Lift problems now a very regular fact of life at K and that

[GSKI]

is even excusing the weather and trees falling on transformers excusable issues. Every weekend I have been stuck on a lift. Varying times. At least I got off eventually.

[bruceol]

Lots of lift problems this year..I would rather see lifts up graded and run properly than a new baselodge that i ll never go in...

[daytripper]

Certainly seems to be a problem that gets worse each year lately.

[fdskier56]

Saturday morning every lift I came upon was stopped for more than a couple of minutes.

Skyeship midstation, superstar and needles quads had mechanics pushing chairs around the bull wheels.

It was single digits, yes a little cold, but not -40 cold.

Aren’t lifts designed to run properly in cold weather?
Why did they have to keep pushing chairs along ?!??

Just another day of regular lift issues...

[iRock]

I think it's just that the detachable lifts have a lot more moving parts, and none are getting any younger. There's a direct correlation here- the least reliable lifts- Supe, the Skyship, Needle's, and K1 are all old detaches. The bubble is kinda in a league of its own, I'm no mech but I'm sure the newer lifts have the most sensors and sh*t that can go wrong. The fixed grips remain pretty damn bullet-proof from my experience (also a lot less moving pieces, people have chairlifts and t-bars home-made in their backyard). Bear, Canyon, heck even the Snowdon triple all move along just fine 99% of the time.

[tyrolean_skier]

I think it's just that the detachable lifts have a lot more moving parts, and none are getting any younger. There's a direct correlation here- the least reliable lifts- Supe, the Skyship, Needle's, and K1 are all old detaches. The bubble is kinda in a league of its own, I'm no mech but I'm sure the newer lifts have the most sensors and sh*t that can go wrong. The fixed grips remain pretty damn bullet-proof from my experience (also a lot less moving pieces, people have chairlifts and t-bars home-made in their backyard). Bear, Canyon, heck even the Snowdon triple all move along just fine 99% of the time.

The Bear Quad has stopped quite often recently too and so has the Southridge.

[RustyK]

Then jump already...

jump.jpg (85.37 KiB) Viewed 1688 times

[da Pimp]

We can factor in weather (ice, wind, severe cold) to some of the K lift problems, but when we are at the competition their lifts seem to run so much better despite any weather encountered. After a while its painfully obvious that Killington operates differently. Don't even compare to western operations - if a lift ever stops, it is a once a day surprise. I can spend a week out west and experience 8-10 stoppages across 5 days. And those include the inevitable screw-ups loading.

K lifts stop & go on dry, sunny, calm days with no one screwing up top or bottom. Or as we recently see more of, they stop for a long time or get shut down.
As mentioned earlier, its a fact of life now. Despite a new 6 pack, new quad, refurbished quad and formerly reliable other chairs the customer aggravation continues to mount. Leads me to think that Killington is self insured, thus making them operate on hair triggers and overly zealous systems settings. Then they blame the weather.

K has smart Ops people with a lot of experience. So I wonder if it is upper management decisions on no spending, machine settings, or lack of understanding how to eliminate root causes. Oh, that might involve money. Back to number one.

Maybe a grass roots program is needed to make their problems well known throughout the public. That would help get some action more than daily band-aids. Naturally you have to be concerned about those customers who are showing up, but its the customers who are going elsewhere that K is missing out on. That's pure profit down the drain.

[ME2VTSkier]

No reason at all for the 6 to be malfunctioning. New install barely a year of use. K might have some legit issues with it, and maybe LP should be onsite until they get it sorted out. No reason a year old lift is still going thu install issues constantly.

[nsvencer1]

MLK morning. Blue skies. No wind. Sure, its cool at 5 degrees. Not too crowded. BMQ goes down in line, and with all the long stoppages over the weekend, we bail and go to SPE. It goes down as we're in the ticket gate. Liftie says "gonna be 5 mins or 25 mins, we're waiting for a tech" (3rd time i heard that over the weekend). We bail and run back over to the now running BMQ as does the entire mounting corral. Wait for our turn, ride BMQ out. An unfortunately typical experience these days.

[Captain Hafski]

On our Austria trip, with 80+ lifts, we might see one or two lift stoppages in a week.

[throbster]

Not to sound like a Killington psycophant, but could the fact the you ski K all the time be the reason for you noticing "more" stoppages? I skied three days this weekend and didn't notice any long outages.

Maybe Leitner Poma should be to blame and K should go with Doppelmayr!

Labor shortage? 28 lifts to maintain? Drinking too much WHINE?

[specialp]

Skyeship is probably the most stop prone as the doors on the cabins no longer close properly all the time. These lifts can be made to run reliably despite their age. They aren't stopping due to catastrophic or long running failures for the most part, it is sensors tripping. They just have to focus more on preventative maintenance. But in the K region in general it is hard to find a supply of good workers, and I am sure they are short on good lift mechanics for their many lifts. In fact their site has 4 open positions right now for lift mechs and one for a lift maintenance administrator. I've talked to a lot of people in the area and it seems finding workers is a big problem.

[Downdraft]

Two topics I’ll bring up:

Aging lift infrastructure across most of the country, especially the east - combined with veteran lift mechanics retiring and new lift mechanics not seasoned and trained well. This will lead to a catastrophic lift failure at some point in the next 5-10 years that will reshape the ski industry. Where and when, who knows, but it will happen. And it will be worse then anything we have seen yet.

Poma sucks. Dopp Gang hands down makes a better product in North America.

[Downdraft]

The entire industry is focused on new shiny toys to boost revenue - new and more snowmaking to get open quicker and better. New lodges and hotels to get your money. New lifts to get people up the hill better and quicker with heat and bubbles and WiFi.

Focus on those is great - but when a new lift is put in and different then all the rest, you have an entire crew that can barely keep the rest running - now trying to figure out this new deal. Support from manufacture can only go so far. Even a simple issue can keep a lift down for long time because no one knows how to fix or diagnose yet.

Lift mechanics and lift electricians that know what they are doing are worth a salary close or above 6 figures. I bet there is less then 10 of those county wide. And that could be an over estimate. Also ski areas don’t pay and reward those they know. Lift mechanics should be unionized into the elevator union or a similar union if one exists.

You are putting million dollar units that hold peoples lives in their hands under the supervision and maintenance of employees making $14/hr with minimal formal training.