SAM Magazine—Turin, N.Y., Feb. 27, 2024—A deropement on Snow Ridge Ski Resort’s North Chair came down to a single inch of movement at the base of a chairlift tower that had previously been damaged in a freak storm in August 2023.

Nick Mir, general manager of the upstate New York ski area, said the incident—in which two chairs fell off the old Hall lift and four others bunched together near tower 6—resulted in no injuries, with only a single lift-operations employee needing to be evacuated from the lift. The deropement occurred during opening procedures on Feb. 24, just after 9 a.m.

In a public statement, Mir said the root of the problem was traced to an Aug. 7, 2023, EF3 tornado that shifted the foundations of the North Chair’s towers 5 and 6. 

“We had an engineer examine the damage and come up with a solution to realign the towers and recreate the soil conditions around the foundation as efficiently as possible,” explained Mir. The foundations were put back in their original positions, and the repair crew was able to “achieve perfect alignment of the haul cable across the sheave wheels.”

The repaired chairlift was inspected and passed by the New York State Department of Labor on Feb. 16, and the North Chair ran without incident for four days during the Presidents’ Day holiday week. 

However, on Saturday morning (Feb. 24) the safety circuit was lost during startup; the deropement occurred while the safety was in bypass mode in order for the mountain’s lift operations crew to troubleshoot the problem, Mir said. 

Upon arrival at tower 6, “It only took seconds for me to spot the issue, which was another shift in the cement foundation,” said Mir. “A one-inch gap between the cement and the frozen ground showed that it had twisted in the ground, with the only explanation being a frost heave undoubtedly caused by rain and temperatures in the mid-40s the two days prior, and temperatures abruptly dropping below zero the night before.”

The North Chair will remain closed for the rest of this season and undergo repairs for it to resume operation next season. Mir told SAM that the shutdown will have no impact on capacity for the rest of the current season, since it is redundant with Snow Ridge’s main Ridge Runner Chair. “We have enough other lifts operating to keep things from getting crowded and still anticipate zero to very minimal wait times for all lifts,” he said.

Two other ski areas, Maine’s Sunday River and Utah’s Brian Head, both experienced unspecified “mechanical issues” with chairlifts at the tail-end of the holiday week that resulted in rope evacuations of passengers. No injuries were reported. The incidents have been reported as deropements, but spokespeople from each resort did not specify the cause of the evacuations and both lifts are back in operation. 

Report by Bob Curley

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