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Lake Louise


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#1 SkiKC

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Posted 08 September 2018 - 02:07 PM

Anyone familiar with Lake Louise know anything about the old Murray-Latta double?
I surmise it was Olympic when it was still spinning, and Peter's records indicate it was removed in 2004 I believe, but I came up there in early summer of 2017 and was surprised to still find the bottom terminal more or less intact, save for a mess of sheaves out of line on the bottom few towers.
Obviously it does not run and hasn't in many, many years, but why wasn't it completely removed after retirement? Park Service permits? Further development plans with the lift line?

Also on the topic - how are summer ops handled? The summer lift seems to be a functional 4-CLD in the winter, but we rode it as a Chondola in the summer. Is there extra gear in the terminals that allows this, or does the resort staff just pull some of the chairs, respace the line, and add cabins from the gondola to open it for the summer?

This post has been edited by SkiKC: 08 September 2018 - 02:08 PM


#2 teachme

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Posted 10 September 2018 - 12:57 PM

Hi SkiKC,

Both Olympic and Eagle are kind of still in place, but no cable or chairs and as you can see have not run for a very long time. My guess on why it was not removed involves using it for negotiation for new lifts - we will remove this one if you let us build a new one. That said after reading the Master Plan approved 2 years ago I saw nothing of the sort.

As for Glacier chair they just move cabins from the gondi over and run it with them. I do not know if chairs are taken off, but assume so as spacing and number of 'units' seems the same. If you look close you can see they apply new chair numbers in summer to keep numbering consistent. I am not sure if the grips stay with the gondi cabins are they use glacier grips - but was wondering myself and will have a look when I am next up.

#3 Mike12164

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Posted 19 November 2018 - 11:07 PM

Construction in national parks is no joke, it would cost an insane amount of money to remove the old lifts, plus once a lift is removed they would have to re-negotiate with the park service if they ever wanted to use that right of way again for a new lift. I believe this is why most of the towers from the old Von Roll Gondola still stand today.

Of course of they are only allowed to replace obsolete equipment, not upgrade it so capacity would have to match the old lifts if they were to be replaced. This is one reason why the chair spacing on Top of The World and Sunshine's Tee-Pee LX is so wide, they had to match capacity of lifts with smaller chairs.





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