Industry News
When Winter Park, CO were replacing the Eskimo chairlift back in 1990, they took the opportunity to use the old chair to conduct a rollback test before ripping it out and replacing it. The video above is the terrifying result of this experiment.
An uncontrolled rollback was initiated, with concrete blocks loaded on the chairs to simulate riders. Look at how those blocks are just thrown up to 120-feet off the chair like frisbees as it gets out of control, so much so that the employees had to run for their lives.
The result is the total devastation of the entire infrastructure of the chairlift.
Reminds me of the real-life rollback in Georgia a couple of years ago where riders who didn’t jump were thrown from their chairs. Frightening.
Luckily this video is part of an full “catastrophic failure” test on the lift, so those employees are actually testers. They drop a tree on it, light the engine on fire, etc… fascinating 30 minutes.
The good news is that there are several anti-rollback safety devices to prevent this fro happening. And yes, those devices are tested on a regular basis, at least here in the USA.
Most modern lifts have secondary brake systems in place to prevent this. On fixed grip chairs it is a rod that goes into the bullwheel similar to putting a stick in someones bicycle wheel.