25 replies to this topic

[highspeedquad]

How often does a typical lift break down and how often does a resort have to fix anything on one of its lifts? I was curious because we are hearing about breaking lifts in a few places. Hopefully those are all that there will be for a while.

[poloxskier]

Good idea to move this. We were going .

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When all of you talk about all of these lifts breaking down, it makes me wonder how commom a lift breaks. I'm going to start a topic about that.

What do you consider "can be fixed quickly?" Like what type of problem and how quickly.

Its more that I have been skiing that long. 20 years with at least 30 days a year in Summit County. I have been lucky enough to never have to be evacuated from a lift. Fixed quickly I would reference as a repair that doesnt require an evacuation.

[Boeinglover]

I once heard from some very paranoid person I rode on a lift with in Copper that the Flyer always had a risk of breaking down and that in a few years they would replace it with another high speed quad. I didn't beleive him of course but I would like to hear from liftmech on this one.

[poloxskier]

There were only a few times while I was racing that there were serious problems with the Falcon at Breck. But there was always something small going wrong with it, almost on a daily basis. This was before the new improvements went into it so it's probably better now.

[edmontonguy]

The Sunshine Gondola broke down during last weekend and closed the resort for two days as the lift is the only way to access the hill. It was blamed on some sort of gearbox issues and cost sunshine hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

[highspeedquad]

Did the minor incidents with the Falcon have to do with the carriers? That was the only thing I was aware of that they upgraded.

Where is the Sunshine gondi, and why did they have to close down the resort? Was it a very crucial lift to their ops?

[Kicking Horse]

edmontonguy, on Feb 24 2005, 07:48 PM, said:

The Sunshine Gondola broke down during last weekend and closed the resort for two days as the lift is the only way to access the hill. It was blamed on some sort of gearbox issues and cost sunshine hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You would think that ther ewould be another way up to the mountain if that thing breaks down.....

[highspeedquad]

I just can't believe that it would completely shatter the ops. I would like to find a map, so where is it located?

[poloxskier]

highspeedquad, on Feb 24 2005, 08:52 PM, said:

Did the minor incidents with the Falcon have to do with the carriers? That was the only thing I was aware of that they upgraded.

Where is the Sunshine gondi, and why did they have to close down the resort? Was it a very crucial lift to their ops?
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I havent really payed attention to the upgrades I believe that the cadencing was changed to tires. But there were not too many problems just the same thing hapened alot. Like a wind speed switch that would malfunction and occasionaly stop the lift until it could be disabled. There were problems with the cadencing. Also not maintnance related but the chair is very prone to wind closures. There were also periodicaly motor and gearbox problems. The falcon also runs on diesel more often than any other lift I have been on.

[highspeedquad]

I didn't know that they changed to tire cadencing. I guess that if you look at the pics they have changed to tire from the chain. Well, the Falcon is pretty old, I guess it was time for upgrades. No more chain cadences at Breck, then.

[Allan]

Unscheduled maintenance, or breakdown maintenance doesn't happen very often unless you don't put the time and effort into the lift in the off-season. 95% of our down time is caused by some sort of electrical problem like a failed switch, or broken wire. Mechanical problems are few and far between. I can't speak for all resorts though! And maybe it's higher for resorts with detachables!

[Kelly]

A rule of thumb is - that reliability is proportional to time spent towards preventive maintenance - this would include "off season" and "in season" maintenance hours.
Other smaller factors are manufacturer, type of lift, length, age, staff knowledge and wisdom.
With age, older is a factor as well as a brand new lift with design and construction bugs to be worked out.

With the more stringent non-destructive testing and mandated maintenance schedules it can come very close to 1 hour of maintenance for 1 hour of running to the public.
If you include managers, mechanics and helpers it works out to be about 1 mechanic for each lift you have.

Not quite an answer to your question but hopefully it does shed some light on the topic.

[edmontonguy]

The Sunshine gondola is locted at the Sunshine Ski resort in Banff. The gondola is the only access lift to the mountain. It was recently rebuilt by L-P in 2001 so it shouldn't be having too many problems. The resort has though of plans to add an HSQ for backup because when the gondola is shut down for various reasons the only people who can ski are the ones staying at the inn on the hill.

The gondola runs from the parking area on the far left and rises about 500 m to the village in the right center.

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[ccslider]

At Telluride, our lift availablity goal was 99.75%. We'd track mechanical and electrical downtime events during hours of normal operation (operational stops and weather related downtime was tracked as a different category - you can't control wind events and avi holds).

Over a 1000 hour season (21 weeks x 7 days x 7 hours = 1029), 0.25% downtime equates to 2.5 hours. That translates to 1 minute and 3 seconds per day! My guess is that this sort of relialibility is pretty standard in the Industry.

[highspeedquad]

Well, I guess they did have to close it down if there was no other way to the trails. It is up and running now, I assume?

When L-P rebuilt it what exactly did they do. Scrap everything and start from scratch, modify it for new cabins, grips, etc?

[edmontonguy]

It was fixed in time for family day on monday though the word was the snow was amazing cause no one showed up on monday.

The lift which was originally a 6 seater Vonroll underwent changes by L-P which included new terminals some of which are housed in the old structures. Several of the first stage's towers were replaced to facilitate a more user-friendly loading platform. Otherwise new tower heads were placed on the old latice towers which included new line equipment. As well the all the old cabins were replaced by new Omega 3 cabins.

[highspeedquad]

So no changes to the grips were made? And did L-P put in new systems and stuff when they redesigned the terminals?

[edmontonguy]

all the terminals are now L-P Omegas which use the Omega grip. The old terminal housings were used as much of the original line was used for the lift.

[liftmech]

We had a downtime average of 1% last season; I don't know what that translates to in actual hours/minutes but I know it's pretty low. I would agree with Ryan that we probably put in an hour of maintenenace for every hour of operation, especially considering we do maintenance from May-November and we're open from November-April. There are a couple weeks at the beginning and end of the off-season where nothing much gets done, but we're hard at it all summer.
In general, our lift breakdowns run in three categories: electrical glitches, operator error, and Storm King. The last is simply because only about 10% of the riders on that lift know what they're doing, and the other 90% abuse the sticks when they load. A stick platter is going to have more downtime anyway because of the construction of the sticks (anyone know of any aluminum chairs? I didn't think so).
In regards to the Flyer having a risk of breaking down- I'd like to think I do a pretty good job taking care of it. Any lift, no matter how old, is going to break down at some point. But if I do my daily/weekly/semi-monthly inspections and maintenance, the lift should run just fine without any major headaches. And with the amount of PM that goes into our lifts, we hope to cut our downtime to 0.9% this season. I don't know if we'll make it, but we're trying.

[Doppeldork]

I would also like to add, that "break downs" don't really have a scheduale. You have so many differen't things that can cause down time. From a broken fork to a Catastrophic faliure. Most fixed grip chairs that are under 30 years old and platter lifts, as long as summer maintenance was done properly, are run em and forget em lifts. They are simple lifts and when a problem does occur, down time is minimal. Detachables are a whole differen't ball game. Depending on age, manufacturer, Grip type (DT, DS, poma), style of chair(bubble, cabin) will depict how much down time you have. Obviously the newer the chair the less down time. Don't get me wrong, brand new chairs have problems of their own. Even older ones are sometimes more reliable. But the more moving parts you have, the higher the chance that something will fail. Most "Lift not turning" calls are minor though and are fixed within minutes of a maintennce person being on scene.