There were 26 fatalities due to gondolas being hit by military jets in two separate incidents. 
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It only goes to 2009.
I think the words “obnoxiously cocky pilots” fell out from somewhere in that sentence.
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I might have thought this was another one of those things that looks practical in TV or movies but is difficult or impossible when people try it in a real situation.
Recently on Imgur, with the caption "Safety Standards, 1960s":
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Used your jackets to pile snow under the dangling child. A decent mound of snow would have lowered the risk of injury.
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Three ideas:
- Grab a bunch of people together to form a safety net with coats
- Look around for something that could be used to catch the kid (banner, blanket, netting, etc.)
- Try to find some rope that could be tossed up/over the lift chair that the kid could use to climb/slide down
It’s a general state of apathy that people have for each other. “Don’t want to get involved, it’s not my business, it’s not my concern, someone else will take care of it, I can’t be bothered, etc.”
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Assuming people aren’t skiing directly under the chairlifts and compacting the snowbase a 20 foot drop into soft snow is very survivable, especially for a child. The safety netting may not have been necessary except as a psychological tool to convince the parent to let go. Still I commend the teens for improvising a solution on the spot, that was some quick thinking on their part.
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“I don’t want to get in the way of people who are actually helping.”
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How about “wow, I gotta film this.”
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I’ve been skiing a couple of times and fucking HATE those chair lifts. They move to fast for new skiers, IMO. And with my shit leg it was usually painful to ride and get off.
Kudos to the kids who though of something. Thank god that it wasn’t another much higher than it was.
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Noooooooope.
My palms are sweaty just looking at the pic.
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That’s hardly fair. The video taker’s vantage point makes it pretty clear that they’re also on the lift. Getting a clear and accurate record of the incident is easily the most helpful thing that person could have done.
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You missed the part of the video where the 8-year-old declares, “Do it again, do it again!”
And the ski resort finds another attraction…
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Ah, yes. The “mom arm” safety restraint.
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Even just standing under the kid with a handful of adults is going to make a big difference as it will both shorten the fall by 5-7 feet and add a lot of braking distance as the kid collapses through the arms and bends the legs of the people helping out. Might not be as good of an idea with a 200 pound adult, but with an 80ish pound kid, it’s unlikely even to break anyone’s bones.
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I used to ski all the time as a kid through about college – went on some scary ass chairlifts back then – I went again after about 20 years and those things freaked me out!
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At Whitefish Montana in the 1970s there was a frayed piece of rope on most chairs. Perhaps in the 1960s there was some kind of latch attached to them.
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Canadians: gettin’ 'er done, eh?
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Pretty sure there is some very fine print on the back of every lift pass that indemnifies the resort against being sued for “your inability to stay seated in a chair, however you’re welcome to go to extravagant lengths to prove this in a court of law. Feel free to try, our legal team enjoys breaks from gnawing on the bones of past litigators.”
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the mat they use looks to be one of the padding mats they strap around the base of each lift pole/tower. good thinking, kids! i was thinking that as scary as it was for the kid, it had to also be scary for the dad to let his kid go.
as far as the safety thing goes, lifts have those bars, and every place i’ve ever been says that if you have kids on the chair, you need to put the bar down, but it’s largely up to the people on the chair. also, those chairs can be slippery, so i can see how a small kid could accidentally sit on a wet seat and start to slide before the bar gets fully down. but yeah, i bet there’s going to be new rules in place there about lift operators playing music loudly…
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