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Kim is Kim Kircher, wife of John Kircher, so she probably knows what she's talking about.

18 Gondolas??Thats it?Why even run the gondola in the first place?Spacing on the cars will be so far apart,it will be a bit difficult to see if it is operating..

It might not make a lot of sense, but that's what they're doing. I've heard they have the option to add more cabins as needed. At this point it's more of a marketing tool, a 'look at us' lift like the Peak-to-Peak. I haven't skied there in over ten years, but with a sixpack and a double out of the base I would think they've got pretty good capacity. This new lift is not about easing congestion.

32 is the max number of cabins that can be on it which will give the design capacity of 900. I guess they are going for the capacity of an aerial tram with the lower cost of a gondola. It will be great for summer and good for skiing early in the morning and on wet days. In the below video a Crystal rep used the name Mountaineer Gondola.

News article and video:
http://www.king5.com...s-88739107.html

So a cabin will be leaving a station how often?

Kicking Horse, on 21 March 2010 - 06:33 AM, said:

So a cabin will be leaving a station how often?

Good question. Does anyone have the length of this install? Press release said "10 minute ride".
We could figure spacing, interval, etc. from this.
At about $40,000 a pop for cabins, I can see why they want to "wait and see".

Dino

It is about 6400' but is that necessary to determine cabin interval?

450 hourly capacity/8 passengers per cabin = 56.25 cabins per hour
60 minutes/56.25 cabins per hour = 1.066667 minutes between each cabin.

So a cabin every 1 minute, 4 seconds.
Is my math right?

Yeah your math checks out, and with that much distance between the cabins the idea that this isn't about skiing at all and is about summer operations is becoming increasingly obvious. If this lift were for skiing primarily the capacity would be far more than this is going to be. And honestly with this low of a capacity why they just don't have it be a pulse operation I have no idea. Seems to me they could save themselves some money and at these low capacity numbers it's not like you really need the detachable aspect anyway.

The other issue might be that the USFS doesn't want them to increase capacity to the summit too much, I don't know, but could the low capacity be a compromise with the USFS? And the idea of adding cabins later based on demand is a way for the USFS to say, "let's see how successful this is before we throw huge numbers of people to the top." That part seems a bit far fetched but it's about the only other logic besides the primary summer usage that I can come up with.

Also it appears carrier spacing will be about 712 feet!

450 people per hour, that means a total maximum of 450*7=3150 people can use the gondola every ski day. (assuming a 9-4 ski day)

So if they do a two ticket levels that means that at max (if you rode the gondi once) you shouldn't have anymore than 3150 people buying that ticket (otherwise people aren't getting for it). Now I don't know what the maximum amount of people Crystal can handle but I have a hunch it's over 3150 which means I wonder if Boyne would sell more than 3150 gondola tickets a day (knowing what they charge, I bet they would), which seems a bit disingenuous. A any rate I would think it might make more money for Boyne to just raise the prices on all the tickets, but that implies that everyone would use the gondola, which with the low capacity I don't see that ever happening. This is probably why they are thinking of doing the whole added cost thing instead of just raising ticket prices on every ticket, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did, cause while I haven't seen their financial, skier visits, etc,results I'd think it'd be in Boyne's best interest to raise prices on everyone. (then again I'd certainly prefer if they didn't do that)

Another thing to throw in here is that 450 pph is theoretical capacity at maximum speed. Given most lifts don't get run at full speed all the time, the actual capacity will be lower than this.

There is a cabin sitting in the main plaza which is probably representative of what'll be on the lift. It appears to be an CWA Omega.

I saw the cabin today.

Picture...

Bob got it from Cali okay, looks like.

I hear now that chair 1's rope and chairs are to be removed and sent to Hyak for use there. Which new/used lift, I'm not certain.

liftmech, on 07 April 2010 - 06:02 PM, said:

The old SilverFir triple is suppose to be the frontside lift added at Hyak. They cut and surveyed last year for the double on the backside (Hidden Valley). Is chair 1 a double?

hyak.net, on 08 April 2010 - 05:00 AM, said:

Yes, a 1962 Riblet double

Skier, on 08 April 2010 - 05:22 AM, said:

The Keechelus lift that Boyne removed last summer at Hyak was a 1972 riblet with a fairly new haul rope. Doesn't seem to make sense they would bring over the 62 riblet parts unless they just plan to mix and match? Some of the chairs were destroyed off the Hyak lift during the landslide too. Will be fun to watch and see what happens.

(photo of 72 riblet after landslide)

This post has been edited by hyak.net: 08 April 2010 - 08:30 AM

Mix-n-match could be interesting, as old chair 3's carriers were centre-poles while old chair 1's are bails. Unless they plan to replace all the carriers. Chair 1 has 162 of them.

Getting back on topic...

The gondola will have UNI-G terminals. Clockwise rotation, bottom drive and bottom tension. Line speed is 800 fpm. The carrier interval is listed as 64 seconds (839.9 feet) with 18 cabins. 100% downloading of course. It'll have a full-speed auxiliary drive too. The number of towers wasn't listed on the spec sheet I saw.