Ever since the chairs stopped turning at the end of last season, the boys have been hard at work getting the lifts ready for another great season. It’s a little-known fact that summer maintenance of the lifts takes many thousands of man-hours and over a million dollars each season to ensure optimum safety and prime operation during the coming season.
We got to have some fun yesterday splicing the Chair 3 haul rope! “Haul rope” is the name of the main cable structure that the chairs are attached to. It’s a 1 1/4″ thick steel cable wrapped around a nylon core. The haul rope was installed brand new three summers ago, and now, after two full seasons of use, has stretched out and is hanging low. This is all perfectly normal and part of the process. To remove some of the slack, the rope is spliced and a section is removed to shorten the rope.
A typical haul rope. Image courtesy skilifts.org
Splicing cable is really a fascinating process. Instead of cutting the rope off clean, as in the image above, single strands at a time are cut and unraveled at different distances from the center of the splice. This eventually unravels the rope itself and it comes apart at the center. It is then weaved back together, at a closer distance than before. A total of 18″ feet of rope was removed from Chair 3, all before lunchtime!
Easier said than done, right? Well, I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
Big Steve making the first cut
And another cut. You can see one strand has already been unraveled
Unraveling
More unraveling
Coming apart at the center. You can see the nylon cord in the middle
A jumble of cords. RJ, in the middle, knows exactly where each one goes.
You can see how the ends will be spliced back together
Butt ends spliced together, and RJ is marking the center.
Raveling the strands back in.
Pounding the strands back in for a secure, snug fit
Jason straightening out the pigtails to slide back inside the core.
The pigtails are wrapped in string for a better fit inside the core.
Opening up the cable to slide the pigtail inside
Once he got the pigtail inside the core, RJ rotated these spikes down the length of the rope to hide it inside.
