UKC

youtube.com/watch?v=erq5OvP4c0A&

 Brilliant! Well done those teenagers

In reply to Trangia:

Even more brilliant that they got the lad to drop his skis as they could have caused a bad injury to his rescuers. 

In reply to Rigid Raider:

It would be even better if they just got the lift operator to reverse the lift

In reply to rogersavery:

I'm not sure that's necessarily true. Who knows whether he could have held on for long enough, especially as a moving lift would jerk around more. Trying to run the lift in reverse would cause chaos elsewhere so it would be a long, slow, stop-start process.

I think it's likely be would have just fallen off at a different spot instead, with no chance for them to get prepared to help him and possibly a longer fall or a worse landing.

In reply to Trangia:

Apparently the lift operator's ghetto blaster was so loud that (s)he couldn't hear people shouting.

In reply to Rigid Raider:

In one clip he has skis on...when he falls...voilà...they're gone. He's obviously practised his 'taking your skis off while dangling' technique. Good skills!

In reply to Luke90:

He had only just left the loading point - I believe there is a procedure in place to allow the lift to reverse slowly just with gravity.

the only chaos would be the chairs behind him having to unload ie a small hand full of people.

I suspect he had to hang on longer for the rescue plan to be put in place  than if they just back the lift up

In reply to Kean:

Kicking the bindings loose isn't that difficult, particularly as kids' ones tend to be set quite loose.

An interesting question is how he managed to end up like that!

In reply to rogersavery:

There isn’t. At least not easily or in a way that would be useful in this situation. 

In reply to Trangia:

I have twice seen similar events so presume it is not that rare. In many resorts they now have an added  feature to stop kids slipping out. The problem is that they ( the features not the kids!) can smack the unaware adult male in the goolies!

In reply to earlsdonwhu:

I think if they don't put their feet / skis on the foot rest and can't sit still, they don't have the body mass to avoid sliding under the bar quite easily. Many lifts have age limits for unaccompanied, but never minimum heights. 

In reply to summo:

That lift doesn't seem to have a foot rest, not having skiied in the US but my brother-in-law does a lot and it seems they don't tend to use them even if available?

In reply to rogersavery:

Bloody hell! Do you go through life belittling other people's initiative and efforts?  What those youngsters did was quick thinking and amazing, and they succeeded.

Be careful with your criticism of other's efforts in a situations like this or you might fall out of your armchair because I bet it doesn't have a safety bar.

In reply to summo:

Plenty of the lifts I rode in the Portes du Soleil this January had minimum height requirements for unaccompanied children posted at the bottom station.  I was even drafted in by a ski instructor to "accompany" a small child on a couple of occasions.  As ever, on arriving at the top station, the wee ones' capabilities on skis put many of the adults to shame...

In reply to Martin W:

Curious. I've seen many ages, usually 11 or 12, not heights, which is clearly the critical factor. Yeah done the same for ski schools too. 

In reply to rogersavery:

Stop being such a grumpy know-it-all, the boys totally deserve the plaudits they're receiving.

Well yeah, that's the chaos I was referring to. Bearing in mind that he barely held on as it was, what makes you think he could hold on for longer while the lift started and stopped at least twice more? (Hard to tell how many chairs are beneath them but I can see at least two.) It's not even clear whether all ski lifts can run in reverse. 

I'm pretty sure the lift operators don't care what a few teenage boys are doing on the slope anyway. If they knew about the issue and thought the best option was to reverse the lift, they'd be doing that regardless. They wouldn't have changed their plan based on the boys' actions.

At worst, the boys' attempt to catch him with the makeshift net might have turned out to be an unnecessary insurance measure, if somebody else had solved the problem a different way. Given that nobody else had a fix for the problem, he did actually fall and they caught him without injury, their actions are completely and unquestionably justified.

In reply to Luke90:

I agree, they used their initiative, they acted quickly and decisively, as a team and it worked perfectly. There isn't anything negative to say.

I can imagine many adults in the same situation who would have ran around shrieking or been on their phone asking for help, but doing nothing else. 

In reply to RX-78:

I live in Colorado and was chatting to an australian on the lift the other day about this very issue. By and large, Americans do not put the bars down.  There are even lifts here that have no bars! I don't know if it's a macho thing or what, but I would estimate 80% of american skiers don't put the bar down. I probably put it down 50% of the time. 

In reply to Trangia:

Indeed well done. A small correction (you can find it in updated news stories) it was actually not their idea to grab the mesh, it was an adult and the teenagers joined in.

In reply to Graham:

That's crazy. Never mind a bar, on new lifts in Scandinavia an optional perspex cover and heated seats are common. 

In reply to Graham:

That just sounds stupid. Both you and the Americans I'm afraid! Unless the chair design is radically different why would you not put the bar down? 

In reply to rogersavery:

"a good plan now beats a perfect plan tomorrow". Gen Patton (IIRC)

My comments was not meant as a criticism of the rescuers, but as a criticism of the lift operator

“a good plan now beats a perfect plan tomorrow". Gen Patton (IIRC)

Agreed but the “perfect plan” should have already been drilled into the lift operator - I seriously doubt the kid in question was the first and only person to have come out of the seat.

With the speed of some lifts I am sure this has happened before and I could easily see this happening before the occupants of be lift have had a chance to put the bar down.

In reply to rogersavery:

The real solution, of course, is to design lifts and the way they are operated such that this absolutely cannot happen[1].  I do accept that other countries don't have the H&S approach of the UK, and sometimes this is liberating (e.g. riding on one while deliberately not putting the bar down) but realistically this needs some thought.

Safety measures that don't require a person to do something are always better than those which do.

[1] For example, if a weighted chair passes the point where the fall would be survivable by basically 100% of people and the bar is not down, the lift stops automatically.

In reply to DaveHK:

I only put the bar down if I need to rest my feet or it’s particularly windy. For an adult human, your body weight plus the cant of the chair is what  keeps you in place. The bar is not doing anything 99% of the time.

 A friend witnessed a bad fall a couple of years ago when a snowboarder leaned forward to mess with his bindings without the bar down.

In reply to wildebeeste:

That's a bit like saying I won't use a seatbelt because I stay in my seat just fine 99% of the time.

In reply to wildebeeste:

Do you not think such a thing could happen to you?

In reply to DaveHK:

That's because it's not true. In the East Coast nearly everyone puts the bar down, and it's required by law in several states.

Out West it's a little more common to leave the bar up for some weird reason but most people still do it. I could accept ops claim on 80% if he's talking about 80% of local ski bums who are usually the ones that don't use the bar, not skiers in general. There are some chairs that don't have bars. These are usually old slow ones on more advanced terrain where a modern high speed lift would put too many people on the slope at once. 

In reply to john arran:

Yeah, a little bit. I'm not advocating it just describing my habit. I suppose it feels different because if it starts to feel unsafe because of wind or I need to faff I can put the bar down. You don't get that warning in a vehicle accident.

In reply to DaveHK:

Easily avoided by putting the bar down if I need to do anything apart from just sitting there.

In reply to wildebeeste:

You could even more easily avoid any real risk of falling out and not have to rely on considering possibilities by just putting the bar down.

Part of the point of safety measures like bars on lifts is to take case by case human decision making out of the equation. Although that does assume one takes the decision to put it down in the first place!

In reply to wildebeeste:

You don’t get a warning when the lift operator slams the brakes on because a kid is hanging off the lift

In reply to rogersavery:

Well I have been on the lift countless times when they have shut it down in a hurry. Not for people hanging off but doe to offloadin/Iloading mishaps, and never felt a ‘slam’ or any untoward movement.