Unless you like an obnoxious amount of hiking (or own a helicopter), skiing is impossible without ski lift. And while these simple yet impressive pieces of engineering seem like a natural part of the mountainside when you visit your favorite slope, building one requires an impressive amount of coordination to lug 8,000-pound columns up to higher altitudes. Here's how they do it.
This video comes to us from the distant digital past (actually just 2011), but it's a remarkable look into the process behind building a ski lift on Vail Mountain in Colorado. Using helicopters to lug up the huge columns and other equipment, the workers on the ground use what they call "Mark 1 Eyeballs," meaning they don't use radio or other communication equipment—just hand signals and their own two eyes.
The next time you strap on some skis, be sure to take in the nature and the engineering
Source: Reddit
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
