to replace the old Riblet. Around 1988, #3 was changed to a FGQ by replacing the triple wide Yan chairs with Yan quad chairs similar to the chairs on former Elkhead lift at Steamboat. In 1995, the current CTEC HSQ was installed but many of the original Yan tower uprights were retained and the tower heads were replaced. The current lift is version 3.0 of #3.
This perfectly explains the Yan install at wildwood, but I’m still a bit puzzled since the towers definitely look more dopp than Yan. Maybe Dopp provided some new towers for when the Yan got relocated, and those ended up being the ones that survived until now.
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The old Garaventa-CTEC number stickers on the chairs were replaced with Vail-branded Doppelmayr style number stickers in 2007.
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Tower 6, the intermediate depression tower just above the bottom, was reused from the old Hunky Dory quad, and I think that also extends to the tower foundations (explaining why the towers are so closely spaced).
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Are we really sure that Hunky Dory was even a yan? It’s listed as that everywhere, but upon closer inspection, that looks more like a re-used dopplemayr tower. And besides, why in the same year that the orient dopp HSQ went in would Vail decide to do a one-off installation with yan over 12 years since their last yan installation?
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On second thought, when put alongside a picture of one of Beaver Creek’s Garaventa CTEC high speed quads that repurposed towers from a Doppelmayr triple, it does look like a Doppelmayr tower joint:
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Take a look at tower 3 in the second picture down, those look like Yan ladder steps to me. CTEC would have replaced a handful of towers
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Does anyone have any pics of the old Hunky Dory quad?
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I rode the old hunky dory it was a Yan quad and painfully slow
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It’s kinda odd to tell if it was a Yan because tower 6 looks like a Doppelmayr tower tube and all the other towers look like normal CTEC towers with Yan ladders.
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Tower 6 must’ve looked like this when Hunky Dory was an FGQ:
It would help if there were some pictures out there of Hunky Dory. There were seven years between Hunky Dory being built and it being replaced with the Wildwood Express so there have to be some pictures.
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I could find the queues for the lift and part of the bottom terminal for this lift
It’s in this 1989 New York Times article.
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Here’s a photo that shows more of the lift:
https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=953835&q=ski+colorado
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That’s actually Arrow and the Zephyr Express at Winter Park.
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Come next year, this will feel like the oldest lift in this section of the mountain, since all of the lifts immediately around it will be Leitner-Poma and Doppelmayr lifts that are 20 years newer than it.
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When I initially skied Vail in the late 1970s, #3 was a Riblet double chair with bail style chairs and slatted seats, It was likely one of the original lifts installed in 1962. During this time there was a Yan triple chair serving #4 lift line the chairs were early/mid 70s style Yan chairs similar to those on Argentine, Bar UE, Mountain Chief, Blackjack, etc except triple- wide. I could kick myself for not getting a picture but I was a little kid back then and didn’t think of it. In 1985 when Doppelmayr built all of those HSQs, the former #4 lift, the Yan triple moved to #3 line to replace the old Riblet. Around 1988, #3 was changed to a FGQ by replacing the triple wide Yan chairs with Yan quad chairs similar to the chairs on former Elkhead lift at Steamboat. In 1995, the current CTEC HSQ was installed but many of the original Yan tower uprights were retained and the tower heads were replaced. The current lift is version 3.0 of #3.
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This perfectly explains the Yan install at wildwood, but I’m still a bit puzzled since the towers definitely look more dopp than Yan. Maybe Dopp provided some new towers for when the Yan got relocated, and those ended up being the ones that survived until now.
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Doppelmayr did add some tours and CTEC replaced/ added a few towers
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