eBearing News - Nova Scotia Ski Lifts Plagued by Bearing Failures

It's an acrophobic skier's worst nightmare: stranded on a chairlift, high above the snow. And it's been coming true all too often this year in Nova Scotia. Ski lift operators there have experienced a rash of troubling bearing failures this winter, stranding skiers and closing hills.

Two weeks ago, Ski Wentworth's (Wentworth, Nova Scotia) Doppelmayr chairlift was operating at full capacity on a Sunday afternoon when a major pulley wheel bearing failed at the top of the mountain. More than 100 skiers were left stranded, high in midair. They had to be rescued by lowering them to the ground with ropes.

Ski Wentworth was closed for a week while the bearings were replaced and other repairs and inspections made to the chairlift. The chairlift at Ski Wentworth was made by Doppelmayr Seilbahnen (Wolfurt, Austria) and is 13 years old. Doppelmayr lifts are considered among the world's finest chairlift systems.

This is the second major chairlift bearing failure this winter at Ski Wentworth, said the Nova Scotia Department of Labour. Only one month earlier, a bearing failure in the chairlift's gearbox closed Ski Wentworth for two weeks. It was not clear whether skiers had to be rescued after that failure.

Randy Kennedy, chief inspector for the Nova Scotia Department of Labour, has asked Doppelmayr to perform a complete failure analysis on the bearings. "We want to determine why they failed," said Kennedy.

Last Tuesday, Ski Ben Eoin (Ben Eoin, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia) was closed when the chairlift's pulley bearings began making loud noises. In this case, skiers were able to get off the chairlift before the bearings seized. The facility was closed, and it was not immediately clear how long the repairs would take to complete.