I don't get to participate in the sport very much because of where I live and also how expensive it is but I do enjoy snow skiing. One thing that always goes through my mind when I am on the lifts is how terrible it would be if the lift were to fail and i were to crash to the ground below. When I look up at the welds on the lift chairs I like to believe that they are more than strong enough to handle any possible amount of weight and there are probably excessive safety regulations that are in place to ensure that this never happens.
Well it did happen, just a few days ago.
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Most of the time the chairs are not high enough off the ground that a fall would kill you, but I'm certain it wouldn't be a nice experience if it were to fall. When high winds hit the east coast of the USA this past week an unfortunate 17 year old was in a lift chair that crashed, thankfully only 10 feet or so to the ground below. She suffered only minor injuries but this situations raised questions about if various tourism related things, which have suffered heavy losses over the past 2 years because of Covid, are skirting various measures that would in the past resulted in the resorts being temporarily closed.
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The Sunday River Ski Resort claims they followed all protocols and were in the process of shutting down the lifts when the winds picked up to unsafe levels. I'll go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt because there is proof that the lifts were operating at half speed and they were unloading all passengers and claim they were in the process of shutting down the lifts when the event happened.
The news report says that the 17 year old girl sustained minor injuries and was immediately released without hospitalization and this is good news so the story has a happy ending. It just makes me think about my fears every time I am on one of those things. I always wonder a little bit about how there is just that one tiny bar separating you from a potential fall to your death as well.
This isn't dumb news I know but a scary situation that rarely happens. I'll still go skiing despite this as soon as I can, but I'd be lying if I said this isn't a fear of mine every time I look up at the single piece of metal connecting the chair or gondola to the cabling above.
