Marble Mountain maintenance crews are having renewed problems with the chairlifts and closed the hill through Thursday, ahead of one of the busiest weekends of the year.
Marble Mountain general manager Richard Wells said Saturday water entered the computer system that operates the Lightning Express chairlift, the only one of three elevators that takes passengers to the top of the ski hill.
The operation was restricted at the weekend for safety reasons, while the ski jump was completely closed for maintenance work from Monday.
“We recently had some minor electrical issues with the Lightning Express chairlift, which resulted in a slight delay in our operations this weekend,” Wells said Monday. “It seemed like when we got a loaded weight on the full lime, those kinds of problems, the electrical faults, came back.”
In the announcement of the closure posted on Facebook, officials said Marble Mountain was facing a shortage of maintenance personnel to make progress on repairing the primary elevators while maintaining day-to-day operations.
Wells says that has been fixed and crews are working as hard as they can to quickly reopen the mound.
“We have different crews working at different locations. We’ve hired more maintenance staff than ever before,” Wells said.
“We inherited an outdated infrastructure, but we’re a team of go-getters and we don’t take no.”
There are also plans to reopen the Black Mariah lift, which has not been fully operational for over three years due to a series of setbacks, in the coming weeks.
“Since the chair has been shut down for about three years, we’re seeing more and more security issues that need to be addressed,” he said. “The maintenance schedules we are developing now are exactly what should have been developed many years ago.”
The ski jump will reopen to visitors Thursday ahead of Jibfest Weekender, a three-day sporting and entertainment event, and this weekend’s Marble Cup, which will draw athletes from across Atlantic Canada to the ski jump.
“We are looking forward to some smiling faces. The mountain is in great shape, we are in great shape. This is going to be one of our busiest weekends of the year,” Wells said.
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