Better deal this weekend: SR vs K-Ton

[Highway Star]

Not a full station where the gondola detaches to a separate line, but just a deck for people to load, unload from with the lift running at a dramatically low rate of speed? Interesting concept. I don't think I've ever seen something like that on a Gondola, only on chairs. I would think the cost to be much higher than 60K as they would have to have a full control station to stop the lift in the event of an emergency.

I think the idea is that you run the lift at 'loading' speed. Yes, it would take a very long time to get up and down, but the thought is that you'd only do that at the beginning and end of the day. Most of the time you'd be skiing off of the Glades lift.

From what I understand, yes. Just stairs and a platform, plus any other guides, safety features and controls that would be needed to safely load a gondola car 20 ft off the ground.

The K-1 has a speed in station of 195 ft/min, thus, if you were to run the K-1 main rope at loading speed, it would take about 35 minutes per ride.....which may or may not be reasonable. It would also cut capacity to 550 rides per hour.

If the station could pass cars through at full speed, they could just slow it down for loading once enough people were qued up. But that seems like it would be rather difficult and unsafe.

I've seen them run the K-1 in a pulsed configuration before, for snowmaking ops. They load about 5 cars on the line, and then another 5 cars once the first five reach the top. They could potentially load 20 (10/10 or 5/5/5/5) cars on the line, and just slow down the lift when those were at the download-station. Ride time would be a bit under 15 minutes, but capacity would only be around 350 rides per hour.

So, clearly this could work, but there would have to be some planning involved to figure out the best way to do it.

 

[Highway Star]

Yes, but doesn't the skyeship detach? I think HWS is talking about a mid-station like a normal chairlift mid-station where the lift does not detach.

If it was a full on mid-station with detach like Skyeship, I would place the cost way, way, way above 60K. I know nothing about lift infrastructure costs, but I would have to imagine the cost of a full service mid-station would exceed a million.

Yeah that's a full-on detach midstation on the Skyeship, but since the K1 is so fast I find it hard to think about doing it any other way. That would be pretty hard to cram 8 people out of gondola at full speed! Oh well......best to just wait and see on these kinds of things. I'd rather see them put in either new lifts accessing new terrain or updating some of the older lifts vs a mid-station on the K1 concept. just my 2 cents.

As Rogman said, the skyeship is two separate lifts slaved together with cabin transport system.

A full-on detach midstation on a single rope/drive lift does exist, on a HSQ at le Massif in Quebec, and I think on a few lifts out west.

Installing one on the K-1 would be a signifigant task, major construction work in the middle of cascade, changing the height of towers, rope length, etc. Would a be able to pass through cabins at full speed? Would it detach at both the downhill and uphill side? A full detch on both sides would be interesting with some improvements to the trails around the K-1, such as eliminating the crossovers/GN up top, automated snowmaking up top, adding snowmaking to flume, opening the K-1 liftline and old lower cascade as proper trails, etc. Lots of possiblities that make it more worthwhile but add cost.

 

[jerryg]

As Rogman said, the skyeship is two separate lifts slaved together with cabin transport system.

A full-on detach midstation on a single rope/drive lift does exist, on a HSQ at le Massif in Quebec, and I think on a few lifts out west.

Installing one on the K-1 would be a signifigant task, major construction work in the middle of cascade, changing the height of towers, rope length, etc. Would a be able to pass through cabins at full speed? Would it detach at both the downhill and uphill side? A full detch on both sides would be interesting with some improvements to the trails around the K-1, such as eliminating the crossovers/GN up top, automated snowmaking up top, adding snowmaking to flume, opening the K-1 liftline and old lower cascade as proper trails, etc. Lots of possiblities that make it more worthwhile but add cost.

Most detachable lifts with one haul rope and a detached mid-station only have one side detach. The gondola at Heavenly is a very good examply of this although the mid-station detached section is on the way up and is not for skier services, but rather, summer sightseeing. Presummably K would want to have it the other way around, for downloading purposes.

Having both sides detach would be absolutely ridiculous when they could put in a new or used fixed grip lift a fraction of the cost of the detachable alterations to an existing high-speed lift.