During the 2022-2023 ski season, more than 65.4 million skiers and snow boarders hit the slopes in the United States. Few, if any, of those more than 65 million slope guests give a thought to what is required to maintain and modernize the infrastructure that takes them from the base to the top of the run. Because this work is accomplished during the off-season, even fewer see what goes into maintaining, modernizing, and repairing ski lifts.

“Very few new ski runs are built nowadays as most resorts are built to capacity,” said Brian Jorgenson of Timberline Helicopters of Sandpoint, Idaho. “I've been doing this since 2007, and out of the probably 200 lifts I've built, less than 20 are completely new. Most of them are replacements.”

Snow Sports State-of-the-Art

There are two types of ski lifts, or chairlifts, known as “fixed-grip” and “detachable.” For the fixed grip, it rotates the cable (known as the “haul rope”) at a slower speed and the chairs are fixed. The grip that holds the chair itself onto the cable is fixed – it's either inserted into the cable or clamped on permanently, and they turn it at a speed where people can get on and get off safely. Fixed-grip lifts last anywhere from 30 to 70 years because they turn slowly. The technology is very mature and easy to inspect and maintain.

On the detachable type, the chairs are removed from the cable in the station at the top and bottom, and slow considerably so that people can get on and off. This makes the loading much simpler, and it allows a much higher line speed. Once the chairs are out on the cable, they can move much, much faster, thereby moving more people.

“There was a huge boom in the 1980s to mid-1990s when the first generation of detachables were built, and they're just reaching the end of life for the most part,” Jorgenson explained. “They have become obsolete because most manufacturers have evolved their products and now sell new grips, new terminals, and newer technology. So, if a resort operator needs grips, for example the part that actually clamps on and off the cable, they might sell for $10,000 each. But if an operator has to have them custom made because they own an older generation, they could cost many times that because they have to tool-up and recreate an obsolete part.

“It's the manufacturers that are really pushing for the new generation and selling a new lift that is driving our business. But it makes sense because today’s technology is much better. And the generation we’re installing now should be good for probably 10 to 20 years longer.”

However, just like anything made out of metal, chair lifts will suffer from metal fatigue. The new lifts operate at a higher tension, the cable tension is tighter, and the lift runs much faster causing vibrations, thus more wear and tear. The new generation of grips clamp a lot tighter, inducing greater wear and tear on the haul rope with each opening and closing, which in turn fatigues the grips over time. Thus, detachable chair lifts will always have a shorter lifespan than a fixed grip, just because there are so many moving parts.

“The other thing that will drive a replacement is more capacity. I have done a few replacements where it's a fixed grip that maybe hasn't reached end of life. In fact, we did one a couple years ago that was only about 17- or 18-years old, but the resort operator wanted the increased capacity of a detachable lift,” Jorgenson explained. “So, they took out a fixed-grip quad (quad being four seats per chair) and put in a detachable six passenger lift, thereby increasing their uphill capacity substantially.”

How it’s done

To replace a ski lift tower, it usually takes three visits from one of Timberline Helicopters’ UH-60A+ Black Hawks. The work typically begins in early spring as the last vestiges of the ski season are melting away with construction crews, ranging from six to 20 on the ground, preparing the chair lift towers for disassembly. The chairs come off first followed by the haul rope and the haul rope is replaced with the new lift. The tower head will be semi-disassembled, with the majority of the bolts removed, and readied for the helicopter lift.

“For us, it’s usually two picks to take down a tower,” Jorgenson said. “A crew member or two climb-up the tower, hook the lifting line to the cross-head (which has the pulley wheels for the haul rope), the helicopter pulls tension, the crew on the tower undoes the bolts, climbs down the tower and then signals us they’re clear, and we lift the head or the tower, then fly it away.”

While the Black Hawk is transporting a tower or tower head back to the base camp area, the ground crew is rigging the next part of the lift. While the next rigging step is taking place, the helicopter is working on another tower site. The crews and the helicopter work from tower to tower down the slope.

A ski lift can be as few as five towers or as many as 38 as seen recently during new construction at Steamboat Springs, Colorado. “At Steamboat Springs, they built a new gondola, and we actually flew all the concrete. It's a two-section gondola, so it goes up and makes a corner,” said Jorgenson. “We flew the concrete and all the towers for the first section. Then we flew all the concrete for the second section. But it was so big, they ended up having a Chinook come in and do the steel, because they just keep making ‘em heavier and heavier and heavier. When I started in the business in 2007, there wasn't much a K-MAX couldn’t do. And now we’re at the point where we’re pushing a Black Hawk hard. I did a tower in Brighton this summer. That was 19 picks to build one tower. Now, granted, eight of those were small little pieces that you just couldn't put on any other way, but still, that was an unheard number of picks for one tower.”

New Tower Bases

Timberline Helicopters will know what it’s building and where by April of each year, and from there will build its schedule. “It's a lot of moving. We put a lot of miles on. We travel. The last two summers, we’ve had to run two fuel trucks because the Black Hawk is so fast, and we work until the work is done. Then we’re going to a job site two states away,” said Jorgenson. “That's easy in the Black Hawk, but the fuel truck can't travel as fast. So, one fuel truck’s prepositioned and waiting when we show up at the next job.”

Each season, the company provides chair lift manufacturers with a weight chart – basically altitude, temperature, and weights. The lift manufacturers strive to build the pole and cross pieces in sections that fit within the company’s lifting capabilities. If they’re too big or too heavy, the chair lifts are further disassembled on site to reduce the load. This requires more picks, but the towers are still assembled the same way.

“In June and July, we’re usually taking down the old lifts. And then sometimes in June, but usually July and August, we're pouring concrete,” said Jorgenson. “It used to be that the concrete foundations were an average of eight yards, but they've now adopted the European building codes here. Today, the average foundation is about 20 yards of concrete for these towers. So, it's gotten considerably bigger.”

In the past, ground crews would carry in the material used to make the forms for the foundations, but now the forms will be sling loaded to the site because they’ve become so large. The ground crews will prepare a hole at the tower site. Timberline Helicopters then fly the forms into the hole and the ground crews position them, then concrete is flown in. The Black Hawks can pour 180- to 200-cubic yards of concrete in a day.

“In 2023, at Sun Valley, Idaho, they built two lifts, and one of them is the longest chairlift in North America. It's a monster – 3,150 vertical feet,” said Jorgenson. “We were picking concrete up at the bottom and flying 3,150 feet up the hill to deliver it. It was straight up. Lift the load, and then just settle in for a nice long trip to the top, because it’s just going to take a while. We were averaging about eight-minute round trips to the top. We ended up pouring concrete for five days there, and I think we poured 760 yards of concrete during that time.”

 

Each bucket is capable of carrying one and one-half yards of concrete, and up to a density altitude of 6,000 feet, the buckets go full. Up to 10,000 feet the buckets are just shy of one yard, and up to 12,000 feet the Black Hawks are only lifting three-quarters of a yard.

Once the concrete hardens, the ground crews pull the forms apart and break them down to be used again. Then comes the Spider Excavator, which can literally crawl down a cliff, to backfill the holes around the concrete bases. Once the concrete has set, Timberline returns to set the towers.

In the Cockpit

Timberline Helicopters uses 150-foot long-lines under the Black Hawk and 100-foot lines on its heavy-lift K-MAX fleet. These line lengths are used to keep the slung loads out of the helicopter’s rotor wash. On Black Hawks using shorter lengths, the loads will tend to hide under the craft’s large fuselage and can’t be seen whether being flown with bubble windows or the doors off for increased downward visibility.

“It takes a special type of person to do this sort of precision work,” explains Jorgenson. “To be a really good long line pilot, you have to be a little bit sick in the head because you have to want to do it really, really bad. And you have to be willing; there’s a lot of learning and it’s frustrating.  It's extremely uncomfortable. It makes your body hurt. And it's just one of those things, and it is a skill that I tell people that want to do it: ‘You are not a helicopter pilot. You operate a crane that happens to fly.’”

A lot of what the copilot is doing is monitoring torque temperature, especially temperature in the Black Hawk. The Black Hawk is a great aircraft, but it has one real serious ‘Gotcha’ – especially at altitude. When the engine reaches Turbine Gas Temperature (TGT) limiting, the computers are programmed to save the engines by automatically limiting fuel flow. “You get to 866 degrees TGT, and that's all you get. If you pull further, you just get a droop,” said Jorgenson. “So, if you get caught in a downdraft or something, and you give it an armpit of full collective to keep it from sinking, it will drag the rotor rpm down, and then once it drags the rotor rpm down, now you're in a situation where the rotor rpm is just going to continue to degrade. Even if you get back out of it to where you were previously, it's still going to decelerate. And that's a bad day especially if you have a load over someone’s head that’s 50 to 75 feet in the air on lift tower and can’t go anywhere.

“I've probably got 2,000 hours above 10,000 feet in a Black Hawk, and I have to rely on my copilot who is watching temps like a hawk and telling me exactly where we're at. You have to know where you're at in relation to that limit pretty much all the time. If we're in a really heavy set and a really tight environment or whatever, it’s pretty much constant talking to me, giving me the TGTs or the torque if we're in a torque limiting situation. For us, it’s usually TGT, because most ski lifts are built where it snows, which is where it’s high, and we’re normally there in the summer when it’s hot, it might only be 20-25 degrees C, but at 10,000, 11,000 feet, you calculate the density altitude and you're like, ‘Oh, wow!’ It’s quite often over 14,000 feet. I've seen it as high as 16,000 feet on a hot day. So, you’re at the limits for sure.”

Communicating with the ground crews by radio is not an option, so when the Black Hawk is positioning the load, it's all hand signals. Hand signals are used because they are instantaneous. Radios are used when directing the helicopter to deliver certain pieces or which tower to proceed to next.

Construction Crews

Each manufacturer’s towers have differing requirements for mating the towers to the tower heads, and clearances can be down to millimeters. Using hand signals, the tower construction crews can communicate small adjustments to the pilot to precisely position each piece. “It's not so much about judging the actual inches,” Jorgenson said, “It's about manipulating the controls. You just don't even move it. You just kind of squeeze a little bit.” When the holes line-up, the tower crews insert “snakes” and pull them tight. The snakes are lengths of cable that can quickly mate the piece to the tower with the section being delivered by air to enable the helicopter to quickly disengage from the load. Once secure, bolts are inserted and secured with the corresponding nuts. As the piece is bolted into place, the snakes are removed and replaced with nuts and bolts, which are later torqued to the manufacturer’s specifications.

Each season the Timberline Helicopters crew departs from Sandpoint, Idaho, headed for the ski fields. Pilot, copilot, mechanic, driver, and fuel truck driver meet up with construction crews from the chair lift manufacturers at the job sites. Although the summer labor changes each year, the foremen are the same two or three men who know the entire process from end-to-end, and how to work with helicopters and slung loads.

“Lately, it's been hard to find people. They will shuttle people around that have experience with flying. There's a fly crew that will show up on fly day, and we talk about the dangers of this work every morning at our safety briefing. I remind them:

 ‘You've got to be comfortable in that harness just like I'm comfortable in the helicopter and I don't want your job. There's no way you'd find me on top of that tower because I know what can go wrong. But you picked to be there and it’s just as important that you do your job well as I do my job well. So, you have to be comfortable up there. You have to be both hands to do this job. You have to tie yourself to the tower and you have to trust your equipment, and then just lean back in the harness and do the job. Because if you're up there limp wristing, it just doesn't work. And it makes it way more dangerous because there’s about 30 seconds of every set that is extremely dangerous when the metal is coming together.’

“On the other hand, there are guys that I've worked with now since 2007, pretty much every summer,” Jorgenson continues. “One of my favorite crews to work with is Highlander Ski Lift Services of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, headed by Paul Johnston.

“Johnston has a really tight crew and runs a really tight ship. If you want to know how to build a ski lift, he's your guy. I'd say he looks at building ski lifts the way I look at flying a helicopter – I always want to do the next one a little bit better. And he’s got it down to a science. He is a lot of fun to talk with because he has stories about building ski lifts from the last 30 years, and he's got opinions, and he is not afraid to share. The problem is he’s so good at what he does that I never get to work with him for very long.

“He climbs every tower himself when you’re doing the install. He’s very involved, but he also runs the smallest crew, only six or eight people. I watched a video of a job we did with him. It must've been 2016 or so on Mount Bachelor, and he said, ‘We provide the installation service, and we do everything except we don't tie the knot. So, we don't splice the cable and we don't fly the helicopter.’ But he does everything else and does it well.”

This season, Timberline Helicopters will fly between 400- and 650-hours preparing lifts to handle the upcoming winter ski and snowboard crowds. Jorgenson begins his 17th season as well and says, “One of the reasons that I really enjoy the ski lift work so much is I get to go back and work with the same crews a lot, but even as new people come in, I've done it so much that I know what's going to happen next as well as they do. To do this work, you have to be 100 percent engaged in the job that's going on and flying the helicopter has to be just something that happens.”