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YAN Triple France – offset tower!
http://www.summer-in...airlift%202.htm

Garaventa fixed quad with moving loading
http://www.ropetrans...a/sf_gross6.htm

Ryan B

I guess that's one of the few lifts Yan built in Europe, then.

We used to have two lifts with carpet loading at Crystal- the old Midway Shuttle (Poma fixed quad) and old Chair 9 (CTEC fixed triple). It worked alright, but on C-9 the carriage moved several feet on a stop while the carpet did not. That caused problems, as you might imagine. One season we actually just put snow on it because we had problems synchronising the carpet with the lift.

Well the Midway Shuttle only had its conveyer for 2 season before the six pack replaced it. Did Loup Loup get the conveyer by any chance?

Wow, conveyor systems... I did not know that. They had to have gone in after I worked there and then they were removed before I went back to ski there.

That could be. No, Midway had the conveyor for three seasons; my first winter as a liftie (1994) it still had a normal ramp, but it had the conveyor during 1995-6, '96-7, and '97-8. Loup loup did not get the carpet; it remains at Crystal where it serves as the ski school lift. C-9's carpet was scrapped.

What is the benifit of carpet loading?

the big benefit i can see is that the loading process would be a lot more refinned and it would make it easier for skiiers to reach the loading poit as some lifts have a far length to go to get to this point

The theory behind carpet loading is that the relative speed of the passengers versus the lift is reduced, making it easier to load. (If a carpet moves at 200 FPM and the lift at 500, the loading speed is reduced to 300. The same theory applies to detachables.) The reality is that skiers are a conservative bunch, and tend to try to skate or walk on the carpet. This results in multiple stops, perhaps more than you'd see on a conventional ramp. Headaches for the operators abound, as well as stories to be told over beer. I once had a very large skier on C-9 freak out and jump off the carpet, landing square on my foot and breaking the big toe. His deal was that he couldn't balance on a moving carpet. I wonder about him...

Did you claim L&I on that one John?

Yes I did. I certainly wasn't going to pay for the doctor visit myself, although all he told me was 'yup, it's broken'. There isn't much you can do for a broken toe, apparently- just tape it to the neighbouring toe and move on.

In Australia we have a Doppelmayr with a loading carpet. Because of the carpet we can run the chair at 2.6m/s as opposed to 2.2m/s for without the carpet. Some people certainly freak out on their first time, but this chair actually gets less stops than neighbouring chirs without a loading carpet.

It is basically a quicker ride to the top without the expense of a detatch, acknowledging that a detatch would run much faster than 2.6m/s.

Well on the topic of the Yan those offset towers aren't really that rare as Alta has a bunch especailly on Germania.

There are a bunch of them on the Supreme lift too (alta)

Ryan B mentioned this in another post, but I'll recap it here. Kunczinski used the offset towers as part of his overall engineering viewpoint, which was that the light side (the unloaded or downhill side) did not need as much support since it had much less load. He had quite a few lifts with these towers on them, mainly the steeper ones where the light side would be all combo towers anyway. It was judged as cheaper and easier, plus the lifts with ski-under capability didn't have a tower smack in the middle of the run. In Colorado you can see this theory at work at Loveland (chairs 1 and 2) and A-Basin (Palavicini) for starters. Old B-1 lift at Copper, for those who have seen it (I haven't) apparently had a few as well.

The only problem with those towers it seems is busting the rime of the sheaves and stuff. I looked at one of the towers at Bachelor, and man did it look scary to work on that type of tower.

Your right Supreme has a lot of those towers as well

Certainly wouldn't want to download on the Supreme lift

I'll see if i can get a picture to prove my point

the olympic chair and the Big Red Express at Whistler, both have offset towers.

Big Red only has a small one for keeping the chairs on the downhill side from hitting the snowbanks.

Well the Big Red's lift line and towers are still Yan, not Doppelmayr except the towers next to the terminals.