19 May 2023
It's starting to feel a lot like Winter at Perisher, and if you're anything like us...you're checking the snow cams and weather report daily for updates.
Just because the lifts are closed as we prepare for winter does not mean all is quiet on the home front. We're working tirelessly behind the scenes to prepare for another fun and safe season of skiing and riding at Perisher. With the arrival of autumn each year, it's all hands on deck as we work to have your lifts winter-ready.
This past week, lift maintenance staff and our friends at Doppelmayr have been working hard to completely replace the Ridge Quad Chair haul rope.
Replacing a chair lift's haul rope is no easy feat, with only a very few people in the world skilled for the job. Essentially, a 'haul rope' is the long, looping steel cable that suspends the chairs for a lift.
Blue Cow's Ridge Quad Chair is 1.7KM long, meaning roughly double that in heavy (around 13 tonnes worth), steel cable needed to be removed, replaced, spliced and fed back through.
Each stage in a haul rope replacement is a complicated and labour-intensive undertaking, but the splicing process in particular is a sight to behold. Amazingly, there is no welding involved in the entire splicing process, meaning that the integrity and strength of the haul rope is maintained. The finished product is one, continuous loop of rope that suspends our Ridge Quad Chairs that in turn, take you 1.7KM up the hill for your turns.
Head to Perisher's Instagram to see more.
