6 replies to this topic

[skierdude9450]

In this picture of friendly giant, there is a gondola car on it, making it an early chondola. But also there is what appears to be a Yan bubbled chair.

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[edmontonguy]

The Gondola cars and Bubbled chair were only on the line during the summer. Lake Louise ran a sightseeing operation on the Friendly Giant up until a few years ago when the Glacier express was used for these trips up the mountain. As a rider you were offered the choice of a gondola cabin, bubbled chair or open chair for the ride. Though it is a "chondola" it never operated as a skilift in this configuration.

[skierdude9450]

Yeah. Interesting combination. So, I guess Quicksilver wasn't the only bubbled chair by Yan. You're right, in the winter pictures there were only regular chairs.

[WBSKI]

I posted some closeups of the Friendly Giant bubbles before.

http://www.skiingbc....anhsqchairs.htm

[edmontonguy]

As far as the origin of those bubbled chairs goes, i'm not too sure. I don't think that they were a custom order by Lake Louise as there are probably only a handful of them. Likely they were inherited from Quicksilver. If anyone knows more about the history of scenic rides at LL please share. As far as i know the old gondola used to run scenic rides in the summer, so when it was finally removed from service the friendly giant replaced it.

[WBSKI]

this is off topic but i didnt want to start a new topic, does LL still operate the Olympic Chair? Its not on their new interactive trail map.

[tcs]

I have some advertising brochures which show the summer gondola cabins at LL. They only held two folks and had some weird seating layout where one person faced forward and the other downhill. I was wondering at the time (10 years ago?) whether that was the only "lift" which ran 3 different types of carriers. ??

What year was that lodge at the bottom built?

Cheers, TCS