Loading the gondola bull wheel in Austria.
The Lynden team recently completed a mountain-top to mountain-top move for the Eaglecrest Ski Resort and the City and Borough of Juneau, AK. An entire gondola ski system was dismantled and relocated from the Galsterberg Ski Area in Austria to Juneau where it will be reinstalled for use as a summer and winter attraction.
According to International Operations Manager Brandie Holmes at Lynden Logistics, the three-month move was complicated. "We provided specialized equipment in a tight timeframe on site in Austria to remove the gondola, then trucked the pieces to Rotterdam for ocean export to Norfolk, VA," she explains.
From Virginia, the pieces traveled by rail to Seattle for loading onto an Alaska Marine Lines barge bound for Juneau, with final delivery from the dock to Eaglecrest Ski Resort.
"Our goal was to provide a no-transload (no transferring of goods) move of the pods, pulleys, towers, wheels and other equipment to minimize handling and potential damage," Brandie says. "We moved 21 40-foot containers and one step-deck platform loaded with the bull wheel using truck, steamship, rail and barge."
For Eaglecrest Ski Area's General Manager Dave Scanlan, acquiring the gondola is all about having a better summer, so Juneau residents can have an even better winter. "This creates an opportunity for year-round operations and sustainability which will benefit the community and people of Juneau. With such a long history of serving Alaska's needs, we were honored to be able to work with Lynden on this complex project," he says. "We learned a lot about international logistics through the course of this move and are already looking forward to tackling the next phases of our project together."
A gondola car is placed into a container for shipping.
Topics from this blog: Lynden Alaska Lynden Logistics International AML Featured