51 replies to this topic

[Lift Dinosaur]

passengerpigeon, on 24 September 2015 - 04:10 AM, said:

The Georgian ski resort of Bakuriani has a few lifts that look like they were built during the height of the Dark Ages and haven't been repaired since. There is this single chairlift,

That single chair has some serious misalignment problems on towers 1 & 2 and from the sound of it all sheave liners need to be replaced!!
Dino

[passengerpigeon]

DonaldMReif, on 26 September 2015 - 10:14 AM, said:

The defunct South Ridge lift at Killington was unique. It was a triple chairlift, but the uphill line traveled diagonally away from the bottom terminal, made a midway turn with two bullwheels, then traveled to the top terminal. The downhill line was a straight shot from the top terminal to the bottom terminal. I think they'd planned to build a mid-station at the turn at one point, but this never saw the light of day.

The South Ridge triple was by no means unique. I can think of 2 triangular chairlifts in France, one of which was the Châtel-Conches fixed grip single, installed at the Châtel ski area in the 1960s by the Italian company Atesina. The lift started at the base of the current gondola (TC de Super-Châtel on this trail map), and passed through a loading/turning station at the base of the current Conches triple before following its alignment to a drive station just beside the gondola summit terminal. The lift then went downhill to the base area, running alongside the gondola line. In those days, skiing the terrain served by the gondola was problematic because the bottom third of Trail №20 (the section between the lower terminal of the Conches lift and the gondola base) is very narrow, causing the snow to get scraped off quickly by skiers snowplowing to slow down. Therefore, the management wanted to install a lift enabling skiers to do laps on the upper 2 thirds of the run (a very nice wide mogul field) without traversing along the lower third, or go back to the summit to download on the gondola if the lower third was unskiably icy. In addition, the Super-Châtel gondola could only carry 2 people per cabin in those days, so a lift to supplement the gondola's capacity would have also been a good idea. The Châtel management therefore decided to crack 2 turtles with 1 bird by installing a triangular chairlift which would both provide skiers with an alternate route from the gondola base to the summit and serve the upper 2 thirds of trail 20.
Unfortunately, the triangular shape in the line was too pronounced, and when the lift was first started, it kept slipping backwards because the drive bullwheel did not have enough surface contact with the haul rope. Therefore, the lift was never opened to the public and was removed soon afterwards.

This post has been edited by passengerpigeon: 27 September 2015 - 12:50 AM

[danm5000]

I am curious about this unusual ski tow mechanism....

More or less all we know about it is what can be seen in the photo. It was taken sometime in the early 1950s by a US Army Officer who was also apparently an avid photographer. And he lived in very many places throughout his career --- USA, Europe, Asia, etc.

My brother thinks this is somewhere in Germany, I think it looks more like Idaho. But we are both probably wrong. It sure looks unusual anyway, and it seems like the skiers are having a great time. Any comments or information would be appreciated!

Official site for photo: www.flickr.com/photos/46064258@N08/16701273065/in/photolist-rrQoBT

Some other photos from the same photographer: http://www.flickr.co...157650465907581

[passengerpigeon]

danm5000, on 03 November 2015 - 04:23 AM, said:

I am curious about this unusual ski tow mechanism....

More or less all we know about it is what can be seen in the photo. It was taken sometime in the early 1950s by a US Army Officer who was also apparently an avid photographer. And he lived in very many places throughout his career --- USA, Europe, Asia, etc.

My brother thinks this is somewhere in Germany, I think it looks more like Idaho. But we are both probably wrong. It sure looks unusual anyway, and it seems like the skiers are having a great time. Any comments or information would be appreciated!

Official site for photo: www.flickr.com/photos/46064258@N08/16701273065/in/photolist-rrQoBT

Some other photos from the same photographer: http://www.flickr.co...157650465907581

[Photo snipped]

I'm afraid I don't have any additional information about that particular lift, but I am 90 percent sure that that is Idaho and not Germany judging by the terrain in the background. Those sled tows were relatively widespread in the early days of alpine skiing (Snoqualmie/Milwaukee Ski Hill? had one in the 1940s) but I believe they usually operated like trackless funiculars with two sleds linked together around a bullwheel at the top, rather than having the downhill cable supported by pylons.

Also, here are three more unusual lifts that I've dug up, this time in Japan:
•Green Lift, Asarigawa Onsen, Tosaku, 1991. Instead of a safety bar, this centre-pole triple has a rollercoaster-style shoulder restraint that only covers the centre seat on each chair. Japanese law requires safety bars on all chairlifts other than fixed grip singles and doubles, so these incomplete safety bars may have been installed to exploit a loophole in the law.
•Unknown Lift, Shirakabako Royal Hills Resort. I couldn’t find any information other than the location, but this fixed grip double chairlift has wheeled carriers which sit on top of the cable and run along tracks on the ground.
•Wakkanai Park Ropeway, Wakkanai Park, Nippon Cable, 1974. The northernmost lift in Japan, an aerial tram with no towers that ascends a dizzying 74 vertical metres.

This post has been edited by passengerpigeon: 17 April 2017 - 07:26 AM

[passengerpigeon]

Here's a bicable double chairlift at the Fazendinha Resort in Brazil - I previously thought installations of this type were extinct: https://estanciafaze...019-500x350.jpg

This post has been edited by passengerpigeon: 15 March 2021 - 11:00 AM

[passengerpigeon]

Here's another cool find - a BRAND NEW single chairlift, built in 2019 by BMF-Bartholet to replace the Pölsterlift in Prabichl, Austria. https://de-de.facebo...?type=3

[Backbowlsbilly]

Heron built a few bicable chairlifts in the early days. Examples I know of are the original double chair at Berthoud Pass (has a disputed claim as the world's first double chair), the original lift #2 at Aspen (which traveled from around the top of the modern Ruthie's lift to the Sundeck with a huge span over Tourtelotte Park), and the single chair at Arapahoe Basin (which eventually made its way to Fun Valley, Colorado). Many of the early bicable chairs had parts cannibalized from former mining trams. The image here is the Heron bicable single at Fun Valley, taken by Chuck Dwyer as part of his photo collections now located at the Information Center for Ropeway Studies. (https://mountainscho...ndle/11124/9456)

Attached File(s)

•  Heron Single.jpg (51.47K)
  Number of downloads: 74

This post has been edited by Backbowlsbilly: 30 March 2021 - 10:54 AM

[passengerpigeon]

Here's another unique lift I found through LiftBlog. At The Rock Sports Centre in Wisconsin, a 1960s Hall double was recently converted into a rope tow of all things, with the rope re-using the original towers and sheaves.

Also, although now removed, the former chairlift at Val Bialas in Utica probably takes the cake for the oddest lift I've ever encountered. Built in 1968, it was a bicable high-speed quad with lateral chairs on a pointlessly short alignment. It only lasted until 1973 due to poor reliability.

[Lift Dinosaur]

passengerpigeon, on 10 April 2021 - 12:20 PM, said:

Here's another unique lift I found through LiftBlog. At The Rock Sports Centre in Wisconsin, a 1960s Hall double was recently converted into a rope tow of all things, with the rope re-using the original towers and sheaves.

Also, although now removed, the former chairlift at Val Bialas in Utica probably takes the cake for the oddest lift I've ever encountered. Built in 1968, it was a bicable high-speed quad with lateral chairs on a pointlessly short alignment. It only lasted until 1973 due to poor reliability.

The lift pictured in Wisconsin is a Borvig, not a Hall.
Dino

[passengerpigeon]

Lift Dinosaur, on 11 April 2021 - 06:46 AM, said:

The lift pictured in Wisconsin is a Borvig, not a Hall.
Dino

The remaining chairlift is; the former chairlift (now rope tow) in the background is Hall.

[Lift Dinosaur]

Thanks. Didn’t see that the first time.
Dino

This post has been edited by Lift Dinosaur: 11 April 2021 - 05:54 PM

[Skier72]

The only quad chair Mueller ever built (abandoned since 2003)
https://i.imgur.com/6K6mbGE.png
https://i.imgur.com/bKc3Zah.png