Saturday, December 26, 2020

New Riblet Quad Chair Improvement Project

We have some exciting capital improvement news to share.  There has been a slight delay is sharing this news because we have been so focused on sharing operational changes due to the pandemic over the past few months.  But today, some exciting news.  

Today we ran the East Quad Riblet Chairlift for the first time this season, and it had newly designed chairs on it. 

This past spring we contracted with Superior Tramway in Spokane, Washington, to help us design and manufacture all new chairs for our two Riblet quad chairlifts, one on the east slopes, and one on the west slopes.  Superior Tramway is the leader in the ski industry in manufacturing chairlift parts for Riblet chairlifts. 

The new design of these chairs are exciting because of two important factors: 
1. The center post of the chair now curves behind the seat.  Therefore, there is no center post to dodge while loading & unloading.
AND...
2. In the coming days, we expect to have restraining bars delivered for all of the chairs. 

The current pandemic has forced many delays in manufacturing (and shipping) across the country and our industry is in short supply of companies like Superior Tramway.  As a result, the new chairs arrived a little later than expected. All of the chairs for one of our Riblet quads arrived this past week, on Wednesday afternoon, during the snowstorm.  Our leader in the lift department, Joe K, along with a couple dedicated employees, were able to install all the chairs for the east lift in time for today.  Today we ran the lift with the new chairs beginning around 1pm. 

In the coming days, we expect the chairs and parts for our West Riblet chairlift to arrive. We appreciate your patience as we improve and open these critical lifts to our operation.  We are excited about working with a company like Superior Tramway to find a solution  to move the center post of these chairs and make this lift much more accessible for more people, especially families with younger kids. 

Happy Holidays to all of you and thank you for skiing with us this winter!  




2 comments:

  1. This is awesome news!!! Thanks!

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  2. We rode the new Riblet chairs on Thursday. Very nice! Big improvement! Are the seats on the new chair seats temporary? I see they are coated plywood. Hoping the seats will be replaced with more permanent comfy cushy seats.

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