9 replies to this topic

[OnPiste]

Big blow in Western Washington on the 15th. Here's a video of the removal of a few trees that landed on Kehr's Chair (The Chair Formerly Known as Big Chief) at Stevens Pass: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=1C_mfCDTQjM

What sort of damage is caused by trees landing on the haul rope? The last two trees to come off seemed to bounce the haul rope and adjacent carriers a bit. Would that be enough to derope the nearest sheaves? Is there an inspection protocol for such events, or is it just clean up the mess and inspect everything? Would a visual inspection of the haul rope be enough, or would it require some NDT technique? How are the standards for such inspections established--is it along the lines of ASTM or are there state/local rules or is it a combination? I'm not a lawyer, honest--just curious about interesting machinery of all sorts.


Bill D.

[Peter]

The motor room roof also blew off Triple 60 at the Summit.

[aug]

The Haul rope is very tough and flexible and a good visual inspection would be all that is needed. However the sheave trains are not so flexible . A large tree falling on the line can damage line equipment and cause the dreaded inside derail,in which on some lifts will not be detected by the tower safety systems. No there is not a standard inspection procedure other than using common sense and trying to find any damage that could have been caused by the tree fall. I have seen from no damage what so ever to tens of thousands of dollars damage. If a tree falls on a lift and no one is there to here it .... does it make a sound ?

[teachme]

Mt. Seymore in North Vancouver had that happen in the 90s and the lift and terrain it served never reopened. It was marginal snow area anyway, so not a great loss.  I understand that the tree knocked a few towers out of alignment or maybe even bent some tower heads. May have also been some damage to the top or bottom stations. Not sure but money was needed to fix it and it was not worth it.




TME

[Andy1962]

Skier, on 18 November 2010 - 08:55 PM, said:

The motor room roof also blew off Triple 60 at the Summit.

When you say "motor room" , I assume that you mean this part of the ski lift:
http://www.skilifts....unterweight.jpg

which is is fact the counterweight. Highly likely this is what you were really referring to.

The lower station of Triple 60 looks like this:
http://www.skilifts....owerstation.jpg

I somehow doubt that the roof got ripped off the actual motor room, (unless you have pictures)
(Best if you quote the source when you start making statements about things happening at ski areas unless you work there and say so in your posting.

[Peter]

Andy, this picture I saw is here: http://www.snowboard...?showtopic=7309 The caption is "Triple 60 motor room roof 60 feet away." I should have remembered Triple 60's motor room roof is metal and noticed that the person who took the picture labeled it wrong.

Regardless, the tone of your post seems awfully harsh.

[Allan]

We've had trees derope 6 plus towers at once... Other trees have tired to eject counterweights from their homes & smash their sheaves, and others damage sheave assemblies and carriers!

[yosemitemtb]

My boss tells a tale of trying to convince an area manager that the wind was to strong to operate back in the 1980's. While they argued about it, they both watched a large tree fall across a Hall double causing significant damage as the counterweight crashed through the roof and damaged the sheave structure.

[stmad12]

I belive that this may have been done intentionally to the Eskimo Double in Winter Park. Google Videos has the video. It had some pretty bad effect on that lift. Then again, it was a very old Riblet Center-Pole.
This may help, or it may not.

S

[missouriskier]

Sorry for replying to this topic so late, but I thought you might like to see this picture from the Arizona Snowbowl's Photo Gallery of the Agassiz Lift. It says it was taken on 12/23/10. The lift was unhurt.