After timber removal and survey work, the tubing park grading work has begun this week. The engineered plans involve tubing lanes designed to be slightly tiered (from lookers left to lookers right as seen in the image above) in the upper portion of the tracks. The lanes will then flatten out and become more consistent in elevation down in the runout zone. This will assist…
During the summer months, our favorite ski lines reveal what’s hiding underneath all that snow. Here’s a few pics from the trees adjacent to Ticaboo.
The Monarch Pass area is experiencing what a significant portion of the southwest mountains have been seeing over the last few decades. In the early 2000’s a spruce beetle endemic occurred in the San Juan Mountains and rapidly spread to the North and Northeast as winds carried them to other mountain ranges in the State. In 2012, study plots within the…
A haul rope on a ski lift stretches over time or even hour to hour based on the number of passengers on the chairlift. Temperature can alter the elasticity of the line as well. The tensioning system is designed to help account for these varying forces that are placed on the lift. As the haul rope stretches, the tensioning system can…
Monarch Mountain is continuing to update one of the nicest maintenance facilities in Colorado Ski Country. We recently installed a Snowcat Four Post Lift from Target Lifts International to better access our machines while doing maintenance work. This capital expenditure will assist our vehicle maintenance crew’s ability to efficiently maintain our fleet of machines. This lift can handle machines weighing up…
We recently conducted a rope splice on the Panorama lift cable. This takes place during the installation of a new haul line on a lift or when slack needs to be removed from an existing line. The lift cable on a chairlift is not one single cable, it is comprised of 6 main strands with 19 smaller wires in each one. The rope splice…
Last summer, we replaced the drive and braking systems in addition to new controls on Panorama. This summer, we will complete the mechanical upgrades with a new hydraulic tensioning system. In order to prep for this, our lift mechanics de-tensioned the lift and removed the counterweight. The haul rope was then lowered to the ground so that a splice can occur…
The USFS timber staff marked the trees to be cut to make way for the Tubing Park. Our Mountain Crew is quickly clearing the site. The majority of these trees were infested with the spruce beetle and would have been taken down very soon whether a tubing park was installed or not. Trees were removed and sold to local sources…
The USFS recently approved the Monarch Mountain proposal to install a tubing park this summer with operations scheduled to begin during the 2018-19 winter season. The tubing park will be located just above the Safari Ski+Ride School teaching area. The park will include a Multi Ski-Lift rope tow to assist in bringing guests to the top of the tubing lanes. The tubing lanes will…
People always ask, “What do you do up there in the summer?”. While we do not currently offer summer activities on the mountain for the public, there is still plenty to do during the off-season. The Lift and Vehicle Maintenance departments work on the chairlifts, snowcats and conduct repairs on the ever-growing fleet of machines. The Mountain Crew assists with construction projects…