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The Mount Snow Chairlift Thread

Glenn

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vcunning, drjeff and myself all purchased chairs from Mt. Snow's Grand Summit express (American Express and before that, Yankee Clipper). Figured I'd start a thread where everyone could post pics of their chairs.

The chairs went on sale 4/1 around 9AM...they sold all 150 by 2 or 3PM IIRC. The mountain set up a number of days where you could pick up the chairs. Since they weigh about 250 lbs, the forklift is a huge help.

My wife and I picked ours up a few weeks ago:

Dennis Bills, the Director of Lift Ops was a HUGE help!

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Pile of chairs:
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Seat pans and pads:
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more pics in next post...
 

Glenn

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Back in Dummerston:
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The chair was going to go in the backyard; across our stream. So I used the ATV to move it.
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My wife and I managed to carry is across the bridge and place it on the patio space she made for it.

My ATV jack was a really big help for helping with the base I was making:
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The original plan was 3 4x6" beams stacked...I ended up going with 2.
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Plans change...I was going to use u bolts to hold the chair down. But finding 6" U bolts was a bear...and drilling from the bottom didn't work. The Spax lags are great though. I used those to hold the beams together. 4' on the bottom, 3' beam on top.

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More pics...
 

Glenn

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Life is good: ATV, power tools, chairlift chair:
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I nixed the u bolts and went with lags and metal strapping. I had to bore out the strapping. The first few lags I used didn't cut it and a snapped a few. I used three lags on each side. I had to shim it up a bit; you can see the bit of scrap wood I used. Resting it flat resulted in the chair tiling forward. I used a level and plumbed it up to make sure it was flat.
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Because I'm a safety weenie, I ground down the sharp edges on the strapping with my grinder:
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I then used a wire wheel on the grinder and hit all the scraches and rust spots. That made quick work of it.

Side view of the chair on the mount:
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All done! I had to grind down the seat pan a bit due to my mount, but that was quick work with the grinder. I hit the cleaned up rust spots with a little gloss black. And finally, I put on the seat pad with some zip ties.

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Two shots from the deck:
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We absolutely love it! It's cool enough to have a chairlift chair...but to have one from your "home" mountain...it's pretty special. And given how often we're there skiing, we probably rode this exact chair a number of times.
 

snoseek

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Damn, you have a sweet back yard that's now even sweeter with that chair. I guess you all will be taking "drinking beers on the chair" to all new levels!
 

drjeff

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I hope to have pics of mine with the stand all welded to it and sit on my back patio in the next few days - just waiting for my local welding shop to call and say they're done and to come pick it up!
 

thetrailboss

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Love it. Nice. A classic Yan chair that you don't see anymore. You are lucky to find it since Killington and Sunday River got rid of most of these style chairs a few years back and replaced them with Pomas.
 

drjeff

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does the stream run all year? any Brook Trout?

bravo Glenn. Looks sweet

I was going to ask if it ever floods. It looks small, but looks can be deceiving.

Having been to Glenn's place a few times, and hearing stories of that stream from other times #1 - last summer during a dry time, my kids were in that stream and the depth of the water was barely getting over their feet, so it can get pretty close to going dry

#2 from the angle that Glenn's wife tookthose pictures from, it makes it look a bit deceiving as to how high above the water level the chair is. It's probably a good 3 feet above the water level and with a culvert that goes under their road maybe 50 feetor so upstream from the chair, you almost have a natural dam to regulate run off flow from expanding up and out not too far away and then combine that with how quickly downhill that stream goes once it leaves the property (If you've ever driven by Maple Valley, look across the street on the other side of the West River and you see a pretty big ridgeline over there and Glenn's place isn't too far from thegeneral area of the top of it), short of some debris causing an impromptu damming of the water, I'd doubt that it could get that high
 

Nick

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It looks like you should have a full on lift going up that back hill.

Nice job! Get out there and drink some brews now, would ya!
 

Glenn

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Thanks everyone; I really appreciate it.

We thought of doing a swing, but it would have required a lot more lumber to do it right. And some engineering. But who knows...maybe down the road.

This time of year, there aren't may fish in there, just some really small ones. Across the road, there are few bigger fish...maybe 3-4". We were talking to our neighbor a few weeks ago and he said years ago, there were more fish.

Luckily, the stream does get that high. It's pretty wide for the amount of water that flows through. Next door, there's a large stone and cement bridge with a culvert. One of the previous owners had damed it up and made a swimming hole. Another neighbor told me he took his daughters down a few times to go swimming when they were younger. So I think when it was damed, that caused the stream to be a bit wider and deeper. It gets going pretty good in the spring....and in the fall when it rains more.

Legend has it, there was a really big washout a number of years ago. Our road turns into a Class IV about 1/4 mile up. The head of public works went up there and knocked down a beaver dam. Made a heckuva mess when it let go...washed out part of our road.
 

JimG.

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Legend has it, there was a really big washout a number of years ago. Our road turns into a Class IV about 1/4 mile up. The head of public works went up there and knocked down a beaver dam. Made a heckuva mess when it let go...washed out part of our road.

My property has a trout stream running through it...it is much wider and deeper than your creek and man when it rains hard that stream really gets going. A few years back it rained pretty hard for something like 9 days straight and my stretch of stream turned into a Class V. It's normally a fairly slow moving straight with small riffles at both ends, but it turned into two Class V rapids with a nasty looking wave running between the two.

Your creek reminds me of a small creek that ran through the backyard of a ski house we rented years ago in East Jewett near Hunter. That creek looked just like yours, mild and shallow. Then we had a November weekend downpour and that little creek turned into a monster. Washed out 2 bridges at either end of our road and I thought it was going to wash the house away. Luckily, it didn't.
 

drjeff

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My chairlift (and a few shots of Vcunning's chair too)

Arriving to CT from Mount Snow befoire heading off to my local welding shop to have stands attached

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Fast forward a few weeks, and the chairs and welded stands arrive!

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Close up of the welds and finish work my local shop did

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Unloading my chair onto my patio while Vcunning's rests on the trailer. And let me say that with the stands on, the chairs weigh easily over 300lbs a piece, and trying to get one off the trailer isn't exactly an easy one man job!

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I still need to sand and paint the stands, but my chair has arrived on my patio and I think compliments my ski chair pretty well! :)

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Since the actual numbers of the chairs were on the grip assembly which were removed and used on the new grand summit chairs, with the exception of the gold painted chair #50(which will be auctioned off his fall with all proceeds going to local West Dover, VT charities), its impossible to know which number chair one has. But it is fun to sit on it and wonder just exactly how many times over the 25 or so years this chair was hanging from the haul rope that I've ridden on it before! :)
 

Glenn

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Darn mobile site! I'll have to jump on the laptop later to see the pics.
 

Glenn

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Those look great Jeff! I like how the shop angled the ends of the square tubing before capping them. Very impressive!
 

drjeff

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Those look great Jeff! I like how the shop angled the ends of the square tubing before capping them. Very impressive!

Glenn, the guy at the welding shop who did all the fabrication work on the 3 chairs really seemed like he had a fun time working on them, atleast it came across that way as I was talking with him as he was loading them onto the trailer, and I think the results show that. As he put it, this job wasn't the usual weld some structural steel for a building or weld an 18 wheeler trailer back together that he usually spends most of his time doing! He also told me that in the few days between when he finished the chairs and I picked them up, that there were 5 or 6 other customers of the shop that saw the finished project and inquired if the shop could make something similar for them (chair and all!) :)
 
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