Wire Splice Advice

The Lyndon outing club got a little bit of maintenance work done this past week, splicing a new section of wire in where the old one was frayed, as well as adding a little bit of length to take some tension off the lift. We were there on tuesday morning ready to watch the procedure,  but a few complications and some rain put it off for another day.  In getting the wire ready for work, we had to drop the cable off of a few towers so it was low enough to work on.  I helped with this by taking a 4 foot metal bar and just prying it to the side of the sheaves.  when it dropped it went quick, and to my surprise the whole sheave assembly started whipping around like the propellers on a plane.  i wasn't really ready for that to happen and i almost lost a few toes in the process, but i would call it a lesson learned.  Once the wire was on the ground we put brackets on the wire and pulled them toward each other (1 uphill, 1 downhill) and made some slack in the line.  at this time it was raining pretty good, and there was a little too much tension on the wire since we didn't move the counter weight up so it had to be postponed until wednesday when unfortunately i couldn't make it.

Thursday we went to Stowe mountain and saw ___________(insert important guys name here), who showed us all the work going on with there new high-speed quad and patrol shack.  the new lift looked pretty awesome, and it was obvious that it was a brand spanking new one. It was a Doppelmayr made lift and the most interesting part i think was the bull-wheel assembly.  bull-wheels don't usually come in 3 separate pieces and the bull-wheel was angled down in both the top and bottom terminals.  It is a different way to detach the chair from the cable pushing the chairs along on their own separate track, while the wire is pulled downward onto the automatically tension'd bull-wheel.  after this we helped take apart some of the top assemblies from the old lift tower.  This was a real fun activity and it was cool to see what was holding all of that together.  once we removed the catwalks, and sheave assemblies from the frame we separated them into different organized piles so that Stowe mountain could find a buyer and get them ready to be shipped out.  By parting out their lift, selling the cable to one place, chairs to another, and the sheave's and tubes still without a buyer, they optimized the retail value of the old pieces.

I've Got some good NEWSS

this past Thursday we traveled to Sunday River to take part in the New Endland Winter Sports Summit.  It is a convention for ski areas, and ski industry business to market all of their new product out to the industry.  This was a very cool convention and its interesting to see a few of the industry big-wigs all together in one place.  There were representatives from Pisten-bully, Prinoth, Action Bearing, TechnoAlpin, Ramp snowboards, Rossignol Skis, and many many more. These representatives were extremely helpful and were all willing to take time out of their day to explain their product, and discuss it with us. All of these people represented people who have succeeded in the ski industry, and I think that it is important to talk to these people and learn a little bit about the path that got them there. One of the more interesting people that I talked to was Steve Greene of Action Bearing.  It's funny how we take little things like bearings for granted,  but they are everywhere.  they are in every sheave of every tower, they are in our snowmobiles, and groomers,  we use them in the kitchen, and just about everywhere else on a ski resort, you can look and find a bearing.  Steve explained to me 2 major different kinds of bearing, roller bearings for fast spinning low load bearing uses, and roller bearings which spin a little slower but are able to hold much heavier loads.  Another interesting person that I spoke with was Chris of the National Ski Patrol, he had been patrolling over Pat's Peak for 21 years, and from what it seemed, he has seen everything on the ski hill. We had discussed the curriculum and if it has expanded to cover any needs for mountain biking and other summer recreation that a lot of mountain's have been installing.  He says the curriculum covers all kinds of emergency care, and most of the summer information falls into place in the curriculum already.  This event was a great way to see some in's and out's of the ski industry and also meet some of the people who have lived it.

Lyndon State Outing Club

The outing club is a marvelous place full of opportunity.  this year our practicum class has decided to try and make something of all this land.  our job is to plan and facilitate an event at the outing club that will benefit the club, the town, and the community. so in order to do this effectively we broke the class up into 4 different groups.  events, marketing, trail maintenance, and sustainability so that we can tackle obstacles in a organized and focused fashion.  I am in the events group and we have decided to do an event in conjunction with Thom Anderson's already successful chili cookoff on november 5th.  Beginning to coordinate this event leads me to believe it will be a lot of work to make sure that things run smoothly.  but in the mean time you can watch this snowboard teaser!