Down The Via Ferrata

This morning I toured the Via Ferrata with Mike Friedman and Neve of Adventure Partners. They are building our Via Ferrata. We drove to the Summit and then hiked to the top of Lenawee Pinnacle (12,937') just south of Lenawee Mountain. Hiking up the ridge, we saw several goats including a couple very cute newborn kids. The pinnacle is the high point of the Via Ferrata. We made a series of rappels down the entire course. The route is stunning. Mike's team has prepared much of path through rock scaling. They have started installing rungs. They will spend the next 6 or 7 weeks finishing their work.

This is going to be cool.

Bottom Terminal Pallavicini

The foundations for the bottom drive station of Pali have been back filled. Preliminary grading has been completed. The two tower tubes that support the motor room and the bullwheel are standing. The motor room should be shipped to The Basin and installed by Friday.

An Enormous Piece of Concrete

This is the top of the old Pallavicini Lift. Everything you see here was below ground. The vertical pipe is about 8 feet tall. There was an additional 8 feet of pipe that has already been removed. The bullwheel rested on top of that. The pipe is full of concrete and it is embedded in a concrete mass approximately 10' x 20' x 5'. That is huge. The top of a chairlift has to be incredibly heavy to keep it from being pulled down the hill. Between the weight of the chairlift and the motor that drives the lift, there are tremendous forces at work. We will be breaking this concrete chunk apart. The Leitner Poma guys will replace it with a new foundation of comparable size.

Spider Hoes Are Back

The spider hoes that helped us build the Zuma and Beavers Chairlifts are back. A spider hoe is a very specialized type of excavator. It is designed to travel in extremely rugged terrain and leave a very small foot print. The machine has four big rubber tires on legs that articulate in many directions. The legs and the boom that holds the bucket allow the operator to guide the machine gently and slowly down very steep and rugged terrain. We used these machines to dig the tower holes on the Zuma and Beavers Lifts. It is hard to tell where the machine traveled on those lift lines.

Right now there are two spiders hoes working on the Pali Lift Line. The photos below were taken yesterday at the site of NEW Pali Tower 3.

Perfect Weather

The mountain is in tip top form. The weather the next couple of days should be perfect, blue skies and highs in the lower 70's.Yesterday morning I walked up the Argentine North Fork Trail to Black Mountain Lodge. Today, I wandered around the lower Pali Lift zone checking on construction. Flowers are everywhere. It is beautiful and a treat to be on the hill wandering around.

Molly Hogan Motor Room

The Molly Hogan Motor Room arrived today. It weighs somewhere in the 35-40,000 pound range. After quite bit of prep time, the very large crane set the structure in place in just a few minutes.

Pouring Concrete - Bottom of Pali

Today the Leither Poma team successfully poured the concrete for the bottom terminal of the new Pallavicini Lift. That is a lot of concrete. The bottom will have an LP Alpha terminal very similar to the bottom of Lenawee, top of Beavers and top of Zuma Lifts. Two steel towers will support the drive station or motor room. Each of those towers has a very, very large concrete foundation most of which is buried. The biggest part of any lift, in both size and weight, is buried and most people never see it.

Misty Morning

Last week one of our employees captured this misty morning image in the Aerial Adventure Park.