Homage to the Fixed-Grip Chair

[Tricia]

I dug this up when I was looking for pictures of

Bridger Bowl, Red Chair

 

[Michael R.]

I want one.

Me too. I actually have a chair from the exhibition lift, but it's a triple and doesn't fit on my front deck. Would prefer a double, especially from a lift as famed as Pali

 

[NZRob]

I have fond memories of many fixed grip chairs, including the terrifying wooden-seated single at Ruapehu in the 80's, and we still have a couple of T-bars where I ski.....but I am more than happy for every chair to be a comfortable, padded express now.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

Anybody else riden the new double at Mittersill? It is so strange to ride a brand new fixed grip double.

 

[graham418]

I dug this up when I was looking for pictures of
View attachment 31378
Bridger Bowl, Red Chair

There must be something wrong with your camera .... There's white spots all over the picture!

 

[Wilhelmson]

The double at Mittersill seems faster than some of the older fixed lifts. Of course I liked Mittersill better when there wasn't a lift.

Bretton Woods has a new T Bar that's pretty smooth compared to the old style, but there are still some great wipeouts. In one not so great wipeout a kid was dragged by his goggles which were attached to his helmet. Tough kid and lots of blood but he skied the rest of the day (I have no idea how).

 

[Ecimmortal]

Did someone say fixed grip?

 

[Doug Briggs]

A high speed chair does NOT shorten time in the lift line on a busy day. It actually makes the time you stand at the bottom LONGER when you could be sitting on a slower moving chair. Two quad chairs side by side, one detachable and one fixed grip move the same number of skiers up at roughly the same load and unload rates.. but the detachable has fewer chairs, spaced farther apart, moving up faster, shorter ride. Fixed grip has more chairs on the cable, i.e. more people sitting down where the detachable has fewer chairs for people to sit in and more people stacked up at the bullwheel waiting for fewer, but faster moving chairs.

Now, on a not so busy day the detachable will get you a LOT more laps in a shorter amount of time. But when there is a line backed up, the only detachable that is faster are the ones with more seats on each chair.

I'd rather sit on a slow chair riding up than stand at the bottom in a packed corral waiting for a faster chair.

That is an interesting observation. The load rate of chairs is specified by the local tramway authority. In CO, you can't load chairs any quicker than one every 6 seconds. So given the same size chair, your wait in the line won't change regardless of lift. You'll get to the top quicker, once you load, with a detach.

I cued the following film up to show the old East Slope chair at Cranmore, but it has more awesome content than just that. It was filmed by guests of my parent's inn, the Cranmore Inn, in North Conway, NH. I grew up in the inn; our personal quarters were above the kitchen and 'back rooms' of the inn. I was about 7 when this film was shot. The famous Skimobile is also featured in the film.

The chair was a center pole with a bar and foot rest that aimed forward when in the open position. Miss the seat when loading and you risked getting impaled by either or both. It also had a very high span near the top that when the lift stopped would bounce through what seemed like 50 feet of travel. Very scary when you are young and small.

 

[crgildart]

That is an interesting observation. The load rate of chairs is specified by the local tramway authority. In CO, you can't load chairs any quicker than one every 6 seconds. So given the same size chair, your wait in the line won't change regardless of lift. You'll get to the top quicker, once you load, with a detach.

@Doug Briggs

Actually, your wait to sit will be shorter on a fixed because there are more chairs on the cable and thus more places to sit. Detachables have fewer chairs on the cable spaced farther apart so more people are standing in line at the bottom for detachables than fixed when both are equally tasked with the same number of skiers..

If there are 500 people skiing a run with a detachable and 500 people skiing a run with a fixed here's how that would stack up, both quads..

Let's say the detachable cable moves twice as fast as the fixed..

Detachable quad might have 50 chairs on the cable so there are 200 people sitting on the cable riding while there are 300 people skiing down or waiting for chairs waiting for those 4 seats every 6 seconds.

Fixed grip chairlift would have 100 chairs twice as close together so there are 400 people sitting on any given moment and 100 people skiing down or standing in line waiting for that line moving at 4 people every 6 seconds..

Detachable wait to load is longer but the ride is quicker. Fixed wait is shorter but more time spent sitting waiting to unload.

Say the detachable is a 6 pack since those are common..

50 chairs with 6 people would be 300 on the cable and 200 skiing or waiting.. Still a shorter wait to sit on a fixed grip quad..

 

[JFB]

Last season, Mt Rose had been closed for 3 or 4 (5?) days due, in part, to closure of the highway and the resort website said they would open when the road did. It was a weekday. So I checked the NDOT website and it said the road had just opened. Checking the resort website, they announced they were open. It was about 10:30. It took me about 20 minutes to get there and there were less than 100 skiers on the mountain. And only the Lakeview chair, a fixed-grip double was running. The temperature was low (light snow) and the winds high (free refills) but those of us who were there sessioned the front side (the back side was closed by an avalanche over the road) until about 2:00, when they opened the Northwest lift, a detachable 6-pack. At that point, I knocked it off for the day - old guys on tele don't ski bell-to-bell and my face was getting frostbite. Besides we had reduced the front side to crud and the place was getting crowded - there must have been 300 people there by then. Those who were there were talking about that day on lift rides for the rest of the season "Were you there??? Best day ever!".

 

[Jim McDonald]

If (emphasis on IF) it's one chair every six seconds, the chair spacing is irrelevant to wait time.

 

[dbostedo]

If (emphasis on IF) it's one chair every six seconds, the chair spacing is irrelevant to wait time.

True, for a common place in line. But the line itself may be longer with a detachable, because there are there are less people on the lift at a time. As crgildart calculated, if you account for folks skiing and waiting, the detachable will have more folks not riding the chair. That means the line could get longer, and your wait could be longer with the detachable.

So if you're the 40th person in line either way, your wait will be the same. But the line for the fixed grip might max out at 40 people, where the line for the detachable might max out at 60 people with the exact same number of total skiers on the mountain.

 

[Jim McDonald]

I may be a mathematical idiot, but it's four people getting off each chair every six seconds, as well as getting on.
Obviously, if the detachable loads every eight seconds compared to every six for the fixed-grip, things change.

 

[crgildart]

I may be a mathematical idiot, but it's four people getting off each chair every six seconds, as well as getting on.
Obviously, if the detachable loads every eight seconds compared to every six for the fixed-grip, things change.

@Jim McDonald the fixed grip has a lot more chairs on the cable at any given moment than the detachable does.. both leave the ramp every 6 seconds but the detachable cable is morning faster so there are fewer chairs on it heading up than there are on the fixed grip..
One more time..

Detachable has fewer seats available at any given moment than the slower chair does so people wait longer to get a seat because there are fewer of them.. Both deliver the same number of skiers up but you're sitting longer on the fixed ride up and standing longer at the bottom for the detachable all other things equal.. If there's not enough skiers to back up a line then detachable is twice as fast.. Big line and same speed but detachable has a shorter sitting ride time and thus longer standing at bottom waiting time.

Make sense?

 

[Bad Bob]

Anybody have a 'Double Bubble' chair to brag up?

This is getting way too serious.

 

[Jim McDonald]

@crgildart, sorry but no it does not.
Four hundred people in each line, four people board every six seconds; after 10 minutes, all 400 people have boarded lift and the lines are empty; nobody waited longer in the detachable line, although the people in the fixed-grip line spent more time riding. Extrapolate out to 4,000 people, or 40,000, but the wait gets no longer for the detachable. The number of chairs on the cable isn't a factor; the load interval is.
Now, I do understand that if you assume all 4,000 people are just yo-yo'ing the same two lifts and skiing down at the same average speed (IMHO unlikely, but OK) the line at the detachable is going to get longer than the line at the fixed, because x% of the fixed people are still on the chair while all 4,000 from the detachable have completed their run.
But say it happened that way: after x cycles the skiers on the detachable lift are going to get one run more than those on the fixed, who in turn have gotten to sit on a lift for y minutes more. Whether that's a favorable trade-off is your call.

 

[crgildart]

@crgildart, sorry but no it does not.
Four hundred people in each line, four people board every six seconds; after 10 minutes, all 400 people have boarded lift and the lines are empty; nobody waited longer in the detachable line, although the people in the fixed-grip line spent more time riding. Extrapolate out to 4,000 people, or 40,000, but the wait gets no longer for the detachable. The number of chairs on the cable isn't a factor; the load interval is.

Read my posts carefully .. I said more time and people waiting at the bottom TO GET A SEAT.

Number of chairs on the cable is the main factor to the number of seats available.. More people sitting down at any given time where there are more seats.. so the number of people standing at the bottom will be lower by the additional number of seats going up. Both lifts get the same number of people up per hour, but more time sitting on one with more time standing at the bottom on the other and less time sitting on the way up

 

[Jim McDonald]

OK

 

[David Chaus]

So, there are times when I would rather be waiting in line a bit longer and then whisked up to the top of a lift at a faster rate. Wind and cold temperatures contribute to this. While the rope speed of a fixed grip chair is less than detatchable quads or 6-packs, the fixed grip is still moving at a rate of speed that increases the impact of the wind and/or snow pelting the skiers/boarders. Standing around for a few minutes longer at the bottom, often more protected from wind, is not a bad thing.

 

[crgildart]

So, there are times when I would rather be waiting in line a bit longer and then whisked up to the top of a lift at a faster rate. Wind and cold temperatures contribute to this. While the rope speed of a fixed grip chair is less than detatchable quads or 6-packs, the fixed grip is still moving at a rate of speed that increases the impact of the wind and/or snow pelting the skiers/boarders. Standing around for a few minutes longer at the bottom, often more protected from wind, is not a bad thing.

Agreed. The fixed grip solution to that is the ability to hop off at the mid station and ski the bottom half of the mountain more protected from those elements. Without a mid station a quicker ride is definitely preferable on those below zero days.. Snow guns blasting is another similar scenario..