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Black Mountain’s lifts are all operating once again
Both lifts at the N.H. ski mountain broke down within 90 minutes of each other on Sunday.
Black Mountain is again fully operational after both chairlifts broke down within 90 minutes of each other last weekend.
The chairlifts suffered “critical component failures” on Sunday during one of the mountain’s busiest days of the season, Erik Mogensen, president and general manager, posted on the mountain’s website.
Both the Summit Double Chair and the East Bowl Triple Chair broke down, and visitors were manually evacuated from the double lift, according to Mogensen. As a result, only the mountain’s three surface lifts were available on Monday, and officials were taking ski school students up the mountain on a snowcat.
On Tuesday, Mogensen announced that the double lift was fixed and running. However, the triple lift, which had “a complete failure on the top bull wheel bearing,” was still broken, and officials were scrambling to track down the correct part, he wrote in his update.
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Mogensen then announced Friday that the part was secured, the triple was fixed, and it would begin running at 1 p.m.
“After a few very cold days of near constant work, that lift is ready to spin and take the pressure off the Summit Double, which is running strong,” Mogensen wrote. “The bearing that was driven overnight from Tennessee ended up being the winner.”
It’s been a long week for the Black Mountain team.
“I can’t reiterate the home run effort that this team put in,” Mogensen wrote. “Both fixes were complicated and required significant coordination from all our staff and outside manufacturers. In the end, the double came back online within 48 hours. The triple took just over 100 hours for the complete removal and reinstallation of the top bull wheel bearing. I am proud of the heroic efforts that made this possible, and we are all ready to catch up on some sleep.”
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With both lifts spinning once again, Mogensen said his team will focus on “special snowmaking missions that are going to change the way this mountain skis,” he wrote. There is snowmaking on the Roller Coaster trail for the first time in 30 years and The Goose will soon open, which he called “one of the steepest trails in the state.” The team is also building an area called the Black Mountain Glacier.
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