Installations Obsoletes

A snowHead

Just came across this website run by the ASSOCIATION NATIONALE DE PROTECTION DE LA MONTAGNE: https://www.installationsobsoletes.org/#/

Quite a lot of dead ski infrastructure on there, select Touristique and Pylones for example.

A snowHead

Interesting. I’m guessing that many were made obsolete by the warming climate and reduced/inconsistent snow fall.

I haven’t seen many in Switzerland, as most old installations are either removed completely or replaced by more modern system. The only evidence often being old pylon bases.

I’ve seen a few abandoned lifts in Japan, where it seems they just turned the lift off at the end of the season many years ago and just left it to rust. These are often in active resorts, so it seems to be down to falling numbers, rather than lack of snow.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Well, lifts do wear out - or become uneconomic to maintain. And in some cases it's very expensive to remove much of the structure. Or there's pressure to retain it as a monument. Or it was closed down before there was such attention paid to the environment.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

When you consider the only way to put a lot of chair lift pylones in place is by helicoptering everything from the people, through tools, concrete and the actual pylone into position it's a really expensive job - and that's when you have the payback of being able to sell lift passes to recoupe the costs. On the flip side spending the same sort of money to take one out when the most you'll make back is the scrap value of the metal...easier to either leave them there if you can get away with it, or go bankrupt and just walk away making it someone else's problem.

Help!!

Installations Obsoletes

snowHeads Forum Index >>> The Piste