What's going on at sugarloaf?

fujarome

fujarome

Active member
Just heard from a friend that people have been stuck on a lift for awhile, and there are some injuries?

Anyone have any news? Mostly just curious. Hopefully no one is seriously hurt or anything.
 
sugarloaf live web cam........Too Many Clients. Thought I could get a look at the rescue operation, but I guess so did everyone else.
 
We want make you aware that there has been a derailment of the Spillway East chairlift. There has been approximately 8 injuries, with most appearing to be minor.

Currently our ski patrol is responding to the incident and evacuating our guests from the lift. We will keep you informed and will further update you by 1pm.
 
me too, I know so many dudes and gals up there skiing, haven't heard from anyone of 'em. :(

They requested a life flight.

Sugarloaf closed all of their lifts too.
 
Not a good look. Hope everyone is ok, and just shooken up more or less. Bad black eye for skiing and boarding.

Really hoping Loaf did everything by the book and didn't feel pressured into spinning lifts that they should not have been, with it being the major holiday week and all.

Either way, another major black eye for the sport in the eyes of the general public.
 
shit i really hope it wasn't any of the guys we all know who ride up there. I haven't heard from a single person yet either. hopefully its all good with them.
 
Yeah, I'm hoping no one is seriously injured and hopefully the loaf did their stuff right. I can see a lawsuit coming up. Hopefully everyone is okay.
 
There will almost certainly be a lawsuit. Lawyers LOVE these cases, and it's hard for the general public to side with the big bad corporation in these circumstances.

It is a horribly fine line to walk with winds. As a resort, if you close lifts during a busy holiday week, you are looking at the loss of MASSIVE amounts of revenue and a lot of uneducated people complaining endlessly and verbally assaulting your guest service staff.

Also, just to clarify, I am not saying the the Loaf necesarrily did anything wrong, but I would not be shocked if the winds would have had the lifts offline on a midweek day when there was not much guest traffic. It's easy to feel the pressure to spin lifts and possibly underestimate the winds in the face of the masses.

Hopefully I am completely wrong and it was a freak, rogue wind gust that popped up.
 
now they are saying that the remaining people on the lift are going to have to be belayed down. that in itself is very risky.
 
Standard lift evac. it's not "very risky". Every mountain holds lift evac training for their key staff each year and the process itself is pretty simple. It is time consuming and there are going to be a lot of very cold people coming off that lift and some may be scared shitless while doing it, but lift evacs are not a dangerous task.
 
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i live in maine and am at SR right now, lifts were on hold all day yesterday and there are only like 3 open today, so its been a consistent thing, which is to bad.

on the plus side, i was watching the CNN live coverage because there was a CNN reported trapped on the lift, and he went on and on about how well the Loaf patrollers were handling the situation. I hope no rich texan sues the mountain over something like this...
 
ohhh okay nevermind haha. yes i am defiantly one of those who would be scared shitless then. i assumed that this was one of the high speed chairs but now i know its a much smaller one
 
I'm there right now, just headed up the lift underneath it when me and my brother saw crowds of people and ski patrollers around spillway. We learned what was happening and the ski patrollers wouldn't let us look. Lift was derailed
 
Oh shit. I hate riding lifts when its windy, derailing has got to be scary as shit. This is what happens when dumbshits bounce the chair too, been on way too many chairs where kids have bounced them. Hope everyone is alright.
 
I was just there its a mess at the loaf right now, so many ambulences . It really didnt even seem that windy Sugarloaf's engineers have a rough couple of weeks ahead of them. Hope everyones okay though!
 
OK JUST TO CLEAR THINGS UP BEFORE RUMORS GET OUT OF HAND

Spillway did not definitely derail because of the wind. The cause is unknown right now, but I do know that someone is in big trouble for letting the cable ride on the flange that far. 6 people were injured, most of them were minor. One person did have to get life flighted out of the valley. All the other injuries were more minor, code 3 and 4's (which are on the low scale of our code system).

I did not see the actual derailment happen, but I did have to go evac people even though I wasn't ski patrolling today. It was a scary situation, when I went down to my assigned tower span for evac, the entire sheave train on the downhill side of the tower on tower 9 was bent down and chairs were on the ground and the cable from tower 8 to tower 9 was slacked down to the ground. Luckily almost everyone was ok even though everyone was scared. People were trying to jump off the chair after it happened. Props to everyone on patrol for doing a great job today applying the skills we learned in training, and to all the groomers, park rangers, snowmakers and ambassadors for helping out.

Also, don't believe everything you hear on the news... Most of it is way over exaggerated and they are trying to come up with answers from nothing
 
lift derailment or simply falling has always been one of my main fears while skiing.

good that ski patrol and co. were able to put their training to use and get it all done safely.
 
Thank god it was a fairly low lift, if I remember correctly King Pine is much much higher off the ground. Hope for the loaf's sake that they don't take a beating in lawsuits.
 
someones got to take a fall, thats what always happens. Does anyone know the result of the tower collapse at whis 2 years ago, i think it was?
 
actually, Spillway is just about as high as King Pine, if not higher in spots. Luckily it wasn't the Super Quad, which is the highest lift on the mountain where it crosses Peavy X-Cut
 
luckily it was only 8 people, must have been a very scary situation for the people riding the lift

hopefully sugarloaf doesnt get sued
 
i was watching the news and this came on. the best part was when the reporter said "and the lift is only being held up by a single cable!"
 
I'm up here right now and it's scary stuff to see the lift down and see everyone bustling around following evac procedure. Glad to see kimberlee posted in here to clear things up, she knows the most out of everyone being a ski patroller.
 
no i think the mountains still running but lifts were closed because of the cold this morning, and the wind yesterday, supposed to be nice tomorrow though
 
yes it is, people are responsible for checking the lifts. As a patroller we have to check the lift every time we ride it and make sure the haul rope is running through the sheave trains properly. Not to say that it is someone's fault definitely, but it is definitely something to be looked at. And I'm sure there could be people at Boyne in upper level management in trouble as well, but that is just my speculation.

Also, if anyone wants an interesting read...

http://www.sugarloaftoday.com/chat/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3940

Most of it is rumors, but there is some interesting stuff in there as well
 
I was lapping spillway longside when the cable fell off. Luckily I wasn't on the lift when it happened, but still, scary shit.
 
Dang that sucks!! Plus Vibes to all those people! Not a super far fall i saw a kid fall 35' from a lift two chairs in front of me at Hood the other day he was fine but still that's scary!
 
Just saw our local newscasts segment on this (memphis, tn). Pretty neutral report, but at the very end they added this "the lift was over 35 years old and was scheduled to be replaced"
they say stuff like that alot though
 
i definitely understand where you are coming from on the news just creating drama, but they really are planning on replacing that lift with a quad.
 
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