46 replies to this topic

[aug]

Scariest time on a chair lift in a work chair or regular chair? hmmm regular chair ,it was on a riblet chair in the nw that had (at that time one of the longest and highest spans i have ever seen in the states ), fully loaded line , full speed estop , i tell you that lift stopped on a dime and the heavy side undulated nearly 60 feet up then down etc. etc. truly an e- ticket ride. in the last 6 years this lift has modified to eliminate the high span. work chair : having your radio battery die unexpectedly while you are underway and trying to break the brittle bars as you go by a tower to stop the chair and to let the operator know that something is not right

[Emax]

Falling 30 ft. from a tower

[liftmech]

Now that we're including work chairs, I've twice had an operator not respond to a radio call. Once because his stereo was to loud- we took it away from him (after the lift finally stopped four towers later and we climbed down and walked the rest of the way). The other was when the operator was actually sitting in the truck (again listening to the stereo) at least twenty yards from the controls. We were coming into the terminal and my work partner and I began to unclip our fall pro so we could jump out if necessary.

[Zage]

The scariest thing that happened to me was on the Tamarack double at Castle mountain. I was 8 and I always had trouble loading that lift because it was fast for a FG and the seat pads were slippery, then when I loaded it and I didn't get on properly and my dad was trying to keep me from falling then the lift operator stopped the lift after tower 1 and the jerking motion caused my dad to lose grip and me to fall.

[djspookman]

I have had a few scary moments:

-while night skiing at stowe, I swear our gondola was going to hit the last tower (but never did) due to high winds

-Our chair almost hit the tower on the Jordon Bowl Quad at Sunday River one winter when i was there (again, due to high winds)

-8 years ago on Madonna 1 at Smuggs, it was so windy I didn't open the safety bar until I got to the top platform, then got blown off the chair. (I was one of the last to load that day)

-rode around the bullwheel on Chair 6 at Breck in december with my sit-ski student-his chair got stuck to the seat of the carrier somehow, so I kicked the safety gate and the lift stopped because the operator wasn't all that quick to figure out what was going on (or maybe everything happened so fast he didn't have time to react)

-last weekend at Smuggs, the Sterling chair stopped a few times on the way up it in the afternoon and each time it stopped I swear it had at least a 15 foot rollback. That didn't leave a happy feeling in my stomach at all!

dave

This post has been edited by djspookman: 11 January 2006 - 10:56 AM

[aug]

is the sterling chair a top drive w / bottom tension?

djspookman, on Jan 11 2006, 10:54 AM, said:

I have had a few scary moments:

-while night skiing at stowe, I swear our gondola was going to hit the last tower (but never did) due to high winds

-Our chair almost hit the tower on the Jordon Bowl Quad at Sunday River one winter when i was there (again, due to high winds)

-8 years ago on Madonna 1 at Smuggs, it was so windy I didn't open the safety bar until I got to the top platform, then got blown off the chair. (I was one of the last to load that day)

-rode around the bullwheel on Chair 6 at Breck in december with my sit-ski student-his chair got stuck to the seat of the carrier somehow, so I kicked the safety gate and the lift stopped because the operator wasn't all that quick to figure out what was going on (or maybe everything happened so fast he didn't have time to react)

-last weekend at Smuggs, the Sterling chair stopped a few times on the way up it in the afternoon and each time it stopped I swear it had at least a 15 foot rollback. That didn't leave a happy feeling in my stomach at all!

dave

[Yaoma]

line work with co worker calling fro next tower while still clipped into the tower
ripped him right out of the work chair thank god i had a raido to call the stop

[djspookman]

aug, on Jan 11 2006, 03:24 PM, said:

is the sterling chair a top drive w / bottom tension?

nope, just the other way around; bottom drive, huge concrete counterweight for tension on top

dave

[djspookman]

djspookman, on Jan 12 2006, 07:50 AM, said:

nope, just the other way around; bottom drive, huge concrete counterweight for tension on top

dave

The Sterling lift's top terminal is silimar to this one:

dave

This post has been edited by djspookman: 12 January 2006 - 08:42 AM

[aug]

djspookman, on Jan 12 2006, 04:50 AM, said:

nope, just the other way around; bottom drive, huge concrete counterweight for tension on top

dave

I was curious because I have seen lifts with this configuration when fully loaded surge and have some rollback due to the braking action of the top drive bullwheel. When the line stops and the load wants to go back down the hill the cwt. can move a considerble distance. Athough the lift feels as if it is rolling back the drive sheave (BW) actually never moves after the stop. It is the movement of the cwt. that causes the line to feel as if it is rolling back . Remember that for every foot the cwt moves the haul rope will move two feet .This effect would be felt most at the bottom of the lift.

[djspookman]

aug, on Jan 12 2006, 04:33 PM, said:

I was curious because I have seen lifts with this configuration when fully loaded surge and have some rollback due to the braking action of the top drive bullwheel. When the line stops and the load wants to go back down the hill the cwt. can move a considerble distance. Athough the lift feels as if it is rolling back the drive sheave (BW) actually never moves after the stop. It is the movement of the cwt. that causes the line to feel as if it is rolling back . Remember that for every foot the cwt moves the haul rope will move two feet .This effect would be felt most at the bottom of the lift.

That makes sense now that you say that-I have seen the counterweight on the old top of the madonna chair move quite a bit when the lift stopped (pre-2003, as CTEC came in and put a "traditional" bullwheel on the top instead of the terminal show above)

dave

[liftmech]

aug, on Jan 12 2006, 02:33 PM, said:

I was curious because I have seen lifts with this configuration when fully loaded surge and have some rollback due to the braking action of the top drive bullwheel. When the line stops and the load wants to go back down the hill the cwt. can move a considerble distance. Athough the lift feels as if it is rolling back the drive sheave (BW) actually never moves after the stop. It is the movement of the cwt. that causes the line to feel as if it is rolling back . Remember that for every foot the cwt moves the haul rope will move two feet .This effect would be felt most at the bottom of the lift.

Old chair 9 ar Crystal (WA) would do that. It was a top drive, bottom tension as well, and I remember people standing on the load board who got clocked by the chair in front of them as the carriage rolled back.

Yaoma, on Jan 11 2006, 04:25 PM, said:

line work with co worker calling fro next tower while still clipped into the tower
ripped him right out of the work chair thank god i had a raido to call the stop

Glad I'm not the only one who's done that. I forgot to unclip from tower 23 on Baker's old chair 6. The funny thing is, I don't recall it being especially scary, probably because you really don't fall all that far with a 6' lanyard. My brand-new coworker was plenty scared, thogh I just hung there while I waited for the guys on the next lift over to grab the evac kit. Of course, there was plenty of for them after they stopped laughing.

[Bergstrom]

Holding a heavy 3 ton jack that raped around my legs like an octopus, I backed up to the 4th service platform step. There were only three on that tower.....

[skiersage]

I saw something on hanson hills' T-bar that could be scary. It was running fine and then one of the sheaves on tower 3 just froze up. It was very audible too. So I politely told one of the ski patrolers what was up and the fun began. It took them about ten minutes to acknowledge the fact that it was broken and that it needed to be shut down.

[djspookman]

Saturday I was at Sunday River with my students at the disabled ski team race that the mountain was hosting, so we were riding the Locke Mountain Triple most of the morning since it was the chair at the bottom of the race course and had no lines. I usually ride up the chair with the mono-skiier (sit-skiier) to help him load/unload, so we hopped onto the lift and headed up the mountain. For some reason, his bucket (sit ski seat) seems to hang up on fixed grip lifts and not detachables, but we've ridden this lift before without problems before, so we figured we give it a shot anyway. Besides, usually he just gets hung up on it, then the lifty up top will just STOP the lift and help me pull the kid off the chair on the ramp (or just past the ramp).

Well we arrived up at the top station and he tries to hop off the chair, but is stuck, so I gave him a big shove, and nothing happened, so we both hunched back into the chair and rode around the bullwheel, so I kicked the safety wand, only to have it fly off to my surprise! Apparently it was just sleeved over a stub so the long wand went flying, and the stub of the switch didn't move at all, so the lift didn't stop. So I figured, no big deal, the lifty will hit the stop button. Well we waited, but he still didn't hit it. He finally noticed that something was going wrong and hit it, but not until we were well over the downhill safety net. I was a little upset at him for this, but told him it was no big deal that we had to ride back down the chair. (my wife was in the chair behind us and later said that the lifty didn't move a muscle the whole time this was happening, even after we had ridden around the bullwheel!!) So down we went. I thought to myself, no big deal, I've downloaded before, so we'll just get off the lift at the bottom and ski over to the quad and try that instead... ..

The Locke Mountain Triple has a mid-station, but it is unused. This didn't bother me at all until we were about 4 chairs from the mid-station and I noticed that the snow level on the platform was about 4" from the bottom of the chairs. I got really scared really quick!!! About the same time the chair in front of us got to the mid-station, a mtn ops person arrived on a snowmachine with a shovel in hand. I thought to myself, "cool, they're here and they'll radio the lift attendant at the bottom and have them stop the lift so they can shovel it out so we won't get hung up on the platform".

We had no such luck.

We yelled down the the mtn ops person about the situation, and all they said was "hold on!".. argh.. I guess that's all we could do, so I swung my feet up to the left as high was they'd go, and my student braced himself as good as he could (as his ski and sit-ski hangs down pretty low). The chair swung back about a two feet, enough for me to be looking down at the drop off on the other side of the platform. UGH. We managed to hold on some how as the chair swung back and then went up as we passed over the platform. After we left the platform, the chair bounced up and down a bit as we headed down the line. We got to the bottom and the lift attendant stopped the lift and gave us the option to go back up, so I replied, "you're F@#$%n' guy up top is sleeping, so no way!" He apologized for him, which diffused my anger and helped me realize that it wasn't his fault, it was the guy on top's fault for not paying attention. I appologized to him for screaming at him. I also mentioned that they should shovel off that mid-station since we almost fell off the lift because of it, so he said he'd send someone up to take care of it. He asked me if there was anything else he could do for us and I just said no and went over to the HSDQ with long lines... (Kudos to this guy for beign so calm and helpful!!!!)


Three things I got really pissed about were:

-the CRAPPY safety switch on top (hello.. don't go cheap on safety!!!)
-the horrible reaction time from the lifty at the top station, as he should have hit the stop button before we even made it around the bullwheel
-the huge amount of snow on the midstation platform, considering it had been DAYS since the last storm, although I guess it could have been blow-over from snowguns. Even so, it should have been taken care of before the lift was open to the public.

Needless to say, that was defiantely the scariest thing that has even happened to me on a lift! The whole time as we were heading over the mid-station platform I was thinking that we're probably de-rope the chair, or worse, our chair may detach itself....

dave

This post has been edited by djspookman: 13 February 2006 - 08:32 AM

[lastchair_44]

At Deer Valley if an operator sends a "bullwheel rider" back down to the bottom he/she gets written up. It's pretty serious because as you described it can be very dangerous. Personally, I've never had a scary ride on a lift, but I did have a scary ride in the work cart on Deer Crest last summer. We were replacing the brittle bar and the boot on the depress in the middle of the line when we got a call from our driver that we needed to get moving because there was a storm moving over the cottonwoods and it was moving fast. We copied and said give us 5 minutes to get this brittle bar wired in and we'll call you for a start. When we called for our start it was getting pretty dark but nothing was really happening. Then all of a sudden we get up on the exposed portion of the line and the wind is howling and it's raining hard! Lightening strikes are getting closer so our driver asks us if we're comfortable with 300fpm and we replied "oh yeah get us the hell outta here!" Got to the top...said screw the tools and everything else in the basket and we made a run for it to the gondola building!

[skierdude9450]

Three things happned on the same night at Keystone, all equally scary. First as we were nearing the top of the River Run Gondola, it emergency stopped. You could hear the brakes at the upper station from 5 towers away. Then after about 15 minutes you could hear the brakes release. They were rolling the gondola back. We rolled backwards for about 50 feet and then stopped again. We remained stopped for another 10 minutes. Then, it started rolling back again. We went back for another 20 feet before stopping again for 5 minutes. The gondola finally started to move foward. When we got to the top, we learned that an alarm had gone off that a car had left the station incorrectly, so they had to back it up into the station and then back out onto the uphill side and run it through again. I decided to take Summit Express for the rest of the night.

Well guess what. At almost the exact same spot as where the gondola stopped, Summit Express made an emergency stop that almost threw all of us out of the chair. The lift had to be running 1150+ fpm that night, and it stopped within about 15 feet. I had about had it! So we took a few more runs and decided to take one last run up the gondola. Huge mistake. The gondola stopped again right before the top. I'm thinking "why God, why?" Luckilly it only stopped for about a minute and then started going again.

Another very scary moment was on Super Bee at Copper. It was an extremely windy day, and you know what that can do. The chairs were swinging and hitting into the towers. One after another.

One more. Back to Keystone. This was on Peru Express, and I couldn't have been more than 4. I fell at the top unloading platform and chair after chair, after chair were going over me. It took at least 10 chairs before the lift stopped. So, evidently I have had some very rough experiences at Keystone.

This post has been edited by skierdude9450: 21 February 2006 - 08:00 PM

[Kicking Horse]

A few things today.
This took place @ Winter Park today.

loading a Sit Ski can be very dangerous when the lift op does not slow / stop the lift as asked and he said ok...

Trying to unload a sit ski when people have fallen getting off the chair ahead of us. Lift op does not slow / stop lift. We ended up tripping the stop gate.

Oh And this one is not to offend anyone.

People who go FLYING down the mountain on a skinny run that is busy as crap.

This post has been edited by Kicking Horse: 26 February 2006 - 07:49 PM

[aug]

my old girl friend telling me she was pregnant while we were riding the silver mtn gondola.

[steveT]

The old eagle double chair at Lake Louise. About 3 years ago I got onto it and it stopped dead a second after we'd loaded - the chair was swung around pretty badly and then I fell out (though only fell about a metre and a bit)! Best of all... no apology from the liftie - didn't even let me join the front of the queue to get back on - had to go right to the back. Glad its been replaced by the gondi now though.