Silver Mountain managers toil overtime to fix Jackass

A broken bullwheel shaft on the Jackass chair at Silver Mountain was bad news. But the ski area has made up for it on weekends with snow cat rides to coveted runs off the summit of Warder Peak – about a 20-minute boot pack under normal conditions.

The snow cat pickup is on the saddle en route from the summit of Kellogg Peak to the basin serviced by the Jackass chair. The vehicle holds up to 12 people.

While skiers and boarders have been getting a ride to deep powder, operations manager Bret Dodson and lift maintenance manager Larry Bottemiller have been working 10- to 12-hour days in harsh conditions to get Jackass back online.

“The hardest part of this project has been the weather and the constraint of not being able to get the proper equipment to the site,” Dodson said. “At this time of year, there’s no way to move a crane up there to get tension off the bullwheel.”

A 33,000-pound counterweight pulls on a carriage holding the upper bullwheel of the Jackass chair. This massive block of concrete and rebar creates tension that keeps the lift cable, or haul rope, taught. To replace the bullwheel shaft, 16.5 tons of tension had to be relieved.

“We had to figure out a way to bypass the bullwheel,” Bottemiller said. “We rigged a sling directly from the haul rope to the counterweight. The work had to be done in high wind, heavy snow and bitter cold. We took a lot of warming breaks because your hands start freezing up and the cold starts really eating into you.”

To rig the sling, lengths of cable were bolted on one end alongside the upline and downline of the haul rope near the bullwheel. The opposite ends were bolted alongside lines suspending the counterweight from the bullwheel carriage.

This bypass freed the carriage from the counterweight, allowing Dodson and Bottemiller to move it forward with a come-along, slip the haul rope off the bullwheel and remove the damaged shaft.

“We attached the sling with 14 Crosby clips on each side,” Dodson said. “These are big bolted hooks that have to be tightened to 340 pounds of torque. The sling bore the tension so we could release the bullwheel carriage from the counterweight lines. The immense weight pulled the sling cables thinner just like a rubber band, so we had to crank down each Crosby clip again.”

Heavy chains backed up the sling while the Crosby clips were secured. All the work had to be done by hand. Dodson said bypassing the bullwheel alone took about three days.

Spokane’s Riblet Tramway Company installed the chair in 1967 when the terrain it serviced was known as the Jackass ski area. It’s a classic double chair, the workhorse of the ski industry for decades. The ride is 5,338 feet long with a vertical rise of 1,894 feet.

Riblet was once the largest ski lift manufacturer in the world. The company built about 500 chairlifts, some as far away as Australia. Growing popularity of detachable quads and a shrinking market for fixed grip lifts like Jackass killed off Riblet in 2003.

Ski lifts are inspected and tested twice a year by law. Washington has a tramway board run by the department of parks and recreation. In Idaho, ski area insurance providers oversee lift safety. During the last inspection failure of the Jackass bullwheel shaft was unforeseen.

When I talked with Dodson earlier this week, his crew was ready to install a new bullwheel shaft freshly milled by Superior Tramway Company of Spokane. He said dismantling the counterweight sling and testing the chair would take at least three days. Barring complications, the Jackass chair may be online this weekend.

If not, the snow cat will be back in action while Dodson and Bottemiller soldier on.