 cran
cran
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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 at least their "inspection" proved fruitful. Better it happened to them than to some luckless skiers at a time when the cabins would all have been full. 
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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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pam w, this is VERY unusual and VERY worrying...the main possibility is a fault in the series of tracking wheels on the pylon, opening up the spring mechanism and simultaneously hooking the cabin off the cable - very odd sequence of events...NEVER heard of this happening before - any others on here? I've had the misfortune of being in a cabin which failed to mount the cable properly - it then fell about half a metre before getting snagged on a section of the installation. One of our party banged his head, but that was it. We clambered out and the station closed while the pisteurs whacked everything with large spanners. We simply got in the car and drove off to the nearest entrance to teh system and off we went.
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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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Ouch, very odd as well, as valais2, says for the cabins to come off the cable mid run is very strange, I could maybe understand it if the cable had come off the pylon but that seems from the pictures to be ok, that they all dropped by one pylon certainly implies a problem with that particular structure, the pylon itself is mid run and not one where a sudden change in angle occurs which is even more of a concern, as it suggests that whatever occurred could do so elsewhere on any of the pylons of the same design, in the rare previous occasions where gondolas have failed usually the cable grip on one has failed and this has then slid along the cable under gravity knocking into one or more additional gondolas below it, here that appears not to have happened, at least no one was killed
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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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It's such a good thing, though, that it happened during an inspection, without any injuries - optimal, really, for something of this sort. No doubt they will work very hard to get to the bottom of it, and might have forestalled a really terrible accident.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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D G Orf, ....interesting re friction brake failure....do you have any details of when & where that happened? If you google cable car incidents/accidents there are the (in)famous Italian ones (very tragic, of which one does not count since it was caused by the USAF) and a few on small 'non-public' systems - eg those serving dams etc, but very few in big systems - would be interesting to understand the frequency of incidents. Investment has plummeted since the 70s and 80s, and there's some very old installations out there....
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valais2, this cable car was newly installed i think about summer 2009 replacing some very old bubbles. My french isnt that good to read the article, i can make out they were running pre winter testing but do they go into any detail of how rigourous this is?
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Its the aup de veran (last photo in article) as ianbradders, states they replaced all the bubbles, but not the pylons etc. When the new cabins were first installed early in the season (mid dec) the cabins got so low just out of the gondola station, (where the hut is a bottom of stade in the photo) they had to put barrier around area to stop you going there , then later in the season it all went up a bit.
I go on that thing alot as its usually faster than the dmc..........
Its vaujany that had the big accident when testing their big gondolas before they went operational, there is a monument to those who died.
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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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valais2, one accident occurred at Fort William in Scotland July 13 2006, where a gondola derailed and slid into another, no fatalities from that though, another at Ski Apache in Feb 2007 but again no serious injuries occurred, at Whistler an accident occurred due to ice building up in a pylon possibly as a result of poor maintenance or poor design that resulted in 10 injuries, the only fatalities I can find from Gondola incidents are either as a result of people falling out of them (possibly due to leaning too far out of windows or mucking around) or two nasty accidents one in Austria where a load of concrete fell from a helicopter and unfortunately hit the gondolas and the other in Hong Kong where an oil rig being towed hit a gondola.
Not sure about elsewhere but remember being told the Swiss have very strict regulations about all types of cableways with regular maintenance, inspection and even cable replacement covered by regulations, it's one reason you will very rarely if ever see a second hand installation of a lift in Switzerland, many of the old lifts there are dismantled and sold on elsewhere after they have been reconditioned though, time was they ended up in Italy who used to be the poor neighbour, now I suspect they go further a field possibly to Russia or Bulgaria.
In the case of the accident above I have to admit to being curious, all the gondolas appear to have dropped at the same location which suggests that there is something about that particular pylon that was causing problems
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