If it seems like there have been a lot of slow-running, or worse, no-running, chairlifts at Park City Mountain Resort so far this season, chalk it up to the simple ski-industry maxim of “stuff happens.” At least according to one Park City Mountain lift mechanic and union representative.
“Unfortunately, no, they’re machines. They do break down,” Cody Madden with the Park City Lift Maintenance Union said in a phone interview Thursday after the six-passenger PayDay lift out of Park City Mountain Village was shut down most of Monday and then again Tuesday morning. Madden was asked if there have been more slowdowns and shutdowns than usual.
“Fortunately, no, there’s not really a bigger story,” Madden said. “It’s really not staffing issues at all. We are actually fully staffed on lift maintenance at the moment. We would like to add more people to that, but [Park City Mountain owner Vail Resorts] gives us a number on how many people we can have, and that’s what we go with.”
On Saturday, Jan. 27, McConkey’s Express shut down for a half hour, then creeped along for the next half hour so people could unload.
On Wednesday, Quick Silver Gondola had a delayed start later in the morning. Park City Mountain Communication Director Sara Huey did not elaborate past expressing gratitude “for the expertise and diligence of our lift maintenance employees and all of our operations teams.”
Madden said it just might seem like a lot of incidents because they’ve come one after the other.
“A lot of times it is forefront of people’s mind and, unfortunately, sometimes these things come in a snowball effect,” Madden said. “It’s not even that the lifts are related. It’s that one thing happens, and then it seems like the next thing happens.”
Madden, who works on the Canyons side of Park City Mountain, said he wasn’t entirely sure what shut PayDay down for so long Jan. 29-30, but it wasn’t power-related. He added that, overall, there have been a variety of issues this season.
“We have had a couple of [power issues] this season with the Rocky Mountain Power grid, but that’s all been resolved very fast and no significant downtime on that stuff,” Madden said, adding that mechanical issues sometimes come down to accessing parts. “It just takes time to get them in. Sometimes they have to come from out of state.”
Some skiers have at least perceived an uptick in lift ride delays, though.
“I’ve been skiing here for 20 years and living here on and off for 15. I’ve never before experienced, or even heard of, lift stoppages like this,” said Jerry Stouck of Park City.
He said he got stuck for half an hour two weeks ago when Three Kings lift stopped, in addition to getting stuck on PayDay this week.
“I am personally worried about maintenance issues based on my two recent experiences,” he said.
Richard Sherman of Park City wondered if the high speed detachable lifts were aging toward the point they should be replaced, based on a story he had read in LiftBlog.com about the average of 23.8 years of service when these lifts are replaced. He counted eight detachable lifts on Park City Mountain that age or older.
“It could certainly be a good story to find out why they’re not replacing the lifts, especially when we’re starting to see mechanical issues everywhere,” he said. “If they’re all about safety, maybe it’s time for them to spend some money replacing lifts.”
Madden said the newly formed union is very much on the same page with Vail Resorts.
“Speaking for the union, and Vail Corporation, Park City management, we all have the same end goal: get as many people up the hill as possible and not have the lifts shut down,” Madden said. “When these things do happen — unfortunately there’s mechanical and electrical issues that do set us back — we’re not restricted in any way. … We had guys here till 3 in the morning [Tuesday] working on the thing, trying to get it going for the day. Unfortunately, sometimes you run into waiting for a part to come from someone else, or sometimes it’s a software update.”
Neither of the lifts, Silverlode and Eagle, that infamously earned national headlines in a round of litigation pitting the ski company against the Park City municipal government have been involved in the recent round of mechanical issues. Vail Resorts got initial staff approval to upgrade those lifts before the Park City Planning Commission overruled staff, Vail Resorts sued, and a judge ultimately sided with the city. The new lifts wound up at another Vail Resorts ski mountain in Canada — Whistler.
“I don’t want to speak too far out of line, but the bigger story is upgrading lifts, and when Park City doesn’t want us to upgrade lifts and then we have older lifts still running, that’s kind of a problem,” Madden said. “Like, we want to live in a ski town, but we want our cake to eat it, too, and we don’t want to put new stuff in.”
Asked if this season’s lift issues should just be chalked up to, “S___ happens,” Madden offered: “Educating the public, I’d love to put that out there in better words than that, obviously. I’ve worked for smaller companies, and a lot of people here remember the [previous owner] Talisker days when we couldn’t get parts. We’re not restricted by any means now. We can pretty much get whatever we want and or need to make [lifts] run. It’s just the time frame to get it and install it.”
The company recommends using its website or its mobile app to check lift status.
Park Record Editor Don Rogers contributed to this story.