George Boyden on a morning inspection, over 10,000 feet above sea level and approximately 1,000 feet above ground. He performed these daily inspections for the majority of the Tramway’s first 40 years in rain, snow, shine, wind, and ice weather conditions.

A little pre-ski history of Taos Valley

“Spanish armies came up the Rio Grande River in search of the Seven Cities of Gold, a rumor during ancient times of the 1500’s. Some say that the golden sunsets were the gold that Native Americans talked about and that the physical gold didn’t exist at all. That said, 350 years later, there was quite a bit of gold mining throughout southern New Mexico.”

“At the base of Gold Hill after the first strike, a tent city named Twining, grew to over 1,100 squatters in a year. During the discoveries of gold deposits, miners also found rich copper ore. There were loading trestles, ore cars, and a big smelter right where the parking lot is for the ski resort. Eventually, the gold craze concluded, the copper supply ended, and everything left this little valley except for a few settlers. These bygone events developed well-established roads to a canyon with North facing slopes, avalanche chutes, and a great open base area at 9,400 feet to found Taos Ski Valley.”

“My parents introduced me to skiing back in 1955 when I was ten. As I got older, I continued to ski and worked at La Madeira Ski Area, which in 1962, changed to Sandia Peak when the first chairlift was installed. During the summertime, I would roll rocks, cut trees and brush that would earn me a season’s pass. I also did yard work where I gained experience with sprinkler systems and plumbing and learned electricity from my best friend’s electrician uncle. Tinkering with hot rods, I gained mechanical knowledge. Unknowingly, I was priming myself for future work at the Tramway. But when it snowed in the mountains, all day time jobs were off. I went skiing.”

“I studied for two years at the University of Colorado and had the opportunity to train with the University of Colorado ski team under the renowned Bob Beattie. That was a point in the University’s ski history when Spider Sabich, Billy Kidd, Jimmy Heuga, Jim Barrows, Ni Orsi, and Bill Marolt were training on the team.

After those college semesters, I took the next year off to repair skis and mount ski bindings in Alburqurque, as a Vail dream job fell through.”

“I had a one-track mind that the skiing lifestyle was my direction in life, the very meaning for everything for which I was working. After the snow melted in Sandia Peak, in 1965, when I was working as a certified ski instructor, I got a call from our general manager, Will Jackson. He offered me a job at the Sandia Peak Tramway, which was near the end of its two years of construction. So here I was, my passion and goal were to ski, and I find myself working at the new Tramway with Swiss engineers Adolf Zubruchen and Thomas Horst. My opportunity to get this job was probably because many of the construction workers were burned out from two years of adverse weather conditions, the broken German-English directions from the Swiss engineers, and impatience with the metric dimensions and tools.

Adolf taught me much about ropeway construction, and Thomas educated me on electricity. It was like having two personal tutors. I learned to use a cutting torch and a welder long before I ever operated the Tram. I found that experience can teach as much as a book. During the time of the Tramway’s acceptance test, we looked like muscle men after lifting hundreds of fifty-pound sandbags repetitively in and out of the tram cars to verify the cable tensions and required braking parameters.”

Eskimo Lift destructive testing, 1990

“Industry people learned a lot about acceptance tests from the 1990 Eskimo Lift destructive testing at Winterpark. It wasn’t known prior to this testing, what could happen to a chairlift when it goes through different mechanical failures. A program of destructive testing was planned above and beyond normal operating forces, speeds, and control limits to find the breaking points or adverse reactions.

The results from these experiments were a real eye-opener. The construction of the Tramway was a similar experience of discovery as we were building, rigging, pouring the first sockets, and shortening cables. We learned everything right there on site. Some of these functions we performed only happen once every few years. The Tram is a bi-cable system that works like two buckets in a well. While a tram cabin is moving down, it is pulling the other tram cabin up. Because trams are unique, the ropeway employees are a family that connect with other tramways in the U.S., especially for big jobs and technical incidents.”

“I’ve gone to help out at Stone Mountain Tramway in Georgia, the Palm Springs Tramway in California, and Jackson Hole Aerial Tram, Wyoming. If there is rigging to do, the experienced maintenance guys, engineers, those with ropeway equipment knowledge, like Jan Leonard, Howard Anderson, Jim Ellis, and Maynard Russell have chipped in to help. Sam Geise was always the been the go-to guy with answers in his back pocket involving wire rope and cable technology. I have been one of the luckiest guys in this industry because I was able to learn from and work with the best.”

Lift Mechanic’s challenges vs benefits

“One year we had an ice storm where two of the cables rubbed together and caused some damage. Following the “Standards” directions to the letter, we couldn’t repair or splice a strand in a rope if there were more than six broken wires in a one lay length (as opposed to every lay length from deterioration or wire fatigue), therefore we had to replace the ENTIRE haul rope in order to be in code ..all 15,000 feet of 1-1/4” cable.

As a mechanic, a benefit on the other hand, is that you must do the daily inspections and, if you plan this out correctly, you’re the first person at the top to ski down through the powder. Goodness knows we must double check everything and get a couple of runs before you put any paying passengers on the lift. It can be a tough job. But it is a great life. Most of us love the work by reason that it is both mentally and physically demanding and also rewarding.”

Dale Walters, P.E.

“Dale had a dry sense of humor, and a temper! Although he would do all of the required rope testing, Dale, like many of the old school splicers, through practical experience had a feel for rope and could tell from the history, ropeway and a visual inspection if a replacement or repair was needed. And he would banter about the engineers with book knowledge that were always asking him questions about wire rope strength, and many other things. After he had retired he was at one of the trade shows, I saw him across the room, and we made eye contact. I was glad to see him again. We shook hands and he said: “Oh George, you haven’t seen my new cards!”

The card he gave me said –Dale Walters P.E. I asked, “What? You went back to school and got a degree?” Dale scowled at my remark. Then I realized and said, “P.E. must stand for Practical Experience.”

Dale shook my hand hard and said, “You are the first to recognize that!” Dale was a great man. I miss him and so many others we have lost in our industry. I am thankful for the knowledge and memories that so many in our ropeway industry have shared so freely for so many years.”