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SkiBachelor, on Sep 24 2004, 08:06 PM, said:
Telluride uses it's Chondola to transport small gets down to the Sunshine Express and back up. Since most of the runs off the Sunshine Express are beginner runs, Telluride thought it would be a good idea to install a chondola that wouldn't allow small kids to fall out of a chair when they were downloading on the lift.
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Just to expand on Cammeron's explanation...
Telluride designed the lift with cabins and chairs because the lift not only serves as a ski lift but also as part of the transportation link between the "affordable" housing in the Meadows area (at the bottom of the lift) and the Mountain Village core (at the top). The lift runs from 0700 to 2400 hrs in lieu of shuttle buses. Children's ski school classes find the cabins an easy way to get young kids to the top of the hill without any of the worries about kids falling out of chairs.
The lift is a 1996 vintage Garaventa CTEC with long terminals to accomodate the extra time needed to unload a cabin and then load it all on one side of the terminal. As other posts point out, cabin unloading/loading occurs on one side of the terminal and then skiers have snow surface to work with on the other for loading/unloading.
