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The lowest clearance chair I have seen is High Campbell at Crystal Mountain.
This post has been edited by Skier: 12 July 2006 - 07:43 PM

Skier, on Jul 12 2006, 11:41 PM, said:

Crystal Mountain MI has the record for the lowest chair clearence. The buck chair is the lowest
 cpquad.jpg (100.89K)
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You can touch the ground and they have plowed out below the line before even though they do not get that much snow to begin with.

Close second goes to the Loki triple at crystal. I remember an out of control skier whacked a post and about 4 of 5 people jumped off of the lift.  DSC01558.JPG (1.07MB)
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One section of the Big Red Express at Whistler has to be shoveled out though the rest of the line is well off the ground. Powder Chair at Big White has the entire line roped off though it's not as bad as the other chairs pictured here.

Skier, on Jul 12 2006, 07:41 PM, said:

Thats about the same clearance of the former chair 2 at Breck. It was one that people would frequently jump off.

The lowest clearance I've ever seen is Palmer @ Timberline, but that's because of snow, not short towers.

This year Cornice at Kirkwood almost had an extra ramp. We got more and more snow and it got closer and closer to the line, then the next weekend a snowcat had plowed it all out but the section was roped off.

the lowest chair i have ever seen would be the summit double at gore mountain. its not that the lift is short or anything, but when every chair is full, the lift line sags, and your feet can actualy touch the ground, i assume this is due to a issue with the hydralic tension system. hasnt been fixed in 2 years tho.

The top two towers or so of the Crown Point lift at DV are close enough to the ground that you can lean off and touch the ground with your ski even if ther snow isn't that high. There's no run underneath, so it doesn't really matter

About halfway up the Peak Chair at Whistler, the snow comes close in January, Febuary. I think they shovel it out.

The Red chair here has several roped off sections, as well as a particularly long span when loaded you can put your skis on the ground.

Ski Baba, a Borvig double at Mount Snow, has very short towers. I think it's the only chair lift in Vermont that doesn't have restraint bars. The Evac equipment for that lift consists of a 6 foot step ladder. Usually people bailed out long before we got there with the ladder.

We've had to rope off portions of Northside's Line because of the bellys in the line and the increasing snowpack. Also there's a wind drift in between tower 15 and 16 (I think) on Empire Express that has to be roped off because it's underneath the line.

ANSI B77 code requires minimum of 13 feet of clearance as measured from the top of the chair seat to the snow surface for areas open for skiing and a minimum of 5 feet for areas closed to skiing - note the penalty box roped around the 1st photo at Crystal.

Crystal definately does not have 5 feet, I can sometimes touch the ground with my skis, and my legs aren't that long. I don't really know what they can do about it, either. It snows a lot, groomers can't get up there, and the chair was probably designed for high winds. I don't think it is very practical to shovel either.

Ski Baba, Mount Snow has the lowest I have ever seen. Like the one at Crystal, they need to rope off under the chair.

Schweitzer's Great Escape HSQ is also pretty low to the ground.

During '98-'99 most chairs at Baker were below snow level
Tower 5 on H-lift is close enough that one can almost touch the seat bottom in the summer, and definitely in the winter. At least several times a year we have people bail off there.

Two years ago they had to dig out the bottom section of Ruby at DV, and there was a part roped off in the trees near the top

The River Run Gondola is really low at the first tower. They had to dig it out last time I was there which was this past Christmas.
This post has been edited by Lift Kid: 15 July 2006 - 12:39 PM

floridaskier, on Jul 15 2006, 02:57 AM, said:

Yeah I remember that...we had to pull some chairs offline so a cat could come in there and push some snow out...that was a pretty amazing season.