New England Can we blame Vail for this? Wildcat chairlift falls of cable

[bbbradley]

Chair Detaches from Wildcat Lift

Photo credit: Mic Murphy A triple chair fell near the base of Wildcat Mountain’s Snowcat lift this afternoon, sending one person to the hospital. The lift involved is a 1974 Riblet servicing …

liftblog.com

A fixed grip chair, losing a chair!

 

[Ogg]

Chair Detaches from Wildcat Lift

Photo credit: Mic Murphy A triple chair fell near the base of Wildcat Mountain’s Snowcat lift this afternoon, sending one person to the hospital. The lift involved is a 1974 Riblet servicing …

liftblog.com

A fixed grip chair, losing a chair!

It's a property they own that is by almost all accounts short staffed and mismanaged so I'd say, yes, we can blame Vail.

 

[Brad J]

1974 chair with little maintenance. both Wildcat and Attitash need at least 3 new lifts each. Vail Corp is really not doing these areas justice. please sell to someone that cares. the corporate heavy handed approach is having a very negative effect on those areas and flys in the face of true New England ingenuity.

 

[Nathanvg]

It's probably too early to say. The clip and other components are to be inspected at regular intervals. If the procedure was followed, I wouldn't blame Vail but rather understand that it is a very rare event but with about 100k chairs in the US alone, something that happens every few years.

That said, I'm all for blaming Vail for closed lifts, reduced grooming, canceled lessons and severely reduced operation schedules.

 

[Ogg]

It's probably too early to say. The clip and other components are to be inspected at regular intervals. If the procedure was followed, I wouldn't blame Vail but rather understand that it is a very rare event but with about 100k chairs in the US alone, something that happens every few years.

That said, I'm all for blaming Vail for closed lifts, reduced grooming, canceled lessons and severely reduced operation schedules.

I doubt it was because lift maintenance took priority.

 

[Jerez]

Ooh. We have one of those lifts where I ski at Santa Fe. The quote "Chairs utilizing Riblet insert clips have fallen on occasion in recent years" and a pretty long list gives me pause!

 

[Erik Timmerman]

I wonder if Wildcat is the unnamed Vail resort in the Northeast where the entire maintenance staff quit this year?

 

[Wendy]

I wonder if Wildcat is the unnamed Vail resort in the Northeast where the entire maintenance staff quit this year?

Did that happen?

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Did that happen?

According to one of the Stories on Epicliftlines it did.

 

[Tony S]

Ooh. We have one of those lifts where I ski at Santa Fe. The quote "Chairs utilizing Riblet insert clips have fallen on occasion in recent years" and a pretty long list gives me pause!

I hope you don't have the level of neglect and incompetence that is plaguing Wildcat this year.

 

[Jerez]

No the Santa Fe crew is pretty darn good. But with so many out for the virus anything is possible.

 

[crgildart]

Did they load test it recently?

 

[Nathanvg]

Ooh. We have one of those lifts where I ski at Santa Fe. The quote "Chairs utilizing Riblet insert clips have fallen on occasion in recent years" and a pretty long list gives me pause!

I really wouldn't worry about Riblets. When they closed up shop in the early 2000's they had built over 500 lifts across the US, more than any other manufacturer. (they never invested in detachable lifts) Riblet lifts have proven to be highly reliable and safe which is part of the reason there are dozens of Riblet lifts over 50 years old that are still operating. These lifts include a lot of smaller areas but they also include major ones. e.g. Breckenridge has 6 Riblets and Mt Spokane still operates a 66 year old one.

 

[Tony]

Same thing happened at Heavenly almost exactly 6 years ago. See https://www.saminfo.com/news/sam-he...9-409-empty-chair-falls-from-lift-at-heavenly which includes “65 passengers were taking the lift up, and were evacuated by ski patrol after the lift shut down due to the malfunction” and “lift is a 1984 Riblet fixed-grip triple with insert clips.” Lift was inspected and used again that season. I rode it last week. It’s scheduled to be replaced with high-speed quad next summer.

 

[LiquidFeet]

Does anybody know how the skier on that chair is doing?

 

[LiquidFeet]

From SkiologyMatt today: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252514958745258/user/100043231966827

The Snowcat lift at Wildcat suffered a detachment today just after noon. The photos here come from Mic Murphy and were shared in the private Epic Ski Pass Northeast group. A single passenger was on this chair and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Early reports were that he walked out of the hospital without severe injury, for which I am grateful to hear.

A first hand account indicated that there were some loading difficulties and the chair fell off the rope (possible attachment failure) prior to reaching the first tower. The distance to the ground was thankfully low at that stage.

UPDATE: The chairlift in question was a Riblet triple built in 1974. This chair will probably not run until it is fully serviced and inspected again. Some have mentioned the unique type of attachments of Riblet chairs. These use an "internal attachment" as opposed to a grip as newer chairlifts use (schematic and photo included from Brownski on the NYSkiBlog forum: https://nyskiblog.com/.../threads/riblet-double-chairs.480/). There have been at last 3 other Riblet detachments in the last two years including in 2020 at Montana Snowbowl, and in 2021 at both 49 Degrees North and Indianhead Mountain, making this at least the 4th Riblet detachment in 2 years. According to LiftBlog there are hundreds of Riblet chairlifts sill in use.