Lapping Hyland is incredibly fun. A must visit if you do park. I recommend going during a weekday morning though. Grom rush hour is INSANE! Probably near or at the capacity that Matthew estimated. Last time I went i hit the jump line 50 times over three hours with a few water breaks and a few chair runs to rest.

Another fun stat. Time to get to the top of the hill: Big Park Rope: 26 secs Small Park Rope: 32 secs South Quad: 3min 2 secs Middle Quad: 2min 1sec North Quad: 2min 5 secs

I love watching the live webcam at Hyland Hills, especially when it’s jamming- very entertaining and inspiring to see kids having fun outdoors without social media, etc. - Midwest ski culture is the best by far!

This of us who ski 300vert know ropes are the ultimate ride to the top. Great video!

When I was in college I did a study of Highlands terrain park. It was for a tourism in outdoor recreation class. I would sit on the hill and at random intervals tally how many times each feature was hit, and do a guestimation on how many people were in the terrain park. I did this over a few weeks and was really fun because when I wasn’t doing research I was boarding. Man I miss college.

I live out east and mainly ski at Stowe VT. I have been hammering Vail to put in a rope in the park area, it makes so much sense. Thanks for this video.

@danmcd5393

6 ай бұрын

I believe you overestimated capacity. You have not spaced the riders on the tow safely. So maximum uplift could be half your estimate

Most intresting video you have ever done to date (yep, I'm a lift fanatic!)

for anyone curious, the highest capacity chairlift in the Midwest is Boyne's six pack (surprisingly not the 8 pack) which moves 3600. highest in North America is 4250. so these ropes are still getting 2-3x that at 20x less to build and run

You should check out Mt Crescent IA. They recently got a fleet of brand new snow guns and about a foot of powder from the recent storms. They have a 1450ft double with a 230ft vertical and a 1050ft quad with a 160ft vertical. I learned to ski there and the snow, service, and atmosphere has always been great.

This needs to be sent to every ski resort without a rope. ESPECIALLY in the midwest.

Another interesting question is what percent of daily visitors could actually manage those ropes compared to a lift. Some of my most favorite fails are rope fails and thats probably going half this speed :D But for us who can use them, they are amazing for these sorts of runs

I always wonder why parks on big mountains, for example, Vail, don't have a rope tow.

Video really doesn't do these 2 ropes justice - they go SOOOOOOOOOO freaking fast it's almost comical. One of my guilty pleasures is putting the Hyland live stream on in the background waiting for havoc to occur. 😅

@eazydp

6 ай бұрын

Haha I love the live stream. Amazing sends and amazing rope insanity.

Very cool video. I'm not sure all the calculations are needed to estimate max capacity. It really just takes looking at how many skiers closely spaced come off every minute. The speed of the rope affects that, but measuring skiers takes it into account. The length doesn't matter much either. It's still almost the same if the run was half as long or twice as long.

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

You are correct, just need spacing and speed but we wanted to double check our math and it just another cool stat to add onto the list :)

Matt's lucky there's no bar or beer there. No WAY that math would have come out right!

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

Maths!

I'm all about the T-bar baby! BTW when are you going to make *the best* boho vid ever?

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

Ya, I'm a huge fan of surface lifts in general. Man, Boho opened yesterday.. as they projected! watching the forecast closely :)

This is all fascinating! With that said, I’d be curious to know, on a somewhat busy day in the Midwest, what percent of the uphill capacity on a rope tow is being used (50%? 95%?) and what percent on a high speed quad? For quads, I would assume that is groups of 2 or 3 riding. Do rope tows experience near constant use?

@eazydp

6 ай бұрын

During the peak hours the tow rope is near capacity, it's not for the faint of heart. I'd say it's realistically at 80-100% of the capacity he estimated. I think it only get this crazy near the twin cities though, and no high speed quads to compare to. It's wayyy more efficient as a rider, you get probably 4-5x the laps to one chair ride.

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

Isn't it fascinating! So, at peak times, this rope sees a lot of traffic. On busy nights, it's common to have knuckle-to-knuckle periods on that rope. We are working on filming a "practical" test to follow up this video to demonstrate how this uphill compares to their chairlifts on a typical afternoon of operations... stay tuned!

Anybody have glove recommendations for rope tow? I'm new to skiing and rode a single rope tow and it shredded my "skiing" gloves. The palm of my gloves didn't have extra padding.

@BradyLikesBikes

6 ай бұрын

I know back in the day Highland sold leather glove protectors for your ski gloves. Basically a leather palm and 1/2 finger “glove” that went over your normal gloves. Thanks worked great!

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

Anything full-leather is excellent. Cheap leather work gloves are best, as you'll burn through them no matter what. Kinco & Wells Lamont are great brands to look up. Depending on how much insulation you want will determine your choice. Otherwise, you can get glove protectors for your more expensive gloves - you can find them at local ski shops across the Midwest. Personally, I use these: a.co/d/4CKXNdb

@eazydp

6 ай бұрын

Pair of choppers

Here's the thing to think about though is the operating cost of each. The tow rope costs just as much fuel (hypothetically) to get people to the top as the chairlift does, and the chairlift is unarguably more comfortable. And you can't make turns (efficiently) using a tow rope system so if you wanted to replace lifts with these on bigger mountains, say like Keystone or Mammoth or Stratton or Big 3, you couldn't do it without adding on to the operating costs for every rope tow you put on the mountain. 6 rope tows to get you to the top of Steamboat would cost 3-4x the amount of gasoline, alone, as a single chair would.

@eazydp

6 ай бұрын

Going rope to rope is awful. I think the idea would be you add ropes to a few park areas or other lappable features. Stuff which people might hike. It's our only option in the midwest with the density/lack of terrain, so it probably doesn't even cross the mind of the big mountain resorts. You get such a massive frequency on features, or at a place like Buck Hill, lapping their ski track, that you can hit this special grove and really, really get locked in a better at something.

Is Midwest Monday coming back?

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

Not likely - we don't have the time/capacity anymore. Unless you know someone that wants to film/edit for us!

PS: While a rope tow has more capacity, I'm absolutely sure that loading and unloading 2.3 skiers per second is NOT fesible - possibly 1 skier every 1.5seconds - so that would be 2,200 people per hour. I'm not saying that I don't like rope tows, its just that there is a big difference between potential uplift capacity and a realistic uplift capacity.

@eazydp

6 ай бұрын

You've never seen Hyland Hills during grom rush hour.

@_tom_p

6 ай бұрын

​@@eazydpexactly! It's absolutely nuts to watch the Hyland chaos on weekends.

@jonathancook4022

6 ай бұрын

@@eazydp okay, guess I’m eating my words on this one

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

This rope is undoubtedly capable of this - consistently, probs not- but there is no doubt this hits that number at peak nights. At times, it could be argued that they could be spaced less than 7 feet... but I guess the only way to find out is to do a practical test (already in the works ) :) Side note: What makes this uphill realistic is that ropes can load 50+ people simultaneously since they don't need to be all loaded at the exact location, unlike a chairlift. It's very common for 5 skiers/riders to all space out and grab the rope simultaneously or for them to fill gaps in the rope line.

Probably can board every 5 seconds. So it matches a triple boarding every 15 seconds.

I am more of a detachable quad kind of guy.

@MidwestSkiers

6 ай бұрын

These ropes are faster than the vast majority of detaches (most run under 11.36mph/1000fpm.) Once you factor loading times in ropes come in way ahead. Ropes also have WAY more uphill capacity. Detaches and fixed grips have roughly the same uphill capacity. Ropes win in every category; it's just a question of whether skiers/riders are fit/skilled enough to use them. kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZKCjqMienbaoYKg.html

@maness2112

6 ай бұрын

Tow rope demographics are park rats and beginners. To much mayhem.