January 24, 2009: How a Chairlift is Made

[Agent-G]

Summer 2006 I was on the crew which built the new chair lift at our local mountain Bear Valley Ski Resort. I didnt really do the job for the money, it was mostly the experiance and to be able to say I did it. They were long, tiresome days working on the lift. Since the season for working on a chair lift is so short, and they started in July, we would work 10+ hours a day 7 days a week. It only takes a crew of about 7 men to build this whole chairlift. Of course they have specialist come in, such as crane opperators and helicopter team.

The plan to change the lift came after an epic break down of the 1960's model chairlift, Hibernation Chair, which was there before it. Infact, I was on chairlift when it broke down. My girlfriend and I were stuck on the chair for 2 and a half hours. About 30 minutes into it, when I was complaining about how much it sucked to be there, the girlfriend just had to say "it could be worse, it could be snowing" ...... and just like that, it started snowing. So, needless to say, it felt kinda good to tear that lift out.

To first start the job, we did alot of chopping down trees, and digging. Since lives depended on the safty of the chairlift, it is engineered to take alot.

We had to dig huge holes on the side of the mountain, and clear them out by hand since a tractor could affect the stability of the soil. Most of the time, we would come to giant pieces of granite rock which we couldnt dig though and would have to use explosives to blow it up. But first we would have to drill through the granite using an air powered jackhammer and drill. Not easy work.


After the cement was poured, we started seting the Drive engine, and the return engine towers. We would put them on semi trailers and drive them down the back side of the mountain with a tractor.

Then we used a crane to set them. This was very tricky. It had to line up perfectly or else everything was off. We had to pull it toward us with rope, using all the strength we had.







For all the other towers, we used a helicopter to bring them in. This was hard because the helicopter would stir up all this dust below it and it made it like a sand storm. I, of course, did not have to deal with this because I was in the parking lot hooking up the towers to the helicopter. It was a nice reprieve from what everyone else was doing.





One of the hardest days of work we had was tightening all the nuts on the towers, drive, and return. I am sure most of you have seen the nuts on the towers. These ones had a three inch diameter hole. To tighten them, we used a metal wrench which fit on it and then slammed it with a sledge hammer until it was tight. But all the towers had to align perfectly, so we would hammer it down all the way, then have to hammer it off all the way and put metal shims under it using a metal wedge which we hammered under the tower, so it would align. Then hammer it down, then hammer it off. And we had to work early before the sun was high. Amazingly, the sun actually warps the towers and they start bending back and forth. So, what we though was alined, usually wasnt and we would have to hammer it back off and shim it I think that was the most tired I had ever been from a day of work.


After that we ran the haul line, and then built the chairs and put them on. The haul line was tricky. We first had to string a smaller cable that we could carry by climbing up each tower with it on our back and feeding it through the wheels. Once it was strung all the way around, we spliced the wire together and pulled tention on it. Then, we called in a certifed splicer to splice the main haul line.

Me with the carring the cable up the towers


Putting the chairs together was tedious work, wasnt too bad...unless it was the days it was snowing there. We worked in all conditions. It was snowing and we were out there screwing metal nuts together.



It was assembled on schedule and they did the preload test. It was interesting to see how it all went up though.