Timberline Lodge | Palmer 

Here's quite possibly the most famous lift on Mt. Hood, the one Timberline uses to keep the ski season open, even in the summer! Palmer was named after a Pioneer named Joel Palmer, who ascended Mt. Hood up to around where the top terminal of the current lift sits. He made it possible for emigrants to move into the settlements in modern-day Oregon. His climb up Mt. Hood was the first ever ascent to the upper section of Mt. Hood, where he could get a good view of where to put wagon trails through the rugged Cascade Mountains. Fast-forward to 1977, Timberline Lodge installs a lift going up above Magic Mile, into a section of Mt. Hood that saw extreme weather in the winter. Riblet did the install of this double chair, which allowed Timberline to open summer skiing for the first time. Unfortunately for them, Palmer did not survive the first winter "hibernation", as many towers snapped in half! So Timberline had to reinforce the towers with tripods in summer 1978. Palmer had a mid-station, for people to ski the upper snowfield where the snow sticks around the longest. After Magic Mile had been upgraded, Timberline decides to upgrade Palmer, of all lifts, in 1996, this time going with Doppelmayr. Keeping the tripod towers for continued reinforcement, this new lift greatly improved Timberline's summer skiing operations.
Palmer is a Doppelmayr high speed quad. It reused most of the tripod towers that were on the previous lift; the only towers built new were 1 and 12-14. This lift also re-used the snowsheds, which makes me wonder why the previous lift was longer and had more vertical. Still, Palmer is the highest lift by far in terms of vertical rise, at 1,526 feet. Design capacity is lower, as this lift uses tower tubes from a lift designed to hold double chairs. Capacity is 1,800 pph, but at a calculated speed of 800 fpm in this recording, it's only around 1,440 pph. Due to the weather extremes in the winter, all sheave assemblies have metal plates on the west-facing sides, to protect them from rime ice. Inside the base terminal, you can see some previous sheave assemblies that have been damaged. For ski racers, summer camp, or for regular skiers and riders, this lift is great for staying in shape, and getting in turns this late in the summer.
Recorded on July 17th, 2021