8 replies to this topic

[Bogong]

 Here's a 1954 film of a "swiss made" single chair in New Zealand being opened by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1954, a year after he became the first person to climb Mt Everest.

Click here for video

Everest Conqueror Opens Chair Lift .  Sir Edmund Hillary opens the first chair lift on Mt Ruapehu providing easier access to the Whakapapa ski-field.

The alpine-style chairlift built by Swiss engineers allows skiers to get higher up Ruapehu where the snow is drier and deeper. 

Nearby Mt Ngauruhoe fumes with jealousy! Originally part of Pictorial Parade No 26. Duration: 03.52

[Richardo]

Bogong, on 06 June 2010 - 07:20 AM, said:

 Here's a 1954 film of a "swiss made" single chair in New Zealand being opened by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1954, a year after he became the first person to climb Mt Everest.

Click here for video

Everest Conqueror Opens Chair Lift .  Sir Edmund Hillary opens the first chair lift on Mt Ruapehu providing easier access to the Whakapapa ski-field.

The alpine-style chairlift built by Swiss engineers allows skiers to get higher up Ruapehu where the snow is drier and deeper. 

Nearby Mt Ngauruhoe fumes with jealousy! Originally part of Pictorial Parade No 26. Duration: 03.52

That looks suspiciously like some 'engineering' from Mr. Mueller!?!

[seilbahnbilder.ch]

It is definitly a Mueller!

[Diponza]

seilbahnbilder.ch, on 08 July 2010 - 09:21 AM, said:

It is definitly a Mueller!

Apparently that chairlift was 100% Mueller in that the company imported everything from Switzerland, including the specialist contractors. Does anyone know anymore information about this particular chairlift? I'm also interested in the other two (2) lifts (Staircase T- Bar and the No. 2 Chairlift) that Mueller designed and built subsequently at Ruapehu in 1955.

[seilbahnbilder.ch]

A few time ago, I got some pictures from Rowema (www.rowema.ch, succsessor company of Mueller) which show the chairlifts at Mt. Ruapehu.

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[Bogong]

Most of those pictures focus on the build up of rime on the lifts. Euro chairlift makers who built down here like Mueller (and later Doppelmayr and Pomagalski) couldn't believe the build up of rime (or sastrugi on ski tows as someone called it) that occurs in Australia and New Zealand. They sent out engineers from Europe to study it because they thought local resort owners were lying about the extent of the problem.

It wasn't such a problem on lifts made by the two local chairlift manufacturers or by Riblet (which built a few lifts down here as well), maybe they had worked out a way to deal with it?

[vons]

I would think that Riblet had some hard earned expereance building lifts with similar ice rime issues in the northwest US around the 50s-60s which they carried over to NZ

[Lift Dinosaur]

Not to be picky, but Rime and Sastrugi are 2 different things. Sastrugi is the ridges formed on the snow surface when wind erodes the soft snow leaving behind the harder snow.
I learned that term years ago when I was a Patroller and always like the sound of it!
Dino

[Bogong]

Oh we get lots of sastrugi here in Australia, Conditions are a bit similar to New England in the USA. Steep sided mountains with a domed area near the summit of a hill. The top of the slopes tends to be flatter and exposed to the sun which can melt the snow on warmer days. At night it freezes hard and when new snow falls the wind blows it into random clumps with icy ridges between the powder and corn snow.

You can't be a regular skier at most Australian resorts and not be familiar with sastrugi above the treeline. I just mentioned the phrase "sastrugi on ski tows" that a European engineer used to describe rime 40 years ago, because I thought it was weird phrasing.