By Karen D. Lorentz
Director of Lift Maintenance Greg Carter recently retired from a challenging and satisfying 40 years of working at Okemo Mountain.
Born in Springfield, Carter had learned to ski at age 5 at Ascutney and later skied at Round Top. He joined Okemo in 1983 as a lift operator and when recalled to his job at Fellows Gear Shaper, he served as a volunteer ski patrolman at Okemo. He returned to the ski area permanently in January 1985 and worked as the lift operations supervisor from 1986 to spring 1998, when he became the assistant lift maintenance supervisor. In 2001 he became the lift maintenance manager with his title changed to Director of Lift Maintenance when Vail Resorts bought Okemo in 2018.
Asked about the most impressive change he’s witnessed at Okemo, Carter said, “The thing that stands out most is 1992 when the first detachable quad — the Northstar Express — was put in. The first time I rode it, I was like an amusement park ride, so fast and exhilarating.”
Other impressive milestones included the Solitude, South Face, and Jackson Gore expansions. “We changed the fixed grips [original chairlifts] to detachables at Solitude and South face,” he noted, adding that Jackson Gore was built with two detachables with the upper Quantum Four receiving a bubble in 2015 and then being replaced by a six pack in 2021. “Okemo has grown immensely,” he added.
Asked if he was surprised that the Muellers, who took over the area and owned/operated it from 1982 to 2018, were so successful considering they had no previous ski resort experience, Carter said, “No. They were entrepreneurs and knew what people wanted and kept up with times.”
Changes and challenges
Carter recalled there were nine lifts when he started at Okemo —four chairlifts, five Pomalifts (surface disc lifts). Now there are 20 total — six detachable and seven fixed-grip chairlifts, six carpets, and one T-bar (for a terrain park and halfpipe).
Replacing the original lifts and keeping them turning and operating safely is an enormous task that includes preventative maintenance and repairs. And until 2018, Okemo’s lift maintenance department also built the lifts. “Building the lifts was our work until Vail Resorts took over and then the lift manufacturer’s crews installed them,” Carter said.
However, he noted that because the maintenance department had originally installed 19 of today’s lifts, they had benefitted from putting them together and knowing how they work and thus how to repair them.
“Wear is to be expected with moving parts like bearings and belts so there are some checks we do every day and some we do weekly and there are all sorts of different checks we do monthly and yearly. Maintenance is a necessary process to keep the lifts safe and functioning. They don’t fix themselves.
“Everything gets looked at and we do whatever needs to be taken care of. Workers ride the lifts every day — generally all of them — inspect them visually and watch for telltale signs before something happens,” Carter said.
That includes inspecting and lubing the cable (occasionally replacing them as they get worn); climbing towers and checking and greasing the sheve bearings and making sure the sheves (wheels the cable rides) are in good condition; maintaining the bullwheels and drive mechanisms; and looking at backup motors among myriad other tasks.
With some lifts like the detachable quads, maintenance is performed based on hours of operation. The detachables are more labor intensive and a greater challenge to take care of due to more belts and pulleys, Carter noted. Icing presents a particular challenge and on those days maintenance gets in earlier to tackle the job of de-icing the sheves and then putting the chairs, which had been taken off the cable, back on.
Due to ongoing preventive maintenance and understanding how the lifts work, there is less lift downtime today, Carter said. That makes for a better guest experience, but Carter also noted that “on a busy day there are lift lines at every detachable, but you can go to a fixed grip and get right on — sometimes you can get more skiing in on the fixed grip lifts than on riding the faster express lifts. The detachables cost more due to specialized parts and having more to them, but skiers like them so areas with detachables generally get more skier visits.”
Summer is also a busy time for the crew who go over each lift, inspecting cables and running machines to check for cracks on chairs that have been taken off the cables. Non-destructive testing includes the bends, welds, grips, and steel all getting checked out. “Twenty percent of chairs — around 250 chairs — have to be inspected every year, but manufacturers do a good job of building them today so we don’t find cracks very often,” Carter said.
The maintenance challenge that stands out for Carter over the years is “all the electrical changes that happened from year to year. Electronics got more technical and it was a lot of work to understand them from year to year — there was always a learning curve there. The old way always worked well, and now newer electronics can fail in the blink of an eye, and it takes a little longer to figure out where the problem is. Nothing is the way it used to be – just like our cars.”
Asked about other challenges, Carter noted that “Weather is near the top in my book; sometimes you have to shut the lifts down in inclement weather. Mice can get in and cause problems. They like the wire and insulation that protects the wire and chew on it and eat it and make a mess and create an issue. Bearings can be good but can fail at any time. Things like that are unpredictable and keep you on your toes.”
As for the most enjoyable parts of his job, Carter cited the thrill of riding the aforementioned Northstar Express and building the lifts. “It was good, fun work. It was the same procedures each time but also a source of thrills. You definitely had to have your wits about you,” he said of times when a helicopter hovored over the crew with a tower to be set!
Noting that having a stable maintenance crew is important, Carter said that they can’t be afraid of climbing towers, heights, or what’s involved in maintenance challenges in a seven-days-a-week job in winter. He takes satisfaction in having trained “a topnotch crew over the last three to 10 years and being able to retire and say I left Okemo in real good shape.”
Now that he is retired, Carter is enjoying relaxing and riding his motorcycle more. He looks forward to “traveling a little and sleeping in, in winter — not having to worry about getting out of the house and to the area in the middle of the night in a snowstorm.”
And he’ll sleep a little better knowing his longtime associate and assistant manager Shawn Hains, who also started out as a lift operator and then moved to lift maintenance, will be taking over for him.
