Why Building Ski Lifts Is Incredibly Hard

Video written by Corinne Neustadter

[Fay]

4:53 I actually wouldn't be that surprised if Disney had actually bought such a company. Imagineering has dabbled in transport systems many times, WDW has a lift system, and I wouldn't be that surprised if they had plans to develop them further for their own parks & resorts, or try and get into selling them as systems for others.

[DEADBF]

My dad always told me that the first stage of building a ski lift was to take a massive reel of cable the size of a house to the top of a mountain then get a couple of big strong blokes to push it off the edge.

....Then it rolls downhill clearing the trees & stuff and wherever the reel ends up is where you build the bottom station.

[vwvictorw]

Currently works in a smaller ski resort. Most of our lifts are Doppelmayr (Including our two 4-seaters) but now I now i finally realized why the small button lift in the kids area is unoffically known as Poma.

Fun fact: It's more common for small resorts to buy used lifts than brand new ones. Our "new" 4-seater is 20 years old, even though it was opened less than a month ago.

[dominik]

Hti group and dopelmayer group both have their headquaters in Austria. I think that is a relativ interesting fact that wasnt mentioned in the video.

[Erik_Arnqvist]

This can definitely be said about most things. But speaking from personal experience, there’s a lot more going on working on ski resorts than people give credit for. I was on the snow building team but naturally got a peek into the operation as a whole.

[FacterinoCommenterino]

Today's fact: 4% of the sand on Normandy beach is made up of shrapnel from D-Day that has broken down.

[Scotty_LX]

When you said Disney I totally believed you at first because of the Skyliner they installed at WDW around that time. Totally makes sense that Imagineering would've acquired a brand like that lol.

[jeremyglass]

5:23, That's an aerial tram, not a gondola, trams only have 1-2 (usually 2 for counterweight reasons) giant cabins that hold around 20-100 people each, and are usually suspended much higher above the ground with fewer, but much stronger towers and go up to the top, stop to unload, and then go back down by reversing the direction of the cable. Gondolas have many dozens of cabins that hold 4-10 passengers each, and go around in a loop like chairlifts, and slow down, but do not stop, at the top and bottom by detaching to a slower cable like detachable chairlifts (although much slower to allow people to get in one by one and load their skies on the side, on trams, the riders just bring their equipment on board with them). As with any lift, both can be stopped at any time for mechanical failures or misloads (although it's basically impossible to misload a tram). Because of these inherit differences, trams have a much smaller uphill capacity (meaning they can take less people up in the same amount of time) than other lifts, and therefore often have much longer lines, because they can only transport the amount of people that can fit in the tram car in each direction at a time.

[KO]

This makes me think of the elevator industry. I've worked in the AEC industry for quite some time, and I can't recall ever seeing a project that had something other than an Otis or a Thyssenkrupp elevator, and I can't remember ever being on an elevator and noticing it was something different. Maybe an idea for a future video?

[davy]

Fun fact: Doppelmayr and Leitner are from Vorarlberg and South Tyrol (directly on the border to Austria).

I find it funny that two companies, nearly both from Austria cornered the whole Skilift market. You don't see that in too many industries.

[jthomp]

Last week I rode up with the head maintenance guy for my main ski resort and it's interesting cause he was telling me about how small resorts like them have to start getting the licenses and qualifications to self certify most things otherwise it would be so expensive that they would go out of business. Interesting guy and a interesting career

[realfast]

Awesome look into this industry. I worked for Poma back in the late 90s through mid 2000s. Absolutely the best job ever. We built all the new lifts at Killington and the gondola at Gore Mountain. Fly day was always the best with Carson and Ericsson heavy lift helicopters. Never a dull moment!

[mcgonzo]

Me, a liftie watching this on my lunch break: Seems about right, but I’m disappointed that you didn’t mention how heavy the cables themselves are

[sammyfunnybunny]

It would be cool to see a video like this about snowmakeing at ski reports, and the companies that make the snow guns! I think it would be a really interesting and something not to many people know about

[catchampjade]

Its always weird to see the industry I work in talked about because its something 99% of people dont think about at all. The logistics for working on ski resorts is massive but most of it takes place in a way that the public never sees.

[Brickabrac]

3:15 in the background you can see the label "Girak". Girak is a former Austrian ski-lift company and was famous in central and eastern europe. They produced fix gripped chairlifts as well as detachable chair- and gondola lifts. When Girak was absorbed by Garaventa in 1996, they started building surface lifts like t-bars, too. Finally, Doppelmayr took over Garaventa in 2002 which led to their breaktrough in the international ropeway construction industry.

[lizzeyflower]

As someone who worked at Disney world in the skyliner section. This video had made much more sense to me then any of my colleagues explained to me.

Once again this video was very helpful for information use thank you

[dkniberg]

1:08 "For a typical four-person chairlift"
*shows typical two-person chairlift*

3:15 "Including the detachable chairlift"
*shows detachable gondola, followed by non-detachable chairlift*

3:19 "But could detach from overhead cables by way of high powered clamps"
*shows some kind of surface lift? idk, definitively lacking those high powered clamps at least*

Is Sam intentionally trolling or is there just a general shortage of ski-lift related stock footage?

[derfetch]

its both funny but also super weird for me, a european, to see how skiing in the us is. ski patrol on the slopes keeping people in check, passes that work sort of like a drivers license that can be revoked and things like that. while the lifts are mostly older models and many people dont even put the bar down. in comparison to europe, the skiing in the slopes is not controlled at all, yet the lifts are super modern and the bar goes down automatically at some as well.
(note: most of my us knowledge is from videos on yt and only some from friends that have actually skied in the us)

[backmeen]

HTI and Doppelmayer both have their headquaters in Austria