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Snowmaking Pipe Bursts at Beech, Freezing Person to Lift

machski

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The incompetence goes even deeper- starts with the design of that system. Snowmaking hydrants in the middle of a trail running right under the chairlift? Forget about the boarder that skied into the hydrant, there’s so much more that could go wrong with a system that is under pressure with a lift directly above.
Yes, that snowmaking line is odd as it seems to run almost directly below the lift line for it's length. I am unfamiliar with the slope but looks like a very wide area on both sides of the lift. So from a coverage standpoint, the line where it is probably made sense. But given what is overhead, not so much. That's why Killington won't make snow anywhere on the SS trail pod during World Cup I believe. The feed lines run right under where the grandstands are set up.
 

Newpylong

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Shutting the water off is actually fairly simple. Press a button or two in the pump house and at the very least the pumps will start turning off and stop sending water. You wouldn't want to do it in a normal scenario without taking a bunch of other steps. In this case the lift should have been stopped as soon as possible at a point where no loaded chair was in the waters path and the pump should have been shut down immediately. You deal with the issues of a sudden pump shut down later. This could have gone so much worse; rope derailment, etc.

As I saw elsewhere, you hate to armchair QB something like this but it is hard to think of a worse response than what we see in that video.

That would of been an "E Shutdown" for us absolutely. Assuming someone told Mountain Ops, we would have shut the pumps down immediately. Then had the pumphouse operator open the "back drains" to drain the uplines. Leave the compressors running. Then it's a race to open the bleeds, any low points and get the guns shutdown/ hoses drained in that order before riga mortis sets in which isnt long at 15 degrees. It's a snowmaking nightmare. Similar scenario happened to us one evening when we lost one phase of our power and the pumps tripped but the compressors kept running. Luckily our blow outs were always on closed trails or pre-season.
 

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raisingarizona

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i just watched the 13 minute video,… seems like complete incompetence! on all of - Mtn ops, lift ops and the ski patrol! How difficult is it to shut the water off? They also should not have run the chair without evacuation of the second guy. He was not moving, bar was up and looked like he was about to go limp and fall out.
i just watched the 13 minute video,… seems like complete incompetence! on all of - Mtn ops, lift ops and the ski patrol! How difficult is it to shut the water off? They also should not have run the chair without evacuation of the second guy. He was not moving, bar was up and looked like he was about to go limp and fall out.
You must have many years of experience working those positions having such strong opinions.
 

raisingarizona

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When purchasing their tickets, Joe and Bob had no idea how hard they would be hosed that day. *deep narrating voice from Idiocracy.

I hope no one was seriously injured in that, if so I’m going to hell for laughing my butt off watching that video.
 

ThatGuy

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That dude tugging on the lift tower pad has a nice looking suit.
The whole video is the bystander effect in full display. I like how they tried for about ten seconds to get the pad then gave up. Also the people watching from the lifts and jumping off 15+ feet are the icing on the cake. Really surprised no serious injuries have been reported yet.
 

ThatGuy

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the pudge sitting next to the guy filming should be deported immediately we don’t need that kind here
Why you always have some comment out of left field about either Spanish people or Harvey? So unnecessary 😂 the guy was probably born and raised in North Carolina.
 

skiur

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Why you always have some comment out of left field about either Spanish people or Harvey? So unnecessary 😂 the guy was probably born and raised in North Carolina

Because he is a racist asshole, he has proved that repeatedly in the short time he has been posting here.
 

skiur

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The racist is whoever said the dude is Spanish? I just said that because Americans don’t act like that , I don’t care where you’re from, don’t make up crap

I rest my case. I also remember you having a problem with non English speaking workers.
 

deadheadskier

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The racist is whoever said the dude is Spanish? I just said that because Americans don’t act like that , I don’t care where you’re from, don’t make up crap

Maybe not racist, but overt bigotry for certain. We are a nation of immigrants. Always have been, always will be. There are members of this forum who are first generation immigrants. Unless you're 100% Native American, your family ain't from here either.

I will speak for all moderators of this forum in saying we have zero tolerance for racism or bigotry.

You are on the thinnest of ice. Final warning. Make another crack like that and you are gone.
 

deadheadskier

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Back to the subject at hand. Any follow up on this accident? Are those who were impacted ok?
 

Dickc

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If you go to the actual YouTube page, and scroll down through the comments, you will read that the person on the lift who looks to have a leg at a funny angle is supposedly a female, and that the force of the water broke the chair slats, so she is draped in the chairs metal frame. Man am I glad I was NOT there!!!!
 

djd66

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You must have many years of experience working those positions having such strong opinions.
I actually do have many years of experience working at ski areas including all of the positions I mentioned in my post,… thanks for asking. Regardless of my experience, I also have enough common sense to recognize incompetence when I see it. That was complete incompetence.
 

MadPadraic

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oarder (possibly THE reported snowboarder who hit and broke the snowmaking water turent off and caused the incident) there trying to gather their facilities and process the geyser they created, in the shot, so the video may literally be less than 30 seconds after the geyser started, so unless there was an employee with a mtn coms link radio right there to call

More difficult than you realize, it's not like they had a hydrant they could just shut off anymore. With full system pressure having to be halted in the line, it's not a rapid fix. Bottom line is, all should be squarely pointing this blame at the snowboarder for riding far too close to the snowmaking hydrants. Honestly, I cannot count the amount of times I have seen folks ride/ski over snowmaking hose or close to hydrants. Most of the time they are the ones asking for trouble. But in this case, the line was directly beneath a chair and the rider's actions caused many to be injured/inconvenienced.

The incompetence goes even deeper- starts with the design of that system. Snowmaking hydrants in the middle of a trail running right under the chairlift? Forget about the boarder that skied into the hydrant, there’s so much more that could go wrong with a system that is under pressure with a lift directly above.

It was a skier not a snowboarder who hit the hydrant.
 

thetrailboss

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So my terrible jokes aside....

I watched a longer form of this video. Absolute shit show on multiple levels. Starting the chair to move multiple chairs with riders through the geyser was stupidity. The ski patroller who stood there and did nothing while one soaked victim was barely hanging onto the chair, and while multiple other people jumped off the chairs, demonstrates shear incompetence. The lack of communication was painful to watch.

Unreal.
 

MadPadraic

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Between this, Magic and Wildcat having lift accidents, and the avalanche at Crystal, it seems like a lot more bad events are happening. Are we seeing an anomalous number of bad events or are they just being reported better?
 
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