You know you’re an engineer when: You start to scare yourself …

You know you’re an engineer when: You start to scare yourself …

I’m standing in a small metal cabin. I’m at Val Thorens, in the French Alps, as are the couple of dozen strangers who stand and sit around me. We all wear cold-weather clothing: hats of various shapes, scarves or neck-warmers, boots, gloves, waterproof trousers and windproof jackets. Some of us wear sunglasses. I’m wearing a set of yellow-tinted goggles and a rather conspicuous, tight-fitting black jacket with a hood and ‘On The Piste Resort Staff’ stitched into the fabric – clear evidence of my job here. I’m also clutching a brand new set of freestyle skis and ski poles from a hire shop, coloured with a trendy black and red pattern, while my neighbours hold snowboards and skis of other assorted designs. Our breath condenses in the cold air and a draught whips about us from a gap somewhere in the cabin.

This is the first ‘funitel’ ever built and it’s an awe-inspiring construction. Looking out of the windows of the gondola, I see nothing; the cloud at this altitude concealing everything around us from sight. It’s a bizarre feeling to contemplate. I am acutely aware of my immediate surroundings and every little sound, from the shuffle of a snowboarder’s feet on the coarse floor of the cabin to the rustle of clothes as the German lady sitting on the bench beside me tries to remove a glove. Somewhere above me the roof of the cabin is connected to thick steel cables that I can see arcing away in front of the gondola, eventually evaporating into the nothingness ahead. The cables shudder visibly as the gondola is moved by the strong winds.

Slowly, little by little, a form emerges from the white cloud – it starts as a hazy apparition and becomes steadily sharper before finally materialising to form a great steel colossus that edges towards the cabin. I cannot see the bottom of this immense structure, the only way to gain any sense of scale is to identify the tiny ladder that spans its visible height. On either side of the tower, great supports extend outwards, hung with enormous icicles and draped with snow that has collected on every horizontal surface. Into the nearest of these arms is set a series of wheels and pulleys that our cables are slowly drawing us towards.

The grips on top of the gondola are dragged across the wheels with a loud grumbling roar as the cabin shakes beneath our feet. As I turn to watch the tower sink into the mist below us, I start to think about the incredible feat of engineering this lift is.

Disregarding the logistical achievement of moving construction equipment and materials this far up a mountain, the structure itself is a marvel. The Péclet lift spans over 3000 metres of mountain, raising each gondola more than 700 metres above the base terminal, according to my piste map. The weight it hauls must be incredible – each of the two cabins must weigh a huge amount, including the weights of the twenty-or-so people inside the ascending cabin, and the cabling alone must weigh an incredible amount!

I start to think of the strain in the pulley axles… and the effect that the harsh conditions must have on the metalwork of the tower and all the fittings – all that moisture clinging to the superstructure must massively increase the risk of crevice corrosion. I wonder about the stresses that are constantly applied to the structure of the towers, the gondola and the other machinery of the lift, and I wonder what would happen if one of these many insubstantial pieces of metal were to fail – below us there’s a drop of hundreds, if not thousands of feet! I mean, each component of this immense machine must be thoroughly over-engineered to cope with all possible operating conditions, but……

The final terminal comes just in time.