At Whistler-Blackcomb, thinking big means ushering in high-Alpine transportation by constructing a lift unlike any other in North America. At Jackson Hole, it means saying goodbye to a 40-year-old landmark and taking on the largest tram project the continent has ever seen. But “largest-ever” projects don’t come without significant obstacles, and both of these hurdled their fair share.


WHISTLER’S HIGH RIDE
The idea of building a lift that would connect Whistler and Blackcomb mountains was first floated in 1992 by Hugh Smythe, who today is the senior VP of Intrawest Mountain Resorts. Leading up to first phase of construction in the spring of 2007, a number of lift concepts were pitched. Near the end of the process Doppelmayr presented the idea of using its 3S design, of which only three others exist—at Kitzbuhel, Saas-Fee and Val d’Isere. But the concept came with a cost: $52 million, $20 million more than Whistler/Blackcomb was budgeting for the lift. “We asked people and found out what the participation rate would be,” says Doug Forseth, Whistler-Blackcomb’s senior VP of operations. “Out of that, we had to build a business model that would support this lift installation on its own.”

The sheer size and scope of the Peak 2 Peak Gondola is awesome. In all, it travels the 2.7 miles from terminal to terminal in 11 minutes. With 1.88 miles between two of the towers, it has the longest unsupported span of any lift in the world. There are just four towers on the entire line, and the lift is 1,427 feet off the ground at its highest point.

The 3S technology is unique. “Picture a tramway like the one at Jackson Hole, where you have a big carriage going back and forth on the stationary track ropes, pulled by a moving haul rope,” says Warren Sparks, executive vice president and GM of Doppelmayr CTEC Canada, who oversaw the Peak 2 Peak project. A tram goes into the terminal, where the cabin halts, then goes back out on the same track ropes.

On Peak 2 Peak’s 3S System, the 28-passenger cabins enter the terminal, unload and load, travel 180 degrees around the terminal, then go out on the other set of track ropes. “The cabins go through the horseshoe-shaped terminal like a conventional gondola. So it’s like a cross between a mono-cable gondola and a reversible tramway,” Sparks says.

“On a conventional mono-cable gondola, the towers have 200 to 300 meters of spacing,” he adds. “To keep this 1.88 mile span in the air, we have to support it with these two stationary track ropes, which are just like rail tracks. The cabins travel on carriages that roll on these stationary track ropes.”

The “gondolas” include 26 red cabins and two silver cabins; the latter have glass bottoms offering a spectacular view that may not be for everyone.


THE NUTS AND BOLTS
The two-year build consisted of two phases. The first phase included preparing the sites for the two terminals: pouring concrete and securing bases so they would be ready to receive the steel and so that the steel could be hung on the foundations for each terminal. “There was high demand for the trades, and it was hard to get quality people, so managing the project from a budget standpoint was a challenge,” Forseth says.

As always, weather was something to contend with. “It began snowing in September of 2007, and we had 6.2 kilometers (4 miles) of road to get things up. We found it difficult to keep plowing the road and keep concrete trucks going up. We worked three weeks longer than we anticipated.”

Phase one was not quite complete when crews began working again in April of 2008. Again, weather and the mountain environment dictated how the work was done. At Whistler-Blackcomb, conditions required flying concrete up 4,000 feet in elevation. Crews had to discover the right mix of concrete to deal with altitude changes and the time it took to fly. “We needed to get that done so the curing of the concrete would happen,” Forseth says. “We cleared the road and quit skiing the third Sunday in April. Four days later we had both roads to the top of each peak open.”

The greatest logistical challenge, though, was the transportation and installation of the lift’s track cables, which arrived from Switzerland after a two-month journey. Each track weighed 90 metric tons, and the 4,000-vertical foot climb took 12 to 13 hours.

“Once we got them up, the installation of pulling the track ropes and splicing it up took about 90 days,” Forseth says.


SAFETY MEASURES
Of the multitude of innovative features that the Peak 2 Peak can lay claim to, its in-depth safety measures may be the most impressive. On a lift of this magnitude, they have to be.

For starters, the stop command is located in the haul rope, and radio signals are used to annunciate the fault locations. So a stop on the Blackcomb side is conveyed by radio signal to Whistler.

The evacuation system is just as unconventional. In the unlikely event that the lift shuts down with people stuck out on the 1.88-mile span, evacuation vehicles are used to rescue travelers in the cabins. “We have an amazingly complicated and sophisticated winch rescue system,” Sparks says. “The bullwheels are equipped with a redundant emergency bearing. If the main bearing seizes, there is a shear pin that allows an emergency bearing to start turning so we can evacuate the people or pulley the people off the line and repair the bullwheel. So a bearing seizure would not put us out of business.” Each cabin is also equipped with a one-way radio communication system that enables mountain personnel to communicate with the passengers.

There are external safety features, too. Peak 2 Peak boasts OCAS, the Obstacle Collision Avoidance System, which provides a warning to approaching aircraft. OCAS was developed by retired air force pilots, and only about a half dozen exist in the world. Each tower is adorned with a sophisticated radar system that detects incoming aircraft. When an aircraft approaches, a bright strobe light flashes on the towers. If the aircraft continues to approach, the system uses an all-frequency radio signal to warn the pilot in his headphones that he’s approaching a wire. “The pilot will hear the tower yelling at him, ‘Wire, wire, wire,’” Sparks says.


CHANGING THE GAME
The 28 cabins were installed in mid-September 2008, roughly 90 days before the Peak 2 Peak’s grand opening on Dec. 12. During the 2008 Christmas period, the gondola saw 8,000 rides per day, and it is already changing the manner in which people ski Whistler-Blackcomb. Prior to its installation, only 12 percent of the resort’s visitors skied both mountains on the same day. “Now you can stay in the high Alpine and move back and forth,” Forseth says.

The price of paying for the Peak 2 Peak is embedded into all of Whistler-Blackcomb’s lift-ticket products except local passes and the Edge Card. With these, the resort let passholders decide whether or not they wanted access to Peak 2 Peak or not. Ninety percent of passholders and 80 percent of card holders elected to pay extra for the Peak 2 Peak add-on.


Replacing a legend at Jackson Hole
Perhaps no lift installation anywhere has been followed as closely by a resort’s loyal customers as the re-building of the famed aerial tram at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Wyo., which accesses 4,139 vertical feet of some of the best lift-serviced skiing on the planet.

The project of building the new tram took nearly three years to complete. It began when it was obvious that the beloved, 40-year-old tram was nearing its end. Like an old car, the mounting costs to maintain it became too great. “Once we had to replace the track rope on the old tram, it all snowballed,” says Tim Mason, Jackson Hole’s VP of operations. “How many millions do you spend before you buy a new one? The most important thing from the standpoint of the owner was the safety of our guests.”

For one season, the old tram was used mainly by ski patrol—due to the fact that mountain set-up and avalanche control starts from the top of Rendezvous Peak, reached only by the tram. During the 2007-2008 season, there was no tram at all. To provide temporary access, the resort installed a small double chair to the top of Rendezvous Bowl. Still, reaching the summit took 40 minutes and four lift rides. The $31 million Tram has turned that into a nine-minute journey.

The new tram was designed by Garaventa, a division of Doppelmayr based in Switzerland. Garaventa did the design and manufacturing of the tram component, creating thousands of handcrafted parts that filled 40 shipping containers and traveled 6,000 miles to Jackson Hole.

The profile on the mountain of the new tram is much the same as the old tram, thanks in large part to the remarkable accuracy of the original builders in the mid-1960s. “They did a fantastic job,” Mason says. “You sit and think about it. The way technology was then versus now, it’s amazing that they were that close in all their tower locations and calculations.”


NEW FROM THE OLD
The early phases of construction made full use of the old tram. It transported contractors to their workplaces, mainly the top of the tram and the tower locations, and it carried concrete to the job sites. For that, the tram cabins were specially modified. “We cut out the floor and put a big winch system into each cabin so that it could carry the concrete bucket,” Mason says. “Once we got to the location, we’d lower it to the workers below, and they’d pour it right out the bucket. Some of the towers we could drive to with the concrete and pump trucks, but we started with a lot of help from the old tram. If not for that, life would have been difficult.”

Construction started with the top terminal in the summer of 2007, where micro-piles—each one consisting of a 5-inch casing with a threaded rock anchor encased with a high strength grout—were put 35 feet into the ground to provide stability for the terminal. When that was done, the Swiss-based crew poured the concrete pads for the terminal.

During the winter of 2008, they concentrated their efforts on the all-new bottom terminal. Because of the cold temperatures, the entire work area at the base was enclosed with a frame, heavy duty tarps, and a roof, and heated.


LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARES
Mason says one of the greatest challenges was getting supplies to Jackson’s isolated location. Once there, they also had mountain conditions to contend with—but they still got the job done on time.

That was despite heavy snow in the spring of 2008 that all the planning in the world could not have prepared them for. “Our job was to keep the roads clear and get the equipment and supplies to the top, but the roads were washing away,” Mason says. “We had to rebuild these roads. Luckily our summer trail and construction crew has expertise in road building, so we could support these huge trucks that were going to the top.” On June 12, shortly after the roads had become passable, crews were forced to perform avalanche control work on cliffs above them, to make it safe for the workers below. That work dumped four to five feet of snow on top of the traverses, so four D8s and two cats had to clear that snow from the roads. When the work was completed, the sky cleared, and four months of sunshine followed.

During the summer of 2008, the towers were put in and the bullwheels and counterweight were added to the top terminal. Again, the scale of the operation was huge: Garaventa used a 90-ton crane and an all-terrain forklift to install the towers. Each of the five towers has four legs; each leg is buttressed by four micropiles sunk about 30 feet into the ground. Mason was extremely impressed with the dedication of the Swiss team. “They worked six, seven days a week, sometimes 14 hours a day,” he says.


STRINGING IT UP
When the track ropes arrived, they had to be stored in the base area in a location that would not disrupt summer tourism, yet still allow them to be easily pulled up the hill through the bottom terminal when the time came. It wasn’t easy to hide the presence of the four track ropes; they weigh a combined 328 tons and are ten miles long. The lift itself spans 12,463 feet, making it well over two miles long.

The process of hanging and splicing the rope was time-consuming. “The main haul rope is a continuous loop on this system. It’s one long rope and you splice the ends together,” says says Mike Beeley, VP of marketing for Doppelmayr CTEC in Salt Lake City. “Normally, you take the rope off some of the towers and splice it on the ground, then put it back up. That wasn’t possible at Jackson Hole because of the condos and houses underneath the tram line. So we had to splice it in place, which meant we had to somehow get our workers up to work on the haul rope in the air.”

The solution? The “Stairway to Heaven,” a series of massive “stairs” that were suspended from the two track ropes, almost like a swinging bridge, where the crew would walk up and down splicing the line. Walking these platforms is not uncommon work for the guys at Garaventa or for bridge builders, but Mason was amazed watching it in action. Putting the track ropes in place and splicing the haul rope took three weeks, and was completed in September 2008.

The cabins for the new tram arrived in October, covered with heavy-duty vinyl covers created by local clothing manufacturer Marmot to conceal the design and the graphics. “We’ve done a lot of work over the years to improve the wind stability of the cabins and the hanger,” Beeley says. “There is a smaller wind profile than previous cabins so they are much more stable.” The cabins also have more windows, for an improved view, and hold 100 passengers, nearly twice as many as the 53 that the old tram was carrying.


ENDS OF THE LINE
The terminals, too, have their trick technologies. The dock at the top terminal folds down and moves into the cabin to meet it, so there are no longer steps leading down to the snow and the cabins do not have to slow and dampen their sway before entering the platform area.

At the bottom terminal, space was limited, and that led to a creative solution. “Jackson has a limited right of way, so because of the existing footprint, we couldn’t go any wider,” Beeley says. “So we found a way to get a lot bigger system into a small space. Instead of having an affixed center dimension [i.e., loading/unloading platform between the paths of the two cabins], it has a moving platform that moves sideways, closing off one side and making the side that the cabin is entering into a double wide [space] to accept the cabin.”

After extensive load testing—as well as electronics and drive testing—along with training of Jackson Hole’s mechanics and operators by Garaventa, the tram was ready for its Dec. 20 grand opening. It is powered by two 1,100-horsepower AC motors that can work together or independently. If power is lost in Teton Village, a 2,400-horsepower diesel generator backs up the two motors. “If something else goes wrong, we have two other auxiliaries, diesel hydraulic pumps that power a hydraulic motor, and they both work independently,” Mason says. “Then there are two more that are gear driven and run off the main drive shift. If something breaks down, we have so many redundancy backups that we would never have to evacuate anybody by rope.”

The end result of rebuilding the tram has been all positive. Time spent waiting in line has diminished, and people are back to skiing more than 4,000 vertical feet in one lift ride.



SAMMY Guest Editor
I’m sure that there is a greater upside to these big lifts than most people realize. The construction of a new chairlift can spark early season pass sales at a resort , but build a lift like Whistler/Blackcomb’s Peak 2 Peak or Jackson’s Tram, and an entire industry receives a morale boost. This is never more true than during these hard economic times.

Lifts of this magnitude also impact the infrastructure of the mountains and towns they rise above in ways that skiers and snowboarders never realize during public planning forums. The P2P illustrates this in many ways. Due to out-of-the-way ski runs and lodges becoming more accessible, once overcrowded amenities are now comfortable and fun again. Bus routes change and streets become less crowded, as visitors don’t need to drive personal vehicles as often.

A lift like the P2P may seem extravagant at first, but after the exhausting days of construction, bruised and cut hands, sleepless nights and nervous first-day jitters, it eventually becomes another lift staffed by some local kids and a few internationals.

Of course, the absence of the Jackson Tram for two seasons made its value painfully clear. It serves up a massive mountainside with 4,139 feet of continuous vertical and makes Jackson such an icon of American skiing. Jackson and its fans must be ecstatic to have it back.

—James Grant