Whistler Gondola Accident

[Guest]

How about that gondola accident. Can't believe that the tower snapped in two. Hope this never happens at WF. I think the towers are alot higher at WF.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28268812/

 

[Snowballs]

i saw that. have you heard about the peak to peak gondi whistler installed. a 1.88 mile free span over 1500' drop!!! now that's a double black diamond lift.

 

[CUskibum]

Jeeze, the first time i heard about this, I thought it was the Peak 2 Peak gondola. It wasn't. It was the Excalibur gondola. I read the accident writeup on the Whistler site. To me, it seems like someone overlooked this during a safety inspection.

"Several factors converged to cause the tower failure. The structure of the tower is such that two parts are spliced together. Water had seeped into the tower which had turned to ice with the recent extreme cold temperatures. The ice build-up caused the tower splice to rupture, an extremely unusual situation referred to as "ice-jacking"."

http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/media/news/season_2008-09/081217_2.htm

Just points out the importance of safety inspections for lifts. Just from the MSNBC article, the lift looks a lot like WF's Cloudsplitter Gondola. Doppelmayr built the Excalibur Gondola, they also built the Cloudsplitter Gondola at Whiteface.

 

[evantrentful]

I thought CTEC built the Whiteface gondi. Which was completed in 1999 a few years before the Doppelmayr merger