6-MGD Jaillet (Megève) 🇫🇷 | Poma 1978 | AMBIENT ROPEWAYS

Name: Télécabine du Jaillet Place: Megève (Rhône-Alpes, France 🇫🇷) Manufacturer: Poma Type: 6-Person Detachable Gondola Year of Construction: 1978 Length: 1550m Vertical Rise: 452m Music: scntfc - Two Towers, Stonewall, the Bridge    • Two Towers, Stonewall, the Bridge   scntfc - The Fall Parts I and II    • The Fall Parts I and II   from the video game "Old Man's Journey" by Broken Rules. store.steampowered.com/app/581270/Old_Mans_Journey/ Credits for the music used go to their rightful owners. Megève, often referred to as the St Moritz of France, is perhaps one of the most noble mountain resorts in the country. As part of the Evasion Mont Blanc ski area, it is connected to St Gervais and St Nicolas through an extensive network of slopes and ski lifts. The Jaillet gondola however is not directly part of this network. Heading towards the west, it acts as the access ropeway from Megève to the smaller Les Portes du Mont Blanc area. As an industry, France was a bit late to the game when it comes to detachable gondolas. The predecessor of the current Jaillet gondola was the first in all of France to have cabins for four people when it opened in 1952. Constructed by Applevage, it used the Georges Reussner system, which was perhaps the weirdest system for detachable gondolas ever invented: Instead of a typical grip system, the ropeway had catch cars mounted to the haul rope in regular intervals, that would quite literally pick up and release the gondola at each terminal. The system was plagued with issues and unreliability, which is why none of the Reussner-system gondolas lasted for long. Fortunately, despite the early setbacks, France would go on to perhaps have the largest impact on the development of the detachable gondola in the long-run: In the 1960’s and 70’s, Poma would find great national success when they brought the first automated and standardised detachable gondola system onto the market. The iconic egg-shaped cabins celebrated their debut in Villars de Lans, back then only fitting four people, with the variant for six people being introduced the following decade. Poma gondola’s would pop up everywhere and become an icon of the French skiing industry. Latter system would be constructed in Megève in 1978 to replace the original Reussner-system ropeway. Since then, she has undergone two renovations: Since 2002, each terminal features friction wheels to move the cabins, and in 2016, two tower heads in the upper half of the line were replaced. However, what remains is a quintessentially French gondola that still largely looks the same as it did on opening, though a lot of that weight resides on the conservation of the original cabins. The Jaillet gondola specifically is one of the very last to still feature the iconic “eggs”. The 6-person version of those is remarkable for their back-to-back seating arrangement as well as the door mechanism, where instead of having a regular door, the wall at each end of the cabin slides to the side. Overall, the ropeway is in great condition, making it a bit difficult to process that she’s nearly half a decade old. Perhaps the main thing that reminds one of her age is the very noticeable rumble felt when everpassing a support, though once again, that rattle is more inconic than disruptive. Given the recent renovations and the fact that the Portes du Mont Blanc area attracts fewer guests than what’s on the other side of the valley, the Jaillet gondola is likely to operate for many more years to come. While standardisation and automation would become the main driving points as the development of ropeways continued, Poma would be bought out shortly after the turn of the millenium, building an alliance with Leitner, the leading ropeway manufacturer in Italy. During this era, the Ravine chairlift, which has also been featured in this video, was built. #ropeway #seilbahn #téléphérique Date of Recording: 30.08.2025