Skilifts.org / SORT Forum

Hi, on the Doppelmayr website they show pictures of their HS chairlifts, some of them being HS eight packs. I have never seen any eight-packs while skiing, and it appears on the Dopp website that the eight-packs are in Europe. Does anyone know if L-P makes high speed eight packs or any division of Poma?

Poma used to have a great website at www.poma.net, but now all that comes up is a mailing address. That said, I do think they had 8 packs in Europe

There's a Doppelmayr 8-pack at Perisher Blue in Australia too

Hey Tyler, the Poma website still exists.

Too bad, I would have loved to see the other website. I had checked a long time ago when I first started to get interested in lifts and indeed just found an address. That was a few years ago. They probably got rid of it once LPOA got their website.

There's a site for LP at www.pomagroup.com but it's only about US lifts. The old one had a lot more on European stuff. Anyone else remember it?

Hey, I think you might want to try again, floridaskier. I found an excellent website if you click on the logo. After that, go to the bottom and ckick on the British flag to get english.

It is still there.www.poma.net

I found somewhere on the website the picture of a Poma eight-pack, so there are some, and will stay in Europe unless someone here wants one. They do use their single Omega T grip. But I'm not sure if LPOA makes them.
This post has been edited by highspeedquad: 09 February 2005 - 02:37 PM

If any resort chooses to buy a HSE here in North America, it will be shipped over from Europe. Neither Doppelmayr CTEC or L-P of America manufacture eight packs.

Yes, there is not a great need here for eight-packs. Usually if a resort needs that capacity, they buy a gondi.

Gondola's have a lot lower hourly capacity than a HSE. Your average 8 person gondola has an hourly capacity of 2400 to 2800 pph while a HSE has over 4000 pph.

I'm arware of that, but they could have a gondola with larger cabins.

The First Poma Eight pack was installed in 2000 at Meribel (Les Trois Vallées) and features a Satelit terminal. The loading uses a conveyor as coordinating that many people can be tough. A Six pack genrally has about the same capacity as an 8 passenger gondola.

As cabin size increases so must scadence distance. The cadence on most gondolas is fairly small and in the terminals this leads to the gondolas being closer together the smaller the cadence online is. The only solution is to increase terminal speed to allow more a larger gap to be created to keep the same cadence in the terminal.

I have been on various amusement park rides where the loading platform turns at the same speed as the vehicle so you don't have to load on a "moving" vehicle. Is that the same system used?

There are loading carpets that use that system on chairs. I have most frequently seen them in Europe but there have been some resorts in the US that have used them. In their most efficient format they actualy start and pull the skier forward when loading gates open and get the skiers to just under the speed of the chair in the station and are still moving when the skiers load. The ones like the one at breck on the Beaver Run was horibly inefficient as it was a continously moving carpet that would just pull skiers forward when they had moved forward of the wait line.

That may be a good idea for gondolas but it could cause alot of people to fall in ski boots stepping from a stationary platform to a moving one.

At one m/s it might be moving quickly. I have been to the Beaver Run Superchair and don't remember a carpet of any sort.

highspeedquad, on Feb 9 2005, 07:06 PM, said:

I dont remember the years it was there but it only lasted a year or two. It was there the same time as the self-serve ticket readers.

BTW they never worked very well and required more staff to keep them up as it did to just hire ticket scanners.

There aren't really any practical situations that call for an 8-pack here in North America. Generally a 6-pack can do the same capicity, or maybe a bit less so it just doesn't make much sense to build them. Also unloading an 8pack must really suck because I know as a snowboarder getting off a 6 with a few other people can be tricky sometimes, so with 2 more people its gotta get tough.