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Bolton

drjeff

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Guess #1 - big tree fell due to the weight of the snow on the haul rope and caused the rope to come off the sheave trains on a tower

Guess #2 - Catastrophic failure of a tower

Guess #3 - Something like what happened a few years ago with the top terminal of the Spruce Triple at Sunday River with a catastrophic failure of the rebar to rock interface

Something like guess #1, is a relatively quick and "easy" fix..... Guess #2 or #3 and that lift may be done for an extended amount of time... :sad:
 

Keelhauled

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At least it looks like Timberline and not Vista. That buys them some time to deal with it.
 

thetrailboss

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Where did you get that picture? Or are you there? I did not see anything on their FB page.
 

Keelhauled

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Their snow report says "Timberline is strictly closed to all traffic until further notice" in bolded highlighted text, which makes a lot more sense in context of a lift being on the ground.
 

HowieT2

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It's timberline. I got the pic off americanwx forum. dont know anything else.

there was one other pic.IMG_1428.JPG.e65acae9913fe27a188ed5ef7f3c8e79.jpg
 

WJenness

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I was skiing up there last March on the day the lift (Timberline) broke and was then down for the rest of the season.

From the talk in the bar, it sounded like it needed a pretty serious repair.

Maybe they're finally working on that now?
 

drjeff

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So as was just posted on their FB page, Bolton just this afternoon finished replacing the bullwheel on the top terminal of Timberline, and it should be up and running after some testing in a few days. They have a picture of a large excavator up at the top terminal looking like it has just replaced the bullwheel.

That would totally explain the picture(s) with the haul rope down on both sides of the towers
 

jimmywilson69

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Wouldn't they normally take the chairs off the line to do a bull wheel replacement? Seems like a major pain in the ass to restring the line with all of that dead weight...
 

Jully

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Wow that is terrible to see. Hopefully this season continues to be a great one to help pay for the unexpected damage. Definitely explains the somewhat ominous comment on the Timberline area in the report!
 

drjeff

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Is there a reason why they were dumb enough to leave chairs on in the section that they dropped?
I suppose you could look at it this way. If they had the machinery to SLOWLY set the haul rope with the chairs on it to the ground, then do the Bullwheel replacement, and then get the haul rope back up onto the sheaves and Bullwheel, you're saving the amount of time it takes to pull all the chairs off and then put them back on the haul rope

If this was a planned thing, I'm sure the mtn ops folks at Bolton were in cohoots with the folks at Dopp before they did this and mutually decided that this was ok to do

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using AlpineZone mobile app
 

thetrailboss

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I suppose you could look at it this way. If they had the machinery to SLOWLY set the haul rope with the chairs on it to the ground, then do the Bullwheel replacement, and then get the haul rope back up onto the sheaves and Bullwheel, you're saving the amount of time it takes to pull all the chairs off and then put them back on the haul rope

If this was a planned thing, I'm sure the mtn ops folks at Bolton were in cohoots with the folks at Dopp before they did this and mutually decided that this was ok to do

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using AlpineZone mobile app

Why not take the chairs off for that one section?
 

HowieT2

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I don’t know anything about bullwheel replacements but it does seem odd they would leave the chairs on.
 

Newpylong

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I've never seen anything like that. Normally you lower the counterweight, take the tension off with a come along type device, replace the bullwheel or bearing and then put it back. The haul rope never comes off any towers.
 
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