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Vail Gondola Construction Update

Vail is building a new Gondola for the 50th anniversary this winter season! This post will give you an inside look at the construction process. Updates are in chronological order, with the most recent on top!

November 9, 2012

With one week until opening day, gondola construction is complete!

After months of preparation and work, the Leitner-Poma and Vail Lift Maintenance crews did the last two big jobs: installing the 26 lift towers and splicing the cable. The best way to appreciate the work of these crews is to see the images and hear the explanation from the workers themselves:

 

October 26, 2012: snow storm in Vail

The top terminal of the new gondola is almost ready for opening day:

October 23, 2012: New gondola cabins and photos from the upper gondola terminal

Vail Village is quite a sight with lines of shiny, new gondola cabins waiting to make their debut on Vail’s Opening Day November 16.

The gondola cabins fit 10 seated riders on the heated, composite-leather seats.

The equipment racks were designed specially by the Vail Lift Operations team. As more skiers embrace fat powder skis, the lifts team made sure to create a rack that will hold most larger ski designs – including the tapered tips. The racks also hold up to 8 snowboards placed base-to-base. 

The Mid-Vail gondola terminal continues at a fast pace with electricians and workers putting the finishing touches on the space.

The upper gondola terminal houses 6 motors – 4 950 horsepower and two backup 150 horsepower motors. On a typical day the gondola runs on 2 of the 950 horsepower motors. 

 October 16, 2012: Behind the scenes at the Leitner Poma factory in Grand Junction, Colorado

October 12, 2012: Haul rope arrives in Vail

90 tons, requiring a trailer with 13 axles!

 

October 11, 2012: Towers flown in

Workers reach for a guidewire on a tower being flown in  (P: Jack Affleck/Vail Resorts)

September 26, 2012: VIDEO.

Earlier this summer a Huey Helicopter helped pour concrete bases for the new gondola lift towers that were inaccessible by road. Here’s what it looks like to pour 110 yards of concrete at the rate of about 1/2 yard per pick by the helicopter. Towers 19, 17, 8 were poured on day one and 9 & 4 on day two. Shot with a Sony FS700.

September 22, 2012: Gondola terminal construction is well under way.

 

 

Another perspective on the lower gondola terminal 9/18/2012

 

September 9, 2012: What does the construction of a gondola look like?

We went behind the scenes at the Leitner-Poma factory in Grand Junction where the majority of the parts are built. This facility has been a part of the manufacturing of  all types of large projects such as lifts at ski areas around the world,  mass transit systems, and unique projects like the Roosevelt Island Tramway in New York. Most skiers and snowboarders riding the new gondola this year will have no idea that it was built at a world class facility like this only two hours away from Vail!

The tour included observing the plasma cutter creating the contours of the gondola terminal from sheets of steel. Welders then have the task of piecing this massive terminal together.   [portfolio_slideshow] Jon Mauch of Leitner-Poma says that about 70% of the gondola construction has happened right here in the US, which factors in the components, labor, installation and engineering work done both at the Grand Junction facility and at Vail Mountain.

All that work is going into one impressive piece of machinery. The new gondola has the capacity to carry 3,600 skiers and riders per hour. The two mile journey up the mountain will take a mere seven minutes. A multiple redundancy backup system ensures that even if there is a power outage, the gondola can still run. And even with all these advancements, the electronics are so efficient that it will use less power than the Vista Bahn Express it replaces.

Perhaps most exciting to the individual rider are the aesthetic upgrades. The gondola features a ski and snowboard rack attached to the outside of the cabin that has been specially designed by the Vail team and Leitner-Poma engineers. The Vail team wanted to create something that can fit just about any size fat ski or snowboard. The extra-tall 2.1 meter cabins feature composite leather heated seats. These seats can be charged both at the top and bottom docking stations and work much like a car’s seat heater.

 

August 16th, 2012 – Gondola construction continues with work focusing on the terminals. We’re looking forward to installing lift towers next month and are still on track to have the Gondola ready for Opening Day November 16th.

The following photos were shot from August 7th – 16th:

 

July 24th, 2012 – A Huey Helicopter is helping crews to complete the laying of concrete on the Gondola tower bases today and tomorrow. The helicopter flies containers of wet cement to tower locations that are not accessible by road. Once there, ground crews maneuver the containers into position while the chopper hovers above them.
The helicopter pilot monitors the location of the concrete container.   Ground crews maneuver the wet concrete containers.

 

Click here for the full photo album.