The NEW Magic Mountain

cdskier said:

Why do you think that sounds low? For comparison, Sugarbush's Valley House Quad has a 400HP motor and Belleayre's new Gondola has a 600 HP primary drive and a 130 HP Evac drive unit.

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I am just surprised to see an evac drive being less powerful than a Honda civic’s engine. Do these lifts run at maximum horsepower all the time, are they only consuming energy a few times as fast as a Suburban?

APUs, unless specifically ordered differently (like the Superquad at Sugarloaf), are just meant to unload the lift at slow speed in the event of a primary failure. They don't need high HP.

benski said:

The document also says the lift goes 550 ft a minuet, so its not a slow lift.

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Better buy a loading carpet if they want to run it that fast!

Think about older motors too, wasn't too too long ago you could find a car with 75-100 horsepower.

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benski said:

I am just surprised to see an evac drive being less powerful than a Honda civic’s engine. Do these lifts run at maximum horsepower all the time, are they only consuming energy a few times as fast as a Suburban?

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Like newpylong stated, if a secondary motor is intended only to be used for Evac at reduced speed, it doesn't need to be that powerful. In terms of the maximum horsepower question, generally speaking the answer would be no from some of the design specs I've seen. The Belleayre gondola for example has a 600HP motor, but the expected theoretical continuous HP need was only around 500HP.

benski said:

According to the application. The Motor is only 400 horsepower, with an I. C. engine that has only 140 horsepower. I assume I. C. is the backup. This seams awfully low, but I don't know that much, are lift significantly more efficient than a car? The document also says the lift goes 550 ft a minuet, so its not a slow lift.

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What a lift can run at, verses what it will actually run at, are often 2 different things. I think that anyone who rode that quad at Stratton will agree that it didn't run at 550 ft/min, and given that it's the same drive motor, same chairs, etc, I think that "faster than the old Black, but not 550 ft/min" will likely be what the lift runs at this winter

FYI most circa 1980s or newer fixed grips are name plated 550fpm design speed.

I don't think you can run a quad at 550fpm...the state regulates maximum loading speeds and the more people per chair the slower it has to run for safety at load/unload.

cdskier said:

Why do you think that sounds low? For comparison, Sugarbush's Valley House Quad has a 400HP motor and Belleayre's new Gondola has a 600 HP primary drive and a 130 HP Evac drive unit.

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What's fascinating to me is the gearing involved in the transmissions used in a chairlift. With the Red Chair, it gears it down so far you can turn the main shaft by hand.

Also, APUs are generally Diesel motors so a 140hp motor can have gobs and gobs of torque. With an APU being an extremely low speed motor, it allows for some pretty impressive output when coupled with a proper gearbox. It's not a car so comparing it to one is not really apples to oranges.

Also to address the questions put forth so far, yes we will be running the Dam, TBurg pump station and Black replacement simultaneously if the state sees fit to approve our plans. We have obsessively been fretting over the meticulous details, as making sure the permitting goes smoothly is of paramount concern. This is year 2 of the Dam process though, and I can't imagine there's another quagmire to get stuck in at this point. Fingers crossed now, it's basically out of our hands until it gets the stamp of approval. Until then it's just all about keeping contractors and surveyors, engineers etc. all moving fast enough to be ready when we get said stamp. It's been an all-consuming process. Exhausting doesn't even begin to describe life up here right now but we are kicking ass and making headway every day. I will try to update here as things progress, but I may get a little distracted so bear with me.

It's definitely very important to us to be as transparent and open to all our customers ad casual observers, so don't hesitate if you have a burning question. We will do our best to answer it for you. Thanks everybody!

Do Work said:

What's fascinating to me is the gearing involved in the transmissions used in a chairlift. With the Red Chair, it gears it down so far you can turn the main shaft by hand.

Also, APUs are generally Diesel motors so a 140hp motor can have gobs and gobs of torque. With an APU being an extremely low speed motor, it allows for some pretty impressive output when coupled with a proper gearbox. It's not a car so comparing it to one is not really apples to oranges.

Also to address the questions put forth so far, yes we will be running the Dam, TBurg pump station and Black replacement simultaneously if the state sees fit to approve our plans. We have obsessively been fretting over the meticulous details, as making sure the permitting goes smoothly is of paramount concern. This is year 2 of the Dam process though, and I can't imagine there's another quagmire to get stuck in at this point. Fingers crossed now, it's basically out of our hands until it gets the stamp of approval. Until then it's just all about keeping contractors and surveyors, engineers etc. all moving fast enough to be ready when we get said stamp. It's been an all-consuming process. Exhausting doesn't even begin to describe life up here right now but we are kicking ass and making headway every day. I will try to update here as things progress, but I may get a little distracted so bear with me.

It's definitely very important to us to be as transparent and open to all our customers ad casual observers, so don't hesitate if you have a burning question. We will do our best to answer it for you. Thanks everybody!

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Great info. Good luck with all the permits! And thank you Do Work!

I don't think lifts are getting revved out to 8000 rpm (or even relatively speaking) so horsepower might not be even an important # in that application. Seems to me torque and brakes are what matters.

slatham said:

Also interesting that one of the docs mentioned 2 other simultaneous projects: the pond, which I expected to be in the mix, but also pipes on Kinderspiel? I wonder if that is really on the list for this summer - it would be a great addition to the snowmaking terrain with Green going in.

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Any snowmaking off Green should be low down enough for low E guns, no? Kinderspiel is more sheltered/shaded than Hocus Pocus, too, and feeds right into Green Lift. If that snowmaking upgrade happens it'll be interesting to see what guns are used (portable vs. fixed) and how it changes early season ops

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Considering the 10-30 footers are already installed on existing mounts, short of another order, it would make sense to just use the Viper and Impulse sleds there. Or only lay new water pipe and install more fan gun plugs since the trail has some acreage to it. IF they've even thought that far with the 300 other projects going on. Cue Do Work / JM.

I know for a fan expansion for our tube park the number $100k got tossed around. That was to support 10 guns at once via 14 outlets and that doesn't include new pipe or buried power or the fans themselves. I would be a bit suprised if that was cheaper than just air and water, but Magic has been known to build once, right, rather than cheap out on critical infrastructure.

I'd imagine air water and Vipers/Impulse sleds is the way to go myself, but I've been wrong before - perhaps 30' towers with better throw and marginal preformance get picked, maybe they're grabbing fans at a steal.

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That's heavy I had 5 more plugs put in last year it was around 15K parts and labor. We trench and put the plywood/posts up, they do the hookups.

6" .219 wall for air was like $11/foot last I looked so you're looking at about 30k for pipe delivered if KS is like 2500 feet long. You could do 4" air too for prob $8/ft. Need ball valves too. Might be a toss up putting an air line vs more plugs. Only team Magic knows whats best!

They already has their Arecos.

Hmm. I wasn't on that project directly, so maybe there's some aspect that raised the price I don't know about that wouldn't apply, future proofing or something.

Even if fan power is priced the same as running air, though, Magic has only so many Arecos - not a lot for that much trail, especially not to open it quickly. Eight fans can do a lot but that trail is a half mile - without buying more fans, that's 2600'/8 for 325 feet of trail per gun. Not impossible, but pretty thin.

Regardless, I'm sure there are factors we don't know - if Magic is considering more snowmaking coverage they must be planning a serious effort this winter, one way or another, and I look forward to seeing how the new lifts and capacity plays out.

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Kinder is not in the immediate future. Lifts are expensive. More so than planned quite frankly.


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10-4, I was surprised it was ever in the discussion. Regardless I'll be curious to watch how y'all roll out the white carpet this year.

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bdfreetuna said:

I don't think lifts are getting revved out to 8000 rpm (or even relatively speaking) so horsepower might not be even an important # in that application. Seems to me torque and brakes are what matters.

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Essentially yes. Think of how massively powerful a 160hp diesel tractor or excavator is vs. a 160hp car. Apples to oranges for sure when it's a torque function and horsepower is just along for the ride.

IceEidolon said:

Any snowmaking off Green should be low down enough for low E guns, no? Kinderspiel is more sheltered/shaded than Hocus Pocus, too, and feeds right into Green Lift. If that snowmaking upgrade happens it'll be interesting to see what guns are used (portable vs. fixed) and how it changes early season ops

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Yes, correct. We will have to use baby rats etc across sunshine corner due to the huge area needed to cover and relatively low number of hydrants avaiable, but everything else is vipers and 10' impulse sleds from there down unless we're running everything and there's air left on tap.

We wont be able to get pipe to Kinder this season, just too much else going on. We also want to add fixed tower bases on LMC, Showoff, Hocus Pocus and Mystery (which is also disconnected now and will need extensive repair) but that will have to wait also. With how complicated our permitting process was this year, that's a next year deal. Has to be. We've got about 50 HKD spectrum guns to go through, renozzle and get back out there but again, not enough hours in the day this season. We are aggressively planning out the dialing of the lower mountain trails' system (while minimizing cost using what we've got or can make happen ourselves) to maximize the speed we can blow in from Green down early season. It will take a while to get it all, but when it's done it will be crazy nice and very effective. We're also rebuilding our 300cfm IR diesel backup this season so having that extra oomph early on will be extra nice.

Newpylong said:

Considering the 10-30 footers are already installed on existing mounts, short of another order, it would make sense to just use the Viper and Impulse sleds there. Or only lay new water pipe and install more fan gun plugs since the trail has some acreage to it. IF they've even thought that far with the 300 other projects going on. Cue Do Work / JM.

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Yes, for now absolutely. As said above we have a bunch of extra oldie but goodie towers lying around, but they need a little love we can't give them right now, nor do we have the pipe footings to put them on. Next season for sure. On the bright side we pulled all or 10' fixed towers from last season, replaced them with 20'ers and put the 10s on sleds, so the mobile fleet is 50% bigger than last year which is huge. I LOVE those sleds!

IceEidolon said:

I know for a fan expansion for our tube park the number $100k got tossed around. That was to support 10 guns at once via 14 outlets and that doesn't include new pipe or buried power or the fans themselves. I would be a bit suprised if that was cheaper than just air and water, but Magic has been known to build once, right, rather than cheap out on critical infrastructure.

I'd imagine air water and Vipers/Impulse sleds is the way to go myself, but I've been wrong before - perhaps 30' towers with better throw and marginal preformance get picked, maybe they're grabbing fans at a steal.

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That seems really high but fixed fans are for ballers so what do I know? lol. We replaced 2k' last summer and that was in a similar ballpark although one of our investors owns a pipe/steel company so we got a smoking deal on raw materials and I TIG'd it all myself, with our own operator on the sticks of a rental excavator. Basically operated at a fraction of the cost a contractor would have charged. For us it's all about maximizing return with minimal expenditure. I obsess over squeezing every penny until boogers fly out of Lincoln's nose. That said, new 30' impulse towers are about $5k each so there's $50k right there if you went that route.

If I was adding pipe and 10 hydrants to blow in a tubing park, I'd probably try to go with the tallest and most reliably versatile low e sticks I could fit there unless it's the world's largest tubing park. Fans are just so astronomically expensive apiece, they're generally a last resort unless we're talking about a huge area that's under constant care and with huge demand such as a terrain park, the base area etc. I know we got an estimate to replace Hocus Pocus and Showoff's power lines and that alone was over $100k. We have all portable fans that we move around with huge cords, and it works great for us when we need to fill in a certain area fast. Can't wait until our Arecos start to shed their chrysalis and spread their winds as polecats though, that will be amazing. All in good time!