I had a great ski day on 1/28 at Sugarbush sun, warm temps and lots of powder off of the Heaven's Gate Triple. At 10:30 or so massive lift lines occured which was the result of the Gate House quad being down for most of the morning and running on diesel power at 1/2 capacity from noon onwards. Those who endured the lift lines and made it to the North Lynx triple were rewarded with some nice spring snow.

Sugarbush could have optimized managing the throngs waiting for the lifts. People were cheerful enough, but there was Euro funnel at the Super Bravo because of the tiny lift corral and a 'last helicopter out of Saigon '75' congestion at the Heaven's Gate for awhile. Equipment breaks down sometimes, but an organized corral system is easy to arrange. The massive lift lines (for Sugarbush) did have an old time feel of waiting for the gondola.

I was wondering when someone was going to mention this. I've never seen lines like I did on Saturday. What a zoo! The VH chair was backed up all the way past the VH lodge. Still, since we achieved zero movement at SB quad, we hoofed it up there and probably still saved some time even with that line. FWIW, here's a link to what someone on the SKIVT-L list observed/heard:

http://list.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0601e&L=skivt-l&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&X=0EE43563D3A56740F8&Y=mbbernstein%40yahoo.com&P=2668

Something about not having spare parts around. If true, that's not a good thing, though I don't know what standard operating procedure would be at a resort.

The lines were amazing...I give credit to Win Smith who was at the lift front and center dispensing the bad news...at one point he said looks like it is going to be a while but if you want to hike up to North Lynx the skiing is spectacular...I talked my 10 year old daughter into trying to hike up from the top of the beginner lift...I dragged her 1/2 way there but it was turning in to much more effort than it would have been worth...I was disappointed to see the lift running at half speed again on Sunday...Was the problem fixed today?

I'm sure they have a lot of spare parts on hand, but kinda difficult to have a spare lift, so some things you have to hope don't die.

That lift not operating takes out a significant part of the hill, and it happened on one of the worst days.

Still, I thought they reacted to it as well as can be expected.

First saying you could hike it. Maybe a pain, but it takes less than a half hour.

Then they ran the lift at low speed, loading every other chair on aux power. Again, it was a pain, but the people in that line were voting for it with their feet. (skis and snowbaords, too. )

Today it was running at full speed... and was quiet. Ok... I think it was running. Couldn't really see it in all that fog. And I think I was on it!

Yet another reason for my long-lobbied-for idea to cut a connector from the top of Castlerock to the base of Birch Run.

I was with my family on Saturday morning when the Gate House chair stopped. It turned into a half hour wait for the Super Bravo and we wound up doing laps on the VH double. Hard to believe that on a blue sky Saturday with what appeared to be the biggest crowd of the year lift problems turned a great ski day into a day of standing in lines. At 12:30 we waited 45 minutes to take the Gate House to Slide Brook and Mt Ellen. I also heard it was fuses / parts for the lift. Not a good impression of SB if you were a first time visitor to the mountain.

Are the SB lifts being maintained properly? The Gate House certainly has been troubled this season. Can anyone explain to me why all the Doppelmayr signs are painted over? Presumably Doppelmayr built all the UFO-looking lifts for ASC. Why paint over the manufacturer's sign? Does it indicate that SV no longer has a maintenance agreement with the manufacturer? Not maintaining the equipment according to the manufacturer's standards? Someone told me that SV have done some equipment financing with Bombardier Capital, effectively collateralizing the lifts (sale/leaseback?). Do those deals (if this is accurate) have stipulations on maintenance? If SV is in as strained cash flow situation as some believe, should we be concerned about more than the lifts frequently not running, more than there being only one set of fuses on the mountain (heard on Saturday - it did not fix the problem last weekend)? Are the lifts safe?

Thor's stepson wrote:

Are the SB lifts being maintained properly? The Gate House certainly has been troubled this season. Can anyone explain to me why all the Doppelmayr signs are painted over? Presumably Doppelmayr built all the UFO-looking lifts for ASC. Why paint over the manufacturer's sign? Does it indicate that SV no longer has a maintenance agreement with the manufacturer? Not maintaining the equipment according to the manufacturer's standards? Someone told me that SV have done some equipment financing with Bombardier Capital, effectively collateralizing the lifts (sale/leaseback?). Do those deals (if this is accurate) have stipulations on maintenance? If SV is in as strained cash flow situation as some believe, should we be concerned about more than the lifts frequently not running, more than there being only one set of fuses on the mountain (heard on Saturday - it did not fix the problem last weekend)? Are the lifts safe?

Sorry, but this is silly speculation. There is zero chance that SB is going to try to save money by cutting back on the relatively minor cost of maintaining their lifts while buying new snowmaking equipment and spending what they say is $30,000/day on snowmaking, not to mention the huge new development going on at Lincoln Peak.

I'm quite sure that the equipment is properly maintained as well as inspected by the state on a regular basis. The fact is, the quad broke down at an inconvenient time, but I don't see that this indicates anything chronic.

Yes it was frustrating. But anyone could have grabbed a shuttle to North. Try to do that at most other ski areas.

It was actually roughly 1/4 capacity not 1/2. Every other chair and some fraction of the speed. (1/2 maybe).

But I do tend to see exaguration when it comes to liftline times and seasonal up time. I can remember only one other weekend day all season that had a significant problem on the gatehouse, and it got back up and running without having to resort to diesel.

It was unlucky. But it was a great day nonetheless. By the way the chairs were empty after 3:00, so I guess everyone got enough skiing.

I'm assuming it's fixed by now but haven't heard anything. Can anyone confirm?

YES

Wow Lift problems still plaguing Sugarbush? I recall when Northridge broke down like EVERY day. They got that one fixed up. Why would a lift less than 10 or so years old be breaking?

The answer I've heard from the mountain was that... things break sometimes.

If you've owned a car, you know that no matter how much preventive maintenance you do, sometimes things just break. That was what happened, here.

They are adamant that there was no deferring of mainenance. They are well aware that very few people want to pay to stand at the bottom of the mountain and look up at where they would have liked to go.

When it was clear they would not be able to fix the lift on the weekend, (an extremely busy weekend) they scrambled to get permission to run the lift on auxilliary power. This made them run it at slow speed and load every other chair, but they were able to load it... And the line of people showed that was appreciated.

Who had to give them permission to run the lift on auxiliary power?

God? Allah?

I assume you meant either Doppelmeyr engineering or Mountain Ops.

I believe it was the state inspector. They normally aren't allowed to load people while running on aux power. It is only used to unload the lift.