After an unknown vandal (or group of vandals) severed the Sea to Sky Gondola’s main cable last August, crews knew that repairing the damage would be no easy feat.

To start, the long and flexible pieces of metal that’s required for the gondola to ferry people up the Stawamus Chief weighs more than 120 tons. Simply moving something that size requires a lot of detailed planning.

Then you have to splice different pieces of cables together to create one continuous loop. To do that, the Sea to Sky Gondola brought Hannes Koller, an expert in such tasks, over from Switzerland. He’s been leading a team of more than a dozen workers at the gondola’s site just outside of Squamish.

"I connect the rope with just the friction—there's nothing welded, absolutely nothing,” Koller told CBC News. “It's only really the friction.”

An update on repairs published on the Sea to Sky Gondola’s company website yesterday (October 28) explains that the splice that joins each pair of cables together is 70 metres long. Photographs show crews weaving the separate pieces together.

It’s stated there that the repaired cable will consist of a section of the original cable spliced together with a new piece of cable (weighing 54 tons by itself) that was delivered from Switzerland.

The $22-million gondola opened in 2014, carrying tourists and local outdoor enthusiasts 886 metres above sea level on a 10-minute ride through Stawamus Chief Provincial Park.

The Squamish RCMP's investigation of the act of vandalism remains ongoing. The company estimates the value of the damage at more than $5 million.

Work on the cable was completed Monday (October 28).

Now the Sea to Sky Gondola is waiting for the delivery of 30 gondola cabins that were also ordered from Europe.

They’re expected to arrive soon and the gondola is on schedule to reopen for the spring of 2020.