Why Building Ski Lifts Is Incredibly Hard 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

4:26 weirdly america-centric choice of a factoid here given that the parent companies are also within a few hours of each other in europe

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

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.

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

Can't be a coincidence that HAI and Adam something just made videos back to back about gondolas?

Like the wendover ski resort video this is a purely US centred view of ski resorts. Shame really as it neglects the fact that Europe has far more ski resorts and has far bigger ones than the US or Canada. And the resorts here (for the most part) have far more modern and better maintained lift systems, destination resorts in Europe have very few if any fixed grip chairlifts nowadays, but they're painfully common still in even the biggest and most famous American destination resorts. Perhaps a video on the differences in the economics and operation of European vs North American resorts would be interesting.

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)

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!

Interesting to know why the old J-bar I used to ride was called a 'poma,' and why the towers that I go past on chair lifts all say 'riblet' on them.

HTI and Doppelmayer both have their headquaters in Austria

4:57 why did i believe that as an actual possibility lmao

Sidenote : the first try in urban transportation by Poma was the Poma2000 in Laon, France, built in the 80s. It was a 1.5km 3-stations long automated mini-metro meant to create a link between the high and low parts of the city. It worked for almost 30 years before being stopped due to its high cost of operation for a 25k inhabitants city. It was pushed by the government at the same time as the still-developped VAL and the iconic ARAMIS program which was shut down before reaching its end but offered an enormous legacy for automatisation of transit.

I was curious to see if this also applied to the sky buckets that you see at amusement parks and from what I could find most of them where built by von roll holding AG which was acquired by Doppelmayr back in 1996.

Let's address the elephant in the room; during WW1 Austria and Italy had this thing where they were fighting in the Alps and they built countless ropeways to transport military equipment, personnel, and just about everything else to the battlefield and back. After the war was over, the two countries had plenty of ropeway engineers, the necessary supply chains, and people needed to build them. So while Doppelmayr (an Austrian company) and Leitner (an Italian company) could just hire those people to design and build ski lifts, other companies had to pretty much invent everything from scratch, which is why they had so many accidents and why these two companies eventually took over the entire ropeway market.

As a skier this is the first funny and genuinely interesting video about something. I'm still waiting for the "Bricks" one!!

I wish this would have been a full Wendover video, as it could also probably have prevent quite some issues and misleading information

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.

Super cool! I actually toured the doppelmayr factory in Salt Lake City a week or so ago, cool stuff!

Me, who has only seen snow twice in my life: neat.

One thing I have long wondered over is just exactly how they get those kilometer long free hanging cables up mountains?

It's crazy to see my hometown on this channel. Grand junction deserves its own history video with the crazy shit that's happened there

Along with half as interesting facts, Sam teaches us how to make the best and most efficient use of stock footage, on this channel.

June to October: *ignores half of the planet*

Interesting theory/story tangent to this: I went skiing at my favorite place in northern Michigan between the holidays and got to see their new slope and lift layout. Both of their newest lifts are three person lifts, which doesn’t really make sense since most people ski in even number of groups so there would either be one person who would have to ride up alone or there would be an open seat on most chairs. The theory I have is that the 3 person width better accommodates for two snowboarders who’s boards take up more space under the chair than skis. Or maybe it’s just cheaper that 4 person lifts.

That reminds me of this one old chair lift at a place I used to ski with my family. It didn't slow down on the turn, so the operator had to this well-timed push-forward-hold-back manoeuvre to slow the swinging seat down enough to let skiiers get on without having their legs accidentally amputated! It was on one of the more difficult slopes though so they weren't expecting beginner skiers to have to deal with it 😛

The Mi Teleferico system in La Paz, Bolivia is amazing! I used to live there and it offers such a quick and beautiful commute.

This makes sense and it happens with every industry. Someone creates a market, if it profitable new companies will keep joining, until it is no longer profitable. Then the only way to grow is to acquiring the existent companies or to inovate. Just think about how many car brands you know that were absorved by other groups and how many new brands we see appearing? The markets are not elastic, up to a certain point no new companies will be able to operate, especially when you require experience as a way to sell your product.

New drinking game: drink every time he says “dopplemeier garaventa group”

No mention of Von Roll. The inventor of the detachable monocable grip in 1945 known as the VR 101 still in use today. Von Roll was a huge innovator in the ropeway industry. The inventor of the 3s system, breaking systems on aerial trams,funicular and detachable monocable ropeways. Doppelmayr still uses Von Roll technology in there lifts today.

Funny fact about the two companies is that they both come from the same region of Italy, namely South Tyrol. Initially the ropeways were used them to carry building material to mountain shelter and private people that may not have a street connecting the house to the Main Street during winter due to snow and rugged terrain. Both companies now have different offices around the world, but they were both founded within 2h drive from one another. One of them, the Leitner Poma is also a duopoly in the snow making industry and the snow cat industry.

I'm just on a skiing holiday. And exactly yesterday I've wondered, how do they build these Lifts. So thanks😂

Watching your video is really interesting because just like you I also learned to ski in the US and last year I decided to give Europe a go. Went to Zermatt and Courchevel and absolutely loved it. This year I’ve planned a Europe ski trip to explore more resorts. I definitely like Europe better since there’s better quality food, good apres skiing, walkable towns without the need for a car, and more affordable lift tickets like you said. The only downside is that snow isn’t reliable like the US. And yes, there isn’t always one gondola or lift that takes you all the way to the top. You kind of need to connect and usually remove skis before you can get in the gondola which is annoying

Duopoly on a relative low volume product will indeed lead to very high prices. I never thought about how much goes into building the complete ski lift and that it has to be done during a specific time of the year. Interesting.

Always love learning about some random market here and seeing that it's also a duopoly like everything else.

they ALSO have to X-ray the weightbearing components every year, even in small eastern ski resorts!

What a coincidence, I am making plans to do an internship somewhere in the USA or Canada for my study. And on my top 5 list I’ve written Doppelmayr and Leitner-Poma as potential companies I think I want to solicit at.

Don't forget about CTEC (who was bought by Garaventa, and then by Doppelmeyer), they are the ones who put Riblet and Yan out of business.

Hong Konh Ngong Ping 360 was built by Leitner, now under HTI. There's no snow in HK, but typhoons in summer and the 5.7km/ 3.5 mile system must traverse high altitude country parks with only 9 pylons. The pylons were made large, super sturdy and flown in in pieces with the S-64 Skycrane helicopter! All had to be completed quickly before typhoons arrived.

Poma is also a lift company. Killington has a fixed-grip quad by poma, and a high speed quad by Poma.

Cool to see Doppelmayr in an HAI video!!

Super cool that you mentioned Grand Junction! It’s an awesome place!

You should've done a video on the cable splicers. I'm interested

Oh, how cool that Doppelmayr is right here in MY state, Utah, whose 127th birthday was just yesterday (01/04/2023) from when I'm watching this video, where the ski slogan is "Greatest snow on Earth" and where the 2002 Winter Olympics were held!

In Bulgaria we have lots of resorts but one gondola here has like 47 support towers with two mid stations from 1983

Nice timing for me. I just went skiing in Åre, Sweden and they just built a new lift to renlaven an old from the 70s.

Was at copper mountain today, saw doppelmayr written on some of the newer lifts.

Could have stopped at Disney, and I _definitely_ would have believed you with no questions asked.

Wait why the hell is cable splicing so hard and why are there only like 3 people that can do it?

Defiantly: Not as hard as getting off one lol especially when you are new skier like me.

Fun fact: The smallest Doppelmayr gondola system is installed in Riegersburg/Austria at the Zotter Schokolademanufaktur, a local chocolate manufacturer. When you make a tour through the production site - which is a very popular leisure activity probably because you can taste and eat as much chocolate as you want in hundreds of variations - at one station you will be served with bars of drinking chocolate by a Doppelmayr system. You select your favourite chocolate bar from a gondola passing by, hand it to a bartender and he/she will prepare the chocolate drink for you.

Nice flying bullwheel at 5:06

Gosh it would be SO COOL for my island to have one or two lift lines over to Oakland- we are between two BART stations on the mainland, but getting to them by bus or car is very messy. I worked it all out. There is a large college campus at the north end ot the island and about 2 miles as the cable car flies to the West Oakland BART station, where one could go from curbside to platform level in about 6.5 minutes at average cable ca speed. On the south end of the island the easement would be more difficult but it would connect to the Fruitvale BART station where there is a 'transit village'. There are spots all over the BART system where a one or two mile cable car system would reach tens of thousands of riders who now take surface transportation. A cable car gondola across the Bay would be awesome for transit and tourism.

The coolest ski lift is Klein Matterhorn in Zermatt. They had to ship thousands of tonnes of concrete mixed with anti freeze up the mountain by helicopter in massive tanks to an altitude of almost 4000m. Bare in mind this was in the mid 1970's.

You started with copper mountain, and I had flashbacks due to the concussion I got there the first day of skiing in December 2021. (Ouch!)

This is definitely my fav one of Sam's videos now: I'm a nerd about Ski Lifts...

Shout out Banff sunshine village, place of work! they have one of the newest heated bubble lifts in Canada.

4:30 haha the cable splicer lives in my home town

I watch this on Nebula before it's RU-vid release! Can you do people movers next? Like the PHX Skytrain and/or urban installations such as the Miami Metro mover.

The most difficult part of this video was convincing the viewer that a duopoly was at all shocking under late stage capitalism.

I've mainly been to top tier resorts in the austrian and swiss alps and 95% of more modern lifts and dopplemayer

Doppelmayr is in every ski resort I have ever visited (mostly Austria and switzerland)

I am right by copper mountain right now. Family ski trip just checked in a couple hours ago. Want timing!

I would love to know how ski resorts choose which mountain to pick

Ok just today, I watched a a video and one of the clips in that video had a precariously placed ski lift in it - and I wondered how they even got up there, and then this was posted! A strange but welcome surprise 😅

Nice video. Sad timing with the tragic accident in park city, a tree fell on a lift and a ski patrol member died. just another challenge to this operation

I kinda wish this was a full wendover vid

Any other skiers and snowboarders shudder when they hear the name Poma and bring back memories of being dragged behind one because you fell, hanging on for dear life until you had to let go, hearing the plastic excuse of a seat snap back into the pole above you, and taking the walk of shame?

3:46 For some reason I thought you meant the chairmen of the company murdered people, so I'm glad you added the graphic of the chairlift lol.

3:47 - lmao, that edit tho.

I'd love to see urban transit ski lifts. It would be so awesome to be able to commute by air!

When discussing overhead tramways don't forget the cable ore hauling systems used in mining in the 19th and 20th centuries. They were far less expensive than grading a road in rugged terrain, and they could be gravity powered because, unlike chairlifts and passenger gondolas, they most often transported their downhill instead of uphill. As for snow skiing, it has gotten prohibitively expensive for the average skier. When I started skiing one of the local resorts was charging $5 for a midweek lift pass, and they charged the princely sum of $7 on weekends. Another nearby resort was around $12. A $20 bill paid for a lift pass and on-mountain ski rental. When that resort raised their price to $20 for a day pass I felt scandalized! Today they charge $159 for a day pass. Oof! And don't forget that these are summer resorts as well. One summer in the 1990's I was hiking to a 10,000 foot+ peak when I heard a helicopter approaching. I wondered where it was when it ripped just a few feet off the ground and over the saddle/pass where I was standing and plunged down the other side. It had been contracted to install lift poles on a hillside to the west of where I was hiking. There was a fuel truck in the parking lot that would add fuel after every trip up the slope so the chopper didn't have to sacrifice load capacity by carrying a full tank. It looked like a Bell Huey, but it may have been a Bell 412.

Cool. Didn’t realize the name Dopplermayr that I see on Utah chairlifts was made in my home state. Makes sense.

been shredding Sunshine Village since I was 2!

I broke my arm snowboarding on the new year, and the next video you make is about the topic

4:55 Lol.. Yeah, you got me. Stupid Disney!!

Lives and worked at a ski resort a few years back while a company called Dopplemayer was installing a ski lift there. It was really dope to watch them flying the pieces up with the helicopter every day all summer.

HAI learned about economies of scale and is now obsessed lol

I like this, pretty good summary. I really like how you used a picture of my co-worker

Had a crazy guy burn down the local ski lift last year couldn’t imagine how much it cost them to fix it

They‘re ropes as they have a rope core, the main rope is called a haul rope. Lifties have to look at the rope as a morning check to see of the splice is ok, the rope is also checked to ensure it isn‘t coming apart.

why is cable splicing so hard?

Ha, ok you got me with the Disney line. I was like OMFG ARE YOU SERIOUS?! Oh.. he’s not.. 😅😅😅

Dude, u gotta make a video on La Paz, Bolivia's lifts instalked by Doppepmeyer.

I'm waiting for more of these in urban environments. Could free up some space on the ground.

I love it when my home town gets a shot out! Gj ftw!

As someone who trains lift operators I kind of like that there's only 2 companies, each one has their own control scheme that's pretty much universal between generations but not between manufacturers, for example on most Pomas "Emergency Stop" means deploy the emergency brake, with Doppelmayr it means aggressive electric braking, if you need the emergency brake on a Doppelmayr you need to push "Emergency Shutdown", this is one of many differences that would become nightmarish from a training perspective if there were tons of different manufacturers with tons of different ideas on how to control a chairlift. Also one of the many reasons you typically see resorts buying one or the other and rarely both.

4:50 - Hey, I know that place, I work there!

This is an interesting video, and when I found out when Sam is narrating it became better.

As a engineer that works at ski resort planning and cable cars... it's a really acurate explanation. Congrats! If you're interested, happens the same with the industries of snowmaking and snowgroomers (sorry bad englinsh, non native person)