Rickety old defunct lifts.

[Southside_Bobby]

That's interesting about the D lift. When that was installed at Hunter in the 60's it was a revolutionary idea - a triple chair.

I realized why they must have changed it from a triple, after so many years, to a double in 2019.

A year or two prior, a woman fell off of that lift near one of the first towers, and died at the base clinic. I think it was her pole that got caught when the chair passed the tower, and she was pulled out of the chair.

[Mister Moose]

C&S lattice chairs take the cake for me and I think the only full original C&S lattice chair left in the Northeast is Outpost? Followed closely by the other erector set Mueller and Stadeli lifts of which there are a few more left around.

Another lattice chair still standing is the 1964 Mueller at Roundtop>Bear Creek>Plymouth Notch. Otis Ridge still has their 1962 Dopp T-bar, I rode that with my sister quite a bit as a kid.

I thought the chain drive chairs on a track at MT Snow were the most bizarre lift design.


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Most Rickety? Any rope tow powered by a gas truck/tractor/Jeep. Early chairlifts that had no rubber on the sheaves. Honorable mention to the lift at Sunday River (Spruce Peak Triple) that uprooted the entire summit bullwheel when the foundation split apart.
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[Big Bob]

Thank God the Someday Bigger lift failed in the middle of summa. If I recall correctly the grout holding the rebar that attached the foundation to the ledge failed. All of their tower foundations with a similar design received rock bolt hold downs at SR and the Loaf.

[asher2789]

Most Rickety? Any rope tow powered by a gas truck/tractor/Jeep. Early chairlifts that had no rubber on the sheaves. Honorable mention to the lift at Sunday River (Spruce Peak Triple) that uprooted the entire summit bullwheel when the foundation split apart.
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nightmare fuel. what happened that it resulted in... that?

[newpylong1]

Non-epoxy based grout (common in the 70s to 80s) was used to pin the top terminal to ledge. Water intrusion eventually caused it to fail.

As a result every Tramway board in New England (and maybe the country) required every operator to provide evidence that the "right" grout was used for any towers pinned to ledge. If no evidence was available a "pull test" was required and/or the towers had to be re-pinned.

The hill I ran was able to avoid such tests by finding an old timer who was involved in our 1970 install who found the records hidden away in a closet at Poma. But this incident sent waves through the industry at the time.

[Mister Moose]

I think Big Bob is correct on the rebar pulling out from the ledge due to faulty epoxy/grout. I seem to remember that when the haul rope slid off the bull wheel it took out the next tower as well.

You can see the uprooted rebar here:
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[GlenPLake]

For me it is a tie between lift 1 and lift 1a at Greek Peek NY.

I have never felt less safe on a ski lift. And once when night skiing there I got stuck on one of them, and it took a long time for them to get the backup engine running, then that also stopped working. Then they had to use an auxiliary motor of some type, which ran the lift at a barely perceptible speed, I was lucky and was already near the top and got off in less than 30 minutes, but others that were further down took over an hour to get off.

https://liftblog.com/1-greek-peak-ny/

[Downdraft]

The clock is ticking. It is not if, but when a catastrophic lift accident happens. When it does, it will change the industry forever.