Windham - Westside Six

The History:
From Windham's opening until 1993, the primary summit lift was the A-Lift, a 1963 Carlevaro & Savio double chair. To add extra summit capacity, the F-Lift (Whistler Triple) , a Von Roll triple chairlift was installed to the skier's left of the A-Lift. Then in an effort to modernize Windham, the Whirlwind Express Quad was installed in 1993 as the mountain's first detachable lift and replaced the A-Lift. For many years, the Whirlwind Express operated alongside the Whistler Triple, but in the 2010s this lift system was starting to become an issue. The Whirlwind Express was often down because of mechanical issues and had a reduced operating speed of ~800 ft/min. Its alternative was even worse, with an extremely long ride time and little capacity. To mend this, Windham made a very smart move and installed this lift, the Westside Six in 2018 along the line of the Whistler Triple. The Westside Six operated for one season (2018-19) alongside the Whirlwind Express, but Whirlwind never ran and was determined to be redundant. Whirlwind would be relocated to replace the Wonderama Triple the following year and now the Westside Six stands alone as the primary summit lift. It consistently runs near its design speed and is considered by almost everyone to be an ideal replacement for the Whirlwind and Whistler.

The Lift:
The Westside Six is a pretty standard Doppelmayr UNI-G six pack lift. It was installed in 2018 and uses a UNI-G bottom drive terminal and a UNI-G top tensioned return. It has EJ six-place carriers with DT grips, previous generation Doppelmayr sheaves (not D-Line), and still uses an older iteration of Doppelmayr's control system. Its design speed is 1,000 ft/min but it almost always runs at about 900 ft/min. Capacity is rated at 3,000 p/h.