 Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Saw a video on the 20 Minutes website. It’s a bit difficult to see exactly where it is but it looks like a gondola bubble detached completely from the cable and then tumbled down the mountain. 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Dreadful. Looks like the main Titlis Xpress gondola just above the Trübsee middle station based on the video. I was on it 3 days ago
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@michebiche, yes, the lift involved is confirmed in the TT article.
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I thought it couldn't happen because they stop the lift operations when the wind speed goes above a threshold.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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It might have been stopped doesn't mean the cabin can't come off the wire , i mean it shouldn't of course .
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What time did it happened?
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Horrific, my sympathy goes to the family of the deceased passenger. Undoubtedly there will be a detailed technical investigation as to how this occurred.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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You know it makes sense.
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Yikes...
FWIW: That lift looks identical design to Doppelmayr gondola at Nevis Range. One of them slid down the cable in 2006 (thankfully no fatality)
My limited understanding is that the clamps detach from cable when gondola cars enter the station. Occasionally the grips fail to re-attach - usually when its windy or are mechanically worn. An alarm should sound and automatically stop the lift when this happens. But it can apparently be erroneously over-ridden by the operator(s) - which is design limitation / flaw. However there should be procedures in place to prevent that.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/default_content/12373517.nevis-cable-car-operators-fined-accident/
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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That's a horrific video.
Lifts will always be susceptible to winds, because it is cheaper to build them to cope with up to 50mph winds and be closed for 30 hours per year than to build them to cope with 150mph winds and never be closed.
The key is in boundary conditions - if the safe working limit is 50mph and the wind is at 40, that's OK. But if it is gusting to 49, do you close the lift now and leave everyone hanging there in the hope that you can reopen it in a minute or two, or carry on and hope that it doesn't reach 60 momentarily. Forecasting plays a big role, but real measurements are fed into the safety system and the drive will be stopped if the wind shear load on the cable is detected to be over the limit.
The cars also have a part to play - I've often wondered whether the big slab-sided cars are part of the problem, and whether a more weathervane-like aerodynamic car on a speed-limited pivot mount would be a better approach so that it always turns into the wind and presents the least drag possible, with a mechanism to turn it back on entry to the station so that the door aligns with the platform.
This is likely to be found to be either a maintenance problem, or an operational problem where manufacturer SOPs were not followed or were bypassed or stretched routinely. But only time will tell, and there are any number of possible causes.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Dreadful. That's a relatively new lift as well, I recall them building it when we lived there, opened in around 2015, IIRC.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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A 61yo local woman passed.
RIP.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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There will be a wind auto-stop but that’s almost a separate thing to how the car became detached. It looks like it had a pretty standard auto grip so it’s either been blown off completely, been sufficiently blown to impact a tower , the video also shows the top assembly coming down behind the actual car itself , remains to be seen if that failed or it fell off as a result of the whole thing hitting the ground and cartwheeling. For perspective these events are quite rare for the amount of times the cabins attach and detach from the drive wire.
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Not as rare as I'd like – the last one to fall off round here was about two summers ago in similar circumstances.
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Presumably a clamp failure, perhaps triggered by a line squall, or had it just been windy all day ?
A line squall across northern England last week blew lorries over and caused quite a bit of damage and localised flooding.
Last March in Chamonix we had a very sudden squall which caused the Argentiere ski area to be evacuated.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Not been a good year so far for belief in Swiss standards of safety.
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Very fortunate that only one person in the cabin. Doubt anyone could survive that fall.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@Dave of the Marmottes, My husband and I were talking about that last night. Engleberg Trübsee is one of our favourite areas (summer) and we had an annual pass last year for it. When you board at the bottom it’s ‘fancy’ - lots of advertising, light up walls and such. It gives you a sense of security, of it being very modern etc.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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It must have been the most terrifying thing ever. I have to say that advertising does nothing to fill me with confidence! It looks like more of this unpredictable weather is on the way for all of us. That episode on the A66 which @Peter S mentioned is a good example.
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At the time this happened it was very squally in Tignes, just over 100miles away as the Chough Flies. We had lifts opening and closing all morning and it wasn't just the usual suspects, lifts on most aspects and heights.
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You know it makes sense.
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This is a quote from a Süddeutsche article on the incident.
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Reto Canale, the leading Swiss cable car expert, also has no answer to the question of the causes so soon after the accident – but he does have a suspicion . And he is certain: wind alone cannot detach a vehicle from the cable.
Canale was the long-time director of the safety oversight authority for the cantonal-approved cable cars. He also conducted research on the topic at ETH Zurich. Even after reviewing the published photos, the expert suspects a problem in combination with the wind and the pylon: "In an extreme situation, it's possible for the vehicle to get caught on a support platform or another part of the pylon." This means that if the vehicle gets stuck there, the cable could be ripped out of the clamp. |
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Also just saw the below on the Wepowder weather blog, likely to be very relevant
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Today (Wednesday) brought remarkably strong winds to parts of the French Alps and Swiss Alps due to föhn conditions, triggered by a trough passage from east to west combined with a pocket of cold air. At around 700 hPa, very cold air (-13 to -14°C) was present on the southern side, which (pushing in from the east) caused a rapidly increasing pressure gradient and a sharp transition to strong föhn winds.
In Switzerland, this manifested as a rare southeasterly föhn known as the Guggiföhn, which packed a punch with gusts exceeding 100 km/h at several mountain stations; the impact was clearly visible at Kleine Scheidegg. Many French resorts also experienced an abrupt shift to stormy föhn conditions, forcing lift closures at higher elevations. In the high alpine, fresh wind slabs will have formed locally. |
There is an image on the site of the Föhn clouds pouring over the top of the Wetterstein & Eiger. Engelberg is not far away and the mountain topography is similar with the large bulk of Titlis etc to the south of where the lifts are and a sudden föhn storm from an unusual direction could well be a factor here.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Looking at alpinemeteo.com for the Titlisboden weather station (a little higher at 2100m) - you can see the wind pick up in the morning then spike to nearly 100kmh winds about 10:40am
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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On a side note, @Origen, the advertising (there is a whole car parked in there that you walk past on your way to the lift inside, is Volvo*. Thats an indirect marketing message re safety in my view but I am always looking at placement so I have bias.
*I am 99% sure
Today’s 20minuten report said the staff were in the process of bringing the gondolas into the mid-station at Trübsee when it happened.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@Origen, oh they make me want them, Patek or AP if you’re offering. Product placement is a dark art.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I sometimes quite fancy some of the men, but they can keep the watches. 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@Nadenoodlee, me too! I love beautiful watches.
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Swiss cable car slammed into pylon before falling
The fatal fall of a cable car gondola on Wednesday in central Switzerland was due to "an unexpectedly strong gust of wind", according to its manufacturer. The gust blew the cabin against a pylon. The impact unhooked it from the support cable.
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And that is why we don't run lifts when it's too windy. That was my working assumption. Not sure i'd have wanted to evac that lift in those winds.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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The Titlis ski lifts have not acted on a manufacturer's non-binding recommendation to upgrade.
The manufacturer had proposed this upgrade in 2022, following a similar accident in 2019 on the Rotenflue lifts (SZ). Both installations used the same type of clamp. The upgrade involved adding an end cap to the clamp.
“This was not an imperative safety requirement justifying an upgrade”, said Mr Patt, adding that he could not provide the reason why the ski lifts had decided not to ask for an estimate in 2022.
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FAQ
