Scott - thanks for the updates on the Timberline Lift malfunction. I would like to point out however that there is a significant inaccuracy in the Timberline Press release:
“We are requesting that these same experts do a thorough inspection of our other lifts as well, even though they are performing properly,” indicated Timberline Resort in an official release.
The other triple chair at Timberline has not, in my opinion, been performing properly for the last several years. When the lift is running at near full capacity the lift attendants will often resort to loading alternating chairs even when there is a line waiting to get on the lift. A typical case in point is two weeks ago Sunday during the holiday weekend. The lift operated at full capacity for several hours. Lines were significant. Then the attendants started skipping loading chairs. This continued for an hour. Then they started loading the lift at full capacity again. This is not an atypical occurence and has been happening for at least two season.
Regular customers have theorized that a warning is being sent by the lift protection that the lift is being over loaded. When this occurs the attendants begin to alternate load the lift so it doesn't shut down automatically. When this behavior stops they begin to fully load the lift again. There may very well be another explanation but this has never been publicly revealed.
I have skied at dozens of ski resorts and I have never seen a lift operated this way. So, in my opinion, the lifts are not operating properly. It would be nice Scott if you could reach out to industry experts to see if this is indeed proper functioning of a ski lift. It would also be interesting to hear an official explanation of this observed lift behavior from Timberline management. This would be a very useful addition to your current piece on the Thunderstruck lift malfunction. As you can tell by reading the Timberline lift thread this condition has been observed by many skiers at the resort.
This is not piling on Timberline. As the state has no official lift inspection service to my knowledge customers have to rely on the word of Timberline regarding the safety of the lifts. While other companies have supposedly inspected the lifts I haven't seen any other company besides Timberline come forth with an official statement regarding the safety of the lifts. I know I speak for many of the regular skiers that have skied at Timberline for years and love the ski mountain and many of the people that work there in saying that we are incredibly upset and depressed about the occurences of the last week. We implicitly trust and rely on the owners to provide a safe lift system and it is not apparent to many of us that this has been the case. If so, then outside opinions regarding the safety of the lifts and whether such dramatic lift failure was an "act of god" or negligence in maintenance would go a long way to making us regain trust.
Spin Doctors they are.
Sea wot I did thar?
If Timberline wants to regain public confidence I challenge them to post the following information on their website:
1. Documentation demonstrating compliance with the mandatory requirements of ANSI B77.1.
2. Documentation demonstrating why the 1987 Borvig Crossarm Connection Advisory has not been implemented on the Thunderstruck Lift.
3. Ultrasonic testing documentation showing foundation anchor bolts (Tower 12) are satisfactory considering the extreme event load the system experienced during the failure.
4. PE sealed contract/shop drawings of the repairs.
It appears I will be back at Whitetail next season, unless TL surprises me with a new lift.
I believe Timberline's statement in reference to the Silver Queen lift is that it is performing properly from a safety perspective. I don't know why Silver Queen is not running to full capacity, but plenty of people have asked Timberline that question (here on the DCSki Forums and their official Facebook page) and I haven't seen an official explanation from the resort. I understand why skiers might be concerned in light of the Thunderstruck failure, and I hope that Timberline will provide as much information as possible.
There are several reasons why a resort may not fill a lift to capacity 100% of the time. Obviously, extra weight puts more stress on a lift, reducing the expected lifetime of components. There are multiple ways a resort might prolong the length of their equipment. It is common for resorts to run modern lifts at less than full speed to prolong life and reduce maintenance costs. I've heard that modern lifts will automatically adjust their speed based on factors such as the load, wind speed, etc. Silver Queen is not a modern lift. I'm just theorizing here, but it may be getting harder to find replacement parts for some of these old lifts as well, so resorts may be trying to prolong the life as long as they can until there's an option to replace the lifts with newer models. (A theory Ed Fowler has floated is that the average weight of skiers was lower a few decades ago when many of these older lifts were designed. I don't know if that factors into things, but it is a good point!) Reducing load can reduce the chance that safety mechanisms trigger, so your theory that the load might be reduced periodically to cut down on the chance of a disruptive e-stops seems plausible to me. That doesn't mean a lift isn't safe. Safety systems such as e-stops are designed to be conservative. Lifts in the crowded mid-Atlantic are also put under a lot of stress as they are more likely to be at capacity on weekends.
Only Timberline can explain the rationale behind Silver Queen's loading behavior. If the resort provides an official statement, I will certainly report it.
With respect to the ongoing repairs, companies that are under contract to provide services are not authorized to speak about their clients. Doing so would be unprofessional and would often violate the terms of their contract. Resorts can authorize them to release their findings if they choose to.
Every customer will make their own judgment about safety based on information available to them. Within the constraints of my limited time, I can gather and organize available facts and report what a resort says. I consider the Thunderstruck lift accident to be significant and newsworthy, with ramifications across the entire ski industry, which is why I've tried to provide quick and accurate reporting. But DCSki also has very limited resources. (Over the past year my "salary" working on DCSki has been less than 9 cents an hour.) I do the best I can in the limited time I have available.
Scott - I thank you for your reporting so far. Of course you are the only one that can judge whether it is worth your time to continue to update your report on the accident and what level of resources to dedicate to it. This is not a criticism of you.
On the other hand, I assume safety signals shutdown lifts for a reason. If a full load causes these safety signal shutdowns on a regular basis is that not reason to worry? Others can weigh in that are more knowledgeable than I am but I would think a continuing signal of over load can't be status quo operating for a lift. This has been a continuing problem. This is not a procedure to extend the life of the lift. I've watched the lift attendants watch the counter-weight raise up and then shortly thereafter the alternating lift loading occurs.
As far as who deems a lift safe remember Timberline deemed that lift safe to operate at the beginning of the season and supposedly every morning they fire it up. Some of us are more trusting than others but generally when there is some kind of major infrastructure failure relating to a corporation it is a good idea to have an outside unbiased source declare the infrastructure safe. I don't think it would be unprofessional at all for Timberline to ask the companies doing the work to publicly declare it safe. However, for liability reasons I doubt they would ever do such a thing. Eventually Tline will say it is safe. Everyone will have to make a decision on how much they trust the validity of that evaluation.
As always, thanks for your work in providing this web site.
TomH wrote:
Scott - I thank you for your reporting so far. Of course you are the only one that can judge whether it is worth your time to continue to update your report on the accident and what level of resources to dedicate to it. This is not a criticism of you.
On the other hand, I assume safety signals shutdown lifts for a reason. If a full load causes these safety signal shutdowns on a regular basis is that not reason to worry? Others can weigh in that are more knowledgeable than I am but I would think a continuing signal of over load can't be status quo operating for a lift. This has been a continuing problem. This is not a procedure to extend the life of the lift. I've watched the lift attendants watch the counter-weight raise up and then shortly thereafter the alternating lift loading occurs.
As far as who deems a lift safe remember Timberline deemed that lift safe to operate at the beginning of the season and supposedly every morning they fire it up. Some of us are more trusting than others but generally when there is some kind of major infrastructure failure relating to a corporation it is a good idea to have an outside unbiased source declare the infrastructure safe. I don't think it would be unprofessional at all for Timberline to ask the companies doing the work to publicly declare it safe. However, for liability reasons I doubt they would ever do such a thing. Eventually Tline will say it is safe. Everyone will have to make a decision on how much they trust the validity of that evaluation.
As always, thanks for your work in providing this web site.
It wouldn't be unprofessional at all for Timberline to ask the companies to release their reports. It would be unprofessional for those companies to provide that kind of information directly to some web site operator like me without Timberline's permission, since Timberline is their client and they would probably like to have clients in the future as well. Some municipalies would require an independent and public investigation, but I don't think that's the case in West Virginia, so information about the accident may be limited to what Timberline chooses to release. There is certainly public pressure for them to release as much information as possible. If there are concerns about lift safety in West Virginia (which I'm not sure is warranted -- this is the first accident I'm aware of in the history of the state, although one accident is one accident too many), public pressure could cause changes at the state level. States vary in the kinds of regulation they do and ultimately there needs to be public confidence.
Scott - this is my statment from my post:
"This is not piling on Timberline. As the state has no official lift inspection service to my knowledge customers have to rely on the word of Timberline regarding the safety of the lifts. While other companies have supposedly inspected the lifts I haven’t seen any other company besides Timberline come forth with an official statement regarding the safety of the lifts."
I didn't say the other companies should reveal their findings it was merely at statement of fact - so far the only people officially deeming anything safe is Timberline. When the manager states other companies are inspecting a lift that Tline has deemed safe that only tells us Tline has deemed the lift safe. Nothing more nothing less. Unless the inspections are released then that statement is meaningless.
I wasn't suggesting that you should call these companies although perhaps that wasn't clear. I was suggesting that a PR release from Timberline should at least be critically questioned. Input from knowledgeable industry experts or individuals would be helpful or perhaps a simple note from Tline explaining the phenomenon. Perhaps lifts all over the Mid-Atlantic are skipping chairs because we are so fat. If so, maybe Tline can start offering some more healthful food selections or a presser telling us if we lose some extra lbs the lifts will move faster ;)
That is exactly why TL should be open and transparent; how else can they regain public confidence??
I suspect some WV attorneys will have the information in the near future.
This situation has the smell of negligence.
It wouldn't be unprofessional at all for Timberline to ask the companies to release their reports. It would be unprofessional for those companies to provide that kind of information directly to some web site operator like me without Timberline's permission, since Timberline is their client and they would probably like to have clients in the future as well. Some municipalies would require an independent and public investigation, but I don't think that's the case in West Virginia, so information about the accident may be limited to what Timberline chooses to release. There is certainly public pressure for them to release as much information as possible. If there are concerns about lift safety in West Virginia (which I'm not sure is warranted -- this is the first accident I'm aware of in the history of the state, although one accident is one accident too many), public pressure could cause changes at the state level. States vary in the kinds of regulation they do and ultimately there needs to be public confidence.
teleman wrote:
That is exactly why TL should be open and transparent; how else can they regain public confidence??
I suspect some WV attorneys will have the information in the near future.
This situation has the smell of negligence.
You see the way people talk about Timberline here. They don't need to regain public confidence. People will still continue to support them, no matter how unsafe and outdated the hill is.
I’m not certain about that. This could be a game changer considering prior to this lift failure there were only 16 lift incidents since 1973 (according to NSAA). And now 17. And this appears to be the first significant structural tower failure.
The only reason people go there is for the steeper runs, trees and natural snow. If they didn’t have the best terrain within reasonable driving distance of the surrounding metro areas the doors would have shut years ago. There is a reason TL does about 2.5 the number of skier days than CV; but that may change next year.
You see the way people talk about Timberline here. They don't need to regain public confidence. People will still continue to support them, no matter how unsafe and outdated the hill is.
Just for the record, the NSAA report, was updated in 2014, to remove the fatality at Snow Trails in Ohio, as it was not due to mechanical failure. Here is the link to the updated report:
http://www.nsaa.org/media/214677/Lift_Safety_Fact_Sheet_10_31_14.pdf
Also, this does not include the Sugarloaf rollback in 2015, and I am not sure if there was anything else the past season or two. So no. 17 incident is probably right but not gospel. We all need to be careful becuase there may be media and lawyers reading these posts.
This is a true quote:
"Over 1,000 people were on the mountain when the lift went down, but within just 2 hours ski patrol was able to evacuate the mountain and begin an assessment of injuries."
Keith - I was quoting numbers based on the Nov. 2015 document.
http://www.nsaa.org/media/256322/Lift_Safety_Fact_Sheet_2015.pdf
Either way this is a significant event that could adversely impact TL's revenue.
Thanks, I had not seen the latest update, and yes this is a significant incident in the industry, as was seen with the response of Sugarloaf and the State of Vermont.
At some point there needs to be a publically available report over the name and the Professional Engineer license number of the preparing individual. The sooner the better, for both Timberline's reputation and public confidence.
Scott has done a good job of exercising restraint in what has been reported/discussed on the topic of Timberline's lift tower failure. Especially since this is a topic with which lawyers can quickly get involved.
I agree with Tom H. that the official statements from Timberline should be met with a lot of "Show Me State" skepticism. I wouldn't even give them the benefit of "Trust, but verify." I hope the lift repairs go well. I prefer safer repairs, rather than faster repairs, since my friends and myself ride these lifts. I may never ride the Thunder lift again.
Unfortunately, I suspect that Timberliine ownership/management has ignored the most important rule for managing expectations: "Under promise and over deliver." They were likely overly optimistic (and I think I know why but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt...)
There could be a lot of reasons for the less than 100 percent optimal loading of the Silver Queen lift. One reason could be poor training/management of the lifties. (Most are pretty good folks.) I will state this fact: on Sunday, with about 10 percent lift usage (if that), I was asked to skip a chair. I now am a fat lard ass, but I am not that fat...
I was wondering the same and noticed that someone from Timberline answered this question in a comment on their Facebook page back when the accident hit.
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTimberlineWV/posts/982230031847913
Quote: "A new control system was installed on the Silver Queen last year. The company who installed the system came back early this year and corrected a problem with the system. Under fully loaded conditions, this control system was incorrectly counting a stop as a roll back and causing the system to have to be reset. The problem was corrected early in the season."
I don't know how 'early in the season' that was -- they were skipping chairs when I was there at the end of January and it sounds like it's still doing it? It does make some sense as an explanation though -- more load, more rope slippage in the reverse direction when they pause the lift, and the control system thinks "uh oh, the chairs are moving backwards" and freezes up.
The off loading almost always occurs right after the 1:30 Instructors lineup. I'm sticking to the overweight skier explanation it is much more fun than software malfunction ;)
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