It is always amazing to me how quickly the season passes. It seems like just yesterday we were posting about the fish tacos...now no more fish tacos until next November! It certainly was an amazing season, we once again had endless amounts of snow and finished off the season with almost 500 inches of snowfall. A huge number considering that our average annual snowfall is 355 inches.
It is always amazing to me how quickly the season passes. It seems like just yesterday we were posting about the fish tacos...now no more fish tacos until next November! It certainly was an amazing season, we once again had endless amounts of snow and finished off the season with almost 500 inches of snowfall. A huge number considering that our average annual snowfall is 355 inches.
We also had some obstacles to overcome this season, namely the lift problems we incurred. We appreciate all of our guests sticking through it with us. Below I have posted two letters that were recently sent to our season pass holders from Peter Curtis and Jan Leonard (President of Doppelmayr CTEC) about what we are doing this summer to resolve the gear box issue.
Thanks again for another great season! Make sure you check out our new Alpine Coaster this summer. It's like your favorite roller coaster in an Alpine setting. It is scheduled to open July 20th.
Peter's Letter:
Dear Season Pass Holder,
In response to the recent lift problems Park City Mountain Resort has experienced, I, together with the lift manufacturer Doppelmayr CTEC, want to reassure you that the problems have been identified and we have come up with an action plan that provides a long-term solution.
Doppelmayr CTEC has confirmed that the problem is in the engineering of these specific gear box units and has nothing to do with lift maintenance. Park City Mountain Resort goes above and beyond what the manufacturer mandates on the inspection of these chairlifts.
When the Resort’s six-passenger chairlifts were manufactured in the mid-90’s CTEC used gear boxes from the most reputable manufacturer at that time, which was based out of Switzerland. They relied on this manufacturer to provide them with a gear box unit that met the specified requirements and criteria to handle the load-size of a six-passenger chairlift. Until recently, there was no reason for Doppelmayr CTEC to believe that there could be a design or engineering flaw within these gear boxes.
As part of our action plan we considered several options that would address this problem. We determined that the best solution was to retrofit all of the lifts that have the Swiss-made gear box installed with a domestically manufactured unit. Doppelmayr CTEC has been using this unit in all of its six-passenger chairlifts manufactured since 2000. These lifts include PayDay, Silverlode, McConkey’s, Bonanza and King Con chairlifts. The retrofitting process will begin on PayDay as soon as the Resort closes for the winter season.
We are confident that this solution will allow us to provide the service that you expect from Park City Mountain Resort. We appreciate your patience and understanding to this matter.
Jan Leonard's Letter:
Doppelmayr CTEC, Inc. is the manufacturer of the 6 passenger chairlifts at Park City Mountain Resort. We are located in Salt Lake City, Utah, established in 1976, and are part of a renowned family of aerial tramway manufacturers, the largest group in the world.
As the President of Doppelmayr CTEC, I want to assure you that we, and other experts, are identifying the problems relevant to the failure of the three gear units at Park City Mountain Resort and are working closely with them to arrive at the solutions.
I would like to make it clear that this is not a maintenance issue at Park City Mountain Resort. As stated,the suspected problem of each lift is in the gear unit itself. When we manufactured the six-passenger chairlifts for Park City Mountain Resort in the mid-90’s, we purchased the gear units from a reputable gearing manufacturer from Switzerland. We relied on this manufacturer to provide us a component that met our design requirement criteria. These requirements include output torque loadings, tension loadings due to the cable, operating speeds, duty cycles as well as many other operating and design criteria.
At this time, we are still investigating the faulty gear units for the aforementioned design requirements, correct material specifications, as well as other possible failure modes.
At this time, with still not knowing exactly why the failures occurred, we reviewed several options with Park City Mountain Resort on how to resolve these problems. Park City determined the best option was to retrofit all five of the detachable lifts, which have the Swiss-made gear units, with new Sumitomo/Caterpillar gear units. The Sumitomo/Caterpillar gear units are manufactured domestically and we have used these gear units in most of our lifts since 1999, including Park City Mountain Resort’s First Time lift.
We appreciate your patience and understanding. If you have any questions, please contact us anytime.
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