Twenty-five years later, Jigback was retired with a record of dogged reliability for carrying skiers to some of Squaw's most challenging terrain in even the worst of weather conditions.

The Route
The Jigback terminated at the top of the Headwall 8,900 feet above a maze of rugged ridges, deep cornices, and steep contours. Sheets of snow billowed sideways from the rocky outcroppings, signaling extreme weather patterns above the treeless, windswept bowl. Though the spectacular Headwall terrain tantalized customers and challenged avalanche control crews--who had rebuilt the Squaw #1 chairlift at its base three times in as many years--Jigback also presented enormous difficulties at its inception.

Vertical terrain and extreme weather patterns were only part of the challenge. In 1950 the Korean War was raging and no new steel could be used for recreational purposes. Palisades Tahoe owner Alex Cushing was not about to accept "no" for an answer to his needs.

"We needed a lift to the top of Headwall," recalled the late Cushing tongue firmly in cheek. "We couldn't build a 'recreational' lift, but we could build one for avalanche control."

Cushing selected the late Bob Heron of Denver-based Heron Engineering Company to design and build a lift up the Headwall. They had received government permission for a limited-capacity, low-budget installation with a projected operating life of five years. By then, it was hoped, the war would be over and a higher capacity steel lift could take its place.

"I surveyed the profile for the Squaw Peak Tram in the fall of 1950," recalled Heron. "I designed it that winter and from May to September, 1951, we constructed it up the Headwall face."


Engineering
Both terrain and material difficulties faced the engineering team.

"There was a severe avalanche problem, so we couldn't place towers in the slide path," Heron explained. "As a result, we designed a single, 1,000-foot long cable span from the bottom terminal to one break-over tower. Since we couldn't get steel, we used huge wooden timbers from Auburn, California to construct the tower and terminals."

The motor-room components and wire rope were recycled from mining trams, as were the line sheaves that had been purchased at the bargain basement price of $27 for three sheaves. The rest was a collection of used parts from Palisades Tahoe, Heron Engineering, and E.G. Constam.

The final design was a double-reversible, bi-cable, grouped carrier lift, carrying 12 passengers at a time up to the top of the Headwall. The unique chair configuration, easy to load and unload, also accommodated the high winds blowing off the face of the mountain in which a conventional chairlift would have to be run very slowly. The grouped chair arrangement allowed the lift to run quickly up to the break-over tower, where it entered an extreme wind zone unshielded by the mountain. There the lift had to slow down significantly to avoid derailing.

The "Clothesline"
The strange looking setup inspired the nickname the "Clothesline Lift," because the chairs hung sideways off the cable like so much laundry. Cushing said he couldn't recall an official name for the lift, explaining, "We kept it sort of quiet because it was illegal to use beyond avalanche work." He added, however, that most knew the lift as the "Jigback," a common name for to and fro reversible tramways.

There was no electrical power up the mountain, so a 60-horsepower Continental gasoline engine was used to run the Jigback, with no provisions for standby power. It was controlled by a Mack T transmission clutch with forward and reverse gears. When the chairs pulled into the terminal, the lift came to a complete stop to load and unload.

Construction
Designing the Jigback may have been difficult, but Squaw's first Mountain Manager, the late John Mortizia, recalled equally thorny construction problems.

"We had no machinery, no helicopters, no cranes, not even a road going up to the top of Headwall," said Mortizia. "Instead, we had an army surplus jeep and an old ambulance converted to a flatbed. We'd drive materials up to the base on the only road and walk everything up on a footpath."

There wasn't even a cement mixer for the foundation work. All of the concrete was hand mixed in a hopper and carried up in buckets.

Although Mortizia had only ten workers on the project, construction stayed right on schedule.

"We built that lift the way the Egyptians built their Pyramids," he declared.

Workers used a ginpole and a block and tackle to hoist up the wooden timbers that formed the bottom drive terminal, top tension terminal; and the break-over tower. Incredibly, the Jigback was constructed completely by hand and it was completed in five months. It was operational in time for a record Sierra snowfall in 1952.

"It sure was an odd looking lift," recalled Mortizia. "But the safety factor was great. The haul rope was five-eighths of an inch thick, while the track cable was an inch and three-eighths. That stuff could hold up a bridge. We made steel flanges to prevent the cable from falling inside the steel sheaves. The dam thing never really did have any major problem, but, with all the steel components, it made a hell of a racket."

Surprises
According to Mortizia, the lift's worst potential problem was the engine stalling or running out of gas. He recalled an episode during its first winter of use when Emile Allais, Squaw's ski school director, invited some French National Team racers training at Squaw to go up the Jigback.

"I was riding lead chair with Emile," remembered Mortizia. "We were halfway up, through the trees, when the lift stalled and started rolling back, so we all bailed out. Luckily, there was so much snow underneath no one was hurt. Sure shook up those French boys a bit."

Dick Reuter, Retired Mountain Manager at Kirkwood, was a patrol and lift maintenance supervisor for Palisades Tahoe who often worked on the Jigback. Situated as it was in wind-exposed, icing conditions, Reuter remembers having to climb up and remove ice from the steel sheaves with a hammer on a regular basis. The steep terrain caused severe snow creep at the break-over tower, requiring annual summer realignment.

Once, removing the sheaves for summer maintenance, Reuter experienced firsthand the trademark soundness of Heron parts.

"Heron's equipment always had the reputation of being solid," he said, "Once, I simply dropped a top terminal sheave a short distance onto the wooden unload ramp and the damn thing went right through the deck!"

Rugged
Reuter said that, when operated properly, the Jigback was built to outperform normal lifts in high winds, particularly the extremes found at Palisades Tahoe.

"You'd have to shake a whole lot of barrels to find a lift like that ever again," he said. "Even though there was a lot of tension in the thing, the worst danger was of it derailing. You had to run it slow during snowstorms and high wind, especially near the break-over tower.

"You had to have experienced operators who knew when to slow it down, because back then we had no radios to talk to each other," he said.

In fact, lift maintenance had painted the cable red at a certain point to signal the imminent arrival of chairs at the break-over tower, so the operator would know when to slow the lift down on windy days.

Even with these precautions, inexperienced operators could make dangerous mistakes. Reuter recalled an accident during a blinding snowstorm in 1962, when three patrolmen--Dick Reuter, Norm Wilson and Peter Beckett--went up the Jigback to do avalanche control work. The operator at the bottom station didn't slow the lift down and the patrolmen approached the tower at full speed in high winds.

"The first three chairs with Norm and myself in them made it through okay," Reuter recalled. "But the wind knocked the carriage rollers on the next three chairs off the track cable. Peter's chair swing backwards and dumped him out onto hard-packed, windblown crud."

Reuter and Wilson hiked down to help Beckett, who had dislocated his shoulder, climb back to the top. They replaced the chairs and rollers that had derailed from the track cable, which, as luck would have it, were still connected to the haul rope. Beckett and Wilson rode back down, while Reuter remained on the phone with the bottom operator to make sure he ran the lift slowly until the patrolmen reached the base terminal.

Now on his own, Reuter skied a short distance from the top terminal to begin the control work.

Avalanche
"It was a hellava storm," he described. "I couldn't see my hand in front of my face and had no idea what kind of a mess I was getting into."

He threw a double shot (dynamite) down the Headwall, skied a few more yards and fell off a nine-foot, high fracture line. After picking himself up and climbing out, he stood and surveyed the results of the Class V avalanche that he had just caused.

"That morning the whole mountainside went down over a mile all the way to Mambo Meadows on the first throw," Reuter said. As the Headwall slid, it severely damaged the lift shack at the top of Squaw #1, swept away the toboggan stationed there and deposited it 100 feet lower, right on the bottom ramp of the Jigback next to the operator house.

"Some sort of weird fate left that toboggan right where Norm needed it to haul Peter down," Reuter laughed. "After you've worked at Palisades Tahoe, not much is going to surprise you."

Long Life
Though only designed for a temporary use of five years, the Jigback proved so reliable it was in operation for the public until 1960 and for snow safety until 1969. It was the only lift on the mountain that could operate in the kinds of winds for which Palisades Tahoe remains famous. A higher-capacity double chairlift was installed nearby in 1966 and from then on the Jigback was only used by the ski patrol on snow safety days. Finally, declared an eyesore by Ski Corp, it was removed in 1976.

Take Down
"Taking down the Jigback was no easy task," recalled Bro Shontz, head of upper lift maintenance during the 1970s. "We came in, bulldozed and burned the top terminal and platform."

The mountain manager, Dennis Hurt, took on the daunting task of cutting the high-tension cables with a torch.

"Nobody really wanted the job," explained Shontz. "After all, with only one tower near the top, the cable was really tight. Dennis got out there on his knees shaking and cut through it. You should have seen him jump when the thing came down."

The bottom terminal, built into the mountain with over 20 supports, posed another problem.

"We tied boulder busters--shaped heavy charges we called Pregnant Frisbees--on every support with primer cords, directing the explosive force to the inside," Shontz said. "The thing just laid down with one big boom.

"It was kind of sad. I had first ridden the lift when I was eight years old, scared to death going over that steep terrain sitting sideways."

Unique as it was in its conception and construction, however, the Jigback's real magic lay in the opportunities it opened up to skiers. Leroy Hill, Squaw's former Ski School Director, who was a patrolman in the late sixties and was one of the last people to ride the Jigback, remembered a special feeling that he says is elusive in today's ski industry.

"In this day and age, it's hard to believe the limited loading of that chair," Hill said. "You have to remember, the lift only carried 12 people maximum at one time. It took quite a while for the next group to come up. That gave us the whole Headwall: the Slot, the Face, the Nose, the Sun Bowl, the North Bowl-- everything for the pleasure of 12 people.

"It was all yours, with no rush to pick and choose. You felt on top of the world, as if you owned the place."

Palisades Tahoe's Jigback Lift Statistics
Slope Length: 1,150 feet

Vertical Rise: 526 feet

Capacity: 300 pph

Lift Speed: 800fpm

Carriers: 12 double chairs, side load (6 grouped chairs spaced four feet apart

Towers: One wooden intermediate tower, 110 feet from top terminal

Main Span Length: 1,010 feet

Main Span Grade: 29 degrees (56%)

Installed HP: 60 HP Continental gas engine with Mack manual transmission

Years of operation: 1951-1969 (for public)