The lift is a great addition to the mountain, and the increased speed + capacity does a good job of relieving congestion in the basin. However, unloading at the top is terrible. The platform is far too high and the drop is steep and overly challenging for most, especially when the chairs are filled to capacity. Last time I was up there, someone was falling almost every chair. It will be interesting to see if snowshoe regrades this area to improve the experience.
You have a good point about the unloading. I’d say the speed of this chair is about the same as the old triple (now I’m not 100% of they’re running it slower than max due to the passenger faults). The capacity is definitely a huge plus to help wager the lines, especially the loading coming from all sides now without that huge counterweight in the way. I can’t wait to see the numbers and how it’s affected the mountain later this year
Yesterday I saw a small child not able to get off the lift. They had to stop it an get the child off the chair before it went back down the mountain. I'm 6' tall and it's a pain getting off the list on my snowboard. I'm also not so sure it's any faster than the old lift. But so happy SS finally has some snow!
Us snowshoe homeowners were super stoked to see this come into service this season. It's made quite a bit of impact to reducing the wait and providing a reasonable speed lift over to the Western Territory. I am making my last trip of the season for this weekend's college event and pond skim. Will be posting a few videos of it on my RU-vid for a change as I haven't really been posting anything here for a number of years
In Austria we have been using loading carpets since 1989 when Felix Kupfner introduced them on their range of quad chairlifts. It’s certainly not a sight I see often in Italy, France or the USA
That’s awesome you’ve had them for so long. It’s only been the past 10 years that they’ve become more popular on our fixed chairs and some detachables too, thanks to Chairkit loading carpets
