Tremblant not running main chairs because they could break

4 years ago here Intrawest cancelled their maintenence contract with Dopplemeyer for the high speed quads here. Since that time our 2 main high speed quads. Duncan and LaSolel have been closed most of the time when it is cold, and evacuated an average of 2 a year for each chair.

Well the chairs have been closed down most of this year when it gets cold, with the rest running. I found out why today. There are stress cracks in the towers and chairs from the cold in the metal. Basically they are afraid the chairs will basically fall appart in this cold.

Are there a engineer mags that know more about this, and how concerned should people be skiing here when riding these lifts?

They didn't use special ski lift metal.

That doesn't sound too comforting.

Are you sure the lifts weren't built by YAN Lift Engineering??? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Engineering

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Originally Posted by WhatTheHuck?

Are you sure the lifts weren't built by YAN Lift Engineering??? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Engineering

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Where is the YAN chair that has eight million moving paddle things ? I remember riding one that at the start house looked like the inside of watch. Solly ?

yan lifts = marker bindings

Sorry, it doesn't get cold enough to make a difference to the strength of metal. So it must be something else, IE safety switches that seize in the cold, bearings with old lube that cause idler wheels not to turn. In any case don't lifts in Quebec have to undergo an inspection every year? If there were safety issues related to running in the cold I would think they would just have been forced to permanently shut the lifts, or fix them. As for Yan lifts the main (not only) problem with them that the 'grippers' were under-designed and ended up breaking. Also of course once YAN went under there were no repair parts available for anything so eventually even the areas that had new grippers designed and manufactured (Lake Louise was one) had to replace them.

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Originally Posted by TJ.Brk

Well the chairs have been closed down most of this year when it gets cold, with the rest running. I found out why today. There are stress cracks in the towers and chairs from the cold in the metal. Basically they are afraid the chairs will basically fall appart in this cold.

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Whats happening is the chairs are most likely getting hung up in the terminals and they're too lazy to keep spinning the lift and having someone push chairs through to get things warmed up a little and happy. Sunday River has a Dopplemayer that has this issue when its really fucking cold out.

I was stuck on Le Sole for close to an hour about 4 years back one cold ass day at Tremblant...it got the point that patrol was climbing the towers and roping in for emergency rescue attempts before it finally got started. For our troubles we got a $10 gift certificate.....I was so cold I had to shut it down for the day and it was only 1pm.

Why don't you just take Jumper's advice and move to fucking America already. Tremblant STILL fucking sucks.

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Originally Posted by BakerBoy

Why don't you just take Jumper's advice and move to fucking America already. Tremblant STILL fucking sucks.

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Dude I'm working on it. Believe me I am. I just have to be patient to get out of here and leave in a positive light. I know it sounds like I'm whining alot, but I'm just concerned for our sports survival. Thanks for your imput mags. You all :yourock:

Tremblant sucks, you should go to Jay Peak

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Originally Posted by eldereldo

Also of course once YAN went under there were no repair parts available for anything so eventually even the areas that had new grippers designed and manufactured (Lake Louise was one) had to replace them.

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so would that be the friendly giant?

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Originally Posted by TJ.Brk

Dude I'm working on it. Believe me I am. I just have to be patient to get out of here and leave in a positive light. I know it sounds like I'm whining alot, but I'm just concerned for our sports survival. Thanks for your imput mags. You all :yourock:

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Fuck our sport. Nobody at Tremblant cares about it, obviously.

2 Yans at Red.:biggrin: One being replaced summer of 2007.

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Originally Posted by mtaylor

so would that be the friendly giant?

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Friendly giant was finally replaced.
As for the other Yan, Top of the world, Lake Louise management decided to run this lift for years knowing full well of it's potential to kill people. They are always only interested in the bottom line, not customer safety. After that they bought a "new" 20 year old used Gondola from Colorado and installed it.

Apparently the Superstar Quad at Killington (which was the first production YAN high speed quad) was such a headache that they needed a maintainance employee at the lift at all time. Parts of the lift would occassionally "fly off". Not to mention the bull wheel was actually warped to the point that when Poma came in to retrofit the lift (i.e. make it safe to ride), they almost had to condemn the whole thing. And this was a YAN-7 high speed quad, which actually had a decent safety record. It was the later, YAN-11 design, which was installed at Whistler (the Quicksilver Chair @ Creekside) which actually killed people.