12/16/2007 Loon Closed

[Justin10]

Loon Mountain closed around 9:45 this morning. A gondola car on the way back down to the base terminal fell off the wire from high winds. All lifts stopped loading immediatly after that...

Thank God it wasnt on the way up and no one was injured on the trail below (if there was a trial where it fell). Still a scary situation. To all out gettin some today, have fun and be safe!!


EDIT: Thread title should be 12/16/2007....sorry

 

[thetrailboss]

Got you covered....

:wink:

 

[millerm277]

Were there people on the lift at the time? Or was it just running but empty, as Killington often does with the K1 until winds die down?

 

[Justin10]

There were people on the lift, although not packed because of the weather and early time. As far as I know, the lift stopped, and then they ran it very slow to get the remaining people off the lift. My buddy said he was on the lift for about an hour and a half before he got off, but he had just got on, so he had to go the whole way up to the top.

 

[Telemechanic]

Correction

Loon Mountain closed around 9:45 this morning. A gondola car on the way back down to the base terminal fell off the wire from high winds. All lifts stopped loading immediatly after that...

Thank God it wasnt on the way up and no one was injured on the trail below (if there was a trial where it fell). Still a scary situation. To all out gettin some today, have fun and be safe!!


EDIT: Thread title should be 12/16/2007....sorry

This report isn't accurate. The haul rope de-roped on the downhill side of tower 21 (on the summit) when a cabin hit the tower. The gondola summit was experiencing sudden high winds and this caused the cabin to swing. The cabin remained on the haul rope. The rope remained well off the ground and the lift was evacuated on normal electric power. A loon spokesperson will be interviewed for WMUR TV-9's evening news. Please tune in for the official story.

 

[MikeTrainor]

Here's the story:

http://www.wmur.com/news/14867291/detail.html

 

[sledhaulingmedic]

This report isn't accurate. The haul rope de-roped on the downhill side of tower 21 (on the summit) when a cabin hit the tower. The gondola summit was experiencing sudden high winds and this caused the cabin to swing. The cabin remained on the haul rope. The rope remained well off the ground and the lift was evacuated on normal electric power. A loon spokesperson will be interviewed for WMUR TV-9's evening news. Please tune in for the official story.

Maybe I've got this wrong, because I'm not the brightest bulb in the string, but I thought de-ropement was the carrier comming off the haul rope an dderailment was the haul rope coming off a sheave train. I went digging through B77 and the Lift Evac Manual, but I can't find the reference.

Maybe I'm just picking nitts (and happy I didn;t have to deal with that bit of Evac fun today)

 

[davidhowland14]

and now loon is reporting 7 lifts and 0 trails today. what's up with that?

 

[WJenness]

and now loon is reporting 7 lifts and 0 trails today. what's up with that?

They were reporting the same yesterday afternoon when I had looked... with the Gondola listed as "S" in the open column, and commented that it would be a late opening.

-w

 

[Justin10]

Yeah, what really happened was the haul rope simply fell off the wheels when the car hit the tower. We heard the word "de-roped" and we figured the car had fallen off. Sorry for the confusion/inaccuracy guys...

 

[WJenness]

and now loon is reporting 7 lifts and 0 trails today. what's up with that?

Fixed now... 7 lifts, 33 trails.

Gondola still listed as "S" and a delayed opening.

I wonder how long it will take to get it fixed. They'll need it for the holiday weekend.

-w

 

[loonsnow]

Facts and Update

LINCOLN, NH - December 16, 2007 – The Gondola at Loon Mountain experienced a deropement at tower 20 at 9:18 a.m. today, due to a high gust of wind. The lift was able to operate under its normal primary drive system and safely unload 19 gondola cabins carrying 75 guests. All guests were unloaded from the lift without incident by 10:54 a.m.

Due to sustained high winds, all lift operations were suspended at 9:58 a.m. for the remainder of the day. “The safety our guests is our number one priority, and as the storm is expected to intensify, we have suspended operations for the rest of today,” stated Rick Kelley, general manager of Loon Mountain. All scheduled lifts are anticipated to open as usual at 9:00 a.m. on Monday.

Monday update: Gondola is scheduled to open later today after inspections are complete. Storm total 15" of fresh!

 

[billski]

Ok guys and gals, I need an education. Please define:

- deropement
- haul rope

I'm having a hard time visualizing what happend. thanks.

p.s., This is one story not to tell the significant other...

 

[Phildozer]

To all out gettin some today, have fun and be safe!!

You can never be too safe.

Just one more reason I always wear a condom while skiing.

 

[WJenness]

You can never be too safe.

Just one more reason I always wear a condom while skiing.

You really do LOVE to ski, don't you?

-w

 

[bvibert]

Ok guys and gals, I need an education. Please define:

- deropement
- haul rope

I'm having a hard time visualizing what happend. thanks.

p.s., This is one story not to tell the significant other...

Apparently, in this case, deropement means that the haul rope came off the guide sheaves (the little wheels on the towers that the haul rope travels over and under).

The haul rope is the cable to which the carrier (chair or in this case gondola) grip is attached. This is what runs up and down the mountain in a big loop around the bull wheels.

I would guess that they would have had to get the haul rope back on the sheaves before they were able to start the lift again, which can be challenging...

 

[loonsnow]

'Haul rope' is the cable that hauls the chairs, cabins, etc up the hill.
'Deropement' is when the haul rope comes off the sheaves (wheels) that it normally passes over.

 

[billski]

Apparently, in this case, deropement means that the haul rope came off the guide sheaves (the little wheels on the towers that the haul rope travels over and under).

The haul rope is the cable to which the carrier (chair or in this case gondola) grip is attached. This is what runs up and down the mountain in a big loop around the bull wheels.

I would guess that they would have had to get the haul rope back on the sheaves before they were able to start the lift again, which can be challenging...

Thanks. That "rope" must have a tremendous amount of weight on it. Now you have to "pry it back on" to the sheaves, so to speak? Unless they can lock it down somewhere. I remember coming off the gondola last year, looking up mountain to the right. The chairlift tower near the top was having a wheel (sheave) replaced.

 

[Telemechanic]

Hello again. I'm a lift mechanic at Loon and I previously posted some info on the gondola deropement. Loon's officials, Stacey Lopes on Channel 9 and Rick Kelley in the article pasted in an earlier post, covered the story well and collectively this thread has filled in some of the details but I think I can clear up the picture.

Sledhaulingmedic, we've always refered to the haul rope coming off the sheaves as a "deropement" and a cabin coming off the haul rope (hasn't happened at Loon) as "cabin came off the haul rope" (even though its never happened at Loon). The media used "Derailment" because it was a more recognizable term that fit the incident well enough. I'm also not sure what terms the B77 code uses.

As stated earlier the deropement was on the downhill side of tower 20 which is on Hannah's Bypass, for those who know Loon. The gondola has 22 towers. Taking the rope off of a single tower, especially when the rope is tensioned, doesn't result in the rope hitting the ground. In this case the rope was still far enough above the ground that the minimum clearance of the suspended cabins was approximately 15 feet as they traveled between towers 21 & 19.

Putting the rope back up on the sheaves with a loaded lift in harsh winter conditions would have taken a long time. A ground evacuation with ropes of 75 guests in 19 cabins including some in isolated, non-skiing terrain would have also taken a long time. Under the conditions described in the previous paragraph it was possible to run the gondola under normal power with the deroped sheaves' switch bypassed. Only empty cabins going downhill passed over the extra long span. It took 94 minutes (normally a 7 minute ride) because we were extremely cautious about the wind.

Today we hoped to open the gondola sometime today but management graciously aloud us to take all the time we needed to fully inspect the tower, sheaves, haul rope and the cabin that hit the tower and it ended up taking all day. NH State Tramway inspectors participated and they gave us the green light to run tomorrow although full inspection of the cabin will take longer.

Re-sheaving the haul rope today took a couple of hours including travel and set up. We used a 3-ton chain come-along (actually two in series to reach the sagging rope). The rope is first lifted slightly above the sheaves and then pulled horizontally into alignment while lowering too. The tricky part is getting all the articulating wheel frames to level off into the same arch of the rope when pulling horizontally. Most of the work was done by one person with a ground person tying equipment to a lifting rope. He was exhausted afterwards.

Thanks for listening, hope to see you out there.

 

[theshaggydawg]

Does the Gondola have to be re-inspected again so it won't be open for like a week?