Holy Shit!

[k2skier112]

Are you referring to Yan? His lifts/designs killed a lot of people (relatively speaking).

You're
Airborne
Now

[Flyoverland Captive]

I had friends who worked at Keystone the year they installed the gondola; on its first test run, two cars fell off the cable. I believe it was a Yan gondy.

[hutash]

Let's keep thing in perspective, you are far more likely to die or be injured by a tree then a chair lift malfunction. These or more spectacular and make great viral video, but trees and rock are your enemy, not lifts.

[Garth Bimble]

I had friends who worked at Keystone the year they installed the gondola; on its first test run, two cars fell off the cable. I believe it was a Yan gondy.

The old River Run Gondola was a Yan. It was the first they ever built; installed in 1984 and shut down halfway through the following season because operations/maintenance were afraid the thing was going to fall apart.

FWIW, a lot of Yan's chairs are still out there running. The Pali chair is one.

[summit]

The old River Run Gondola was a Yan. It was the first they ever built; installed in 1984 and shut down halfway through the following season because operations/maintenance were afraid the thing was going to fall apart.

FWIW, a lot of Yan's chairs are still out there running. The Pali chair is one.

Couple at Loveland too... now of course they were all upgraded to correct for the flaws that caused accidents in the 80s.

[Garth Bimble]

Couple at Loveland too... now of course they were all upgraded to correct for the flaws that caused accidents in the 80s.

True but most if not all of those still running are FG's and they didn't experience the same problems as the DG's did, IIRC. I think a lot of the problems were the result of Yan's decision to do much of the assembly work on site. Unlike most manufacturers who do most of the assembly off site prior to install Yan was doing a lot of that shit in the parking lot. Probably not the best place for some of that to happen.

[WTF is dat]

Most areas have a policy that if the lift must be run in reverse a patroller or other staff member will ski the line and let people know prior to that action. That said, because of some crazy circumstance it may not always be.

This reminds me of the day I was skiing at vail when that guy was hanging naked upside down off the chair.

I was actually on the lift at the time this happened, although I was much further up the liftline near the steeper cliff section. I remember the chair came to a stop and then a few minutes later started moving backwards because they needed to get the guy down from the chair.

None of us on the chair knew why we were moving backward and we started panicking, thinking we were experiencing a rollback. Fortunately after a couple seconds the chair came to a stop.

[The SnowShow]

This reminds me of the day I was skiing at vail when that guy was hanging naked upside down off the chair.

I was actually on the lift at the time this happened, although I was much further up the liftline near the steeper cliff section. I remember the chair came to a stop and then a few minutes later started moving backwards because they needed to get the guy down from the chair.

None of us on the chair knew why we were moving backward and we started panicking, thinking we were experiencing a rollback. Fortunately after a couple seconds the chair came to a stop.

I was in line at BSB and saw it happen. Couldn’t believe my eyes. The locals peanut gallery was not kind

[wyeaster]

I was in line at BSB and saw it happen. Couldn’t believe my eyes. The locals peanut gallery was not kind

peanut gallery
penis gallery

[thebrucemac]

Have to admit it made me notice the squeak from the chair during a stop over the weekend--something I would have never thought twice about. My chair-mate even said, "oh that sounds good!" and we both laughed and started talking about this video.

Do you think you're better off trying to ditch your skis, or leave them on?

[Flyoverland Captive]

Ditch the skis. What about kicking off boots?

[The AD]

Ditch the skis. What about kicking off boots?

If you ditch the skis how are you supposed to ride it switch to the road?

[Garth Bimble]

I was in line at BSB and saw it happen. Couldn’t believe my eyes. The locals peanut gallery was not kind

Are you referring to this? Excuse the Brokeback patroller PS.

[wyeaster]

hopefully that's not his kid on the chair

[Garth Bimble]

hopefully that's not his kid on the chair

It was

[RootSkier]

Better angle:

[Skistack]

What about kicking off boots?

You’ll break your ankles!



Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[mcski]

I'm not remotely sure why, but that pic reminds of the time a buddy of mine got his balls shaved by the strippers at a Bach party. He wasn't even the groom, he just volunteered

[wyeaster]

I'm not remotely sure why, but that pic reminds of the time a buddy of mine got his balls shaved by the strippers at a Bach party. He wasn't even the groom, he just volunteered

oddly, having strippers do it is not in the article
https://www.gq.com/story/shave-your-balls-safely

[muted]

Let's keep thing in perspective, you are far more likely to die or be injured by a tree then a chair lift malfunction. These or more spectacular and make great viral video, but trees and rock are your enemy, not lifts.

I thought we were all the best skiers on the mountain. So trees and rocks are no worry for perfection.

[Swiftybish]

Have to admit it made me notice the squeak from the chair during a stop over the weekend--something I would have never thought twice about. My chair-mate even said, "oh that sounds good!" and we both laughed and started talking about this video.

Do you think you're better off trying to ditch your skis, or leave them on?

Was it a high speed lift? Sometimes the chairs squeak as they go through the terminal especially on warm days and it sounds way worse than it actually is

[k2skier112]

No. Fixed Dopp quad. More info https://liftblog.com/2018/03/16/high...injures-eight/

[Shred Baron]

i'm torn about the proper course of action if i'm with the boy. i outweigh him by 140 pounds and am strapped to a snowboard. it's unlikely i would be able to control my own fall and just as likely land on him or have the snowboard break him or cut him. i don't see how the snowboard isn't a major issue at some point. even if i only had time to undo the binding so it was just hanging by the leash, that would be better than having it strapped on but i think he stands a better chance of lesser injury if he's not near me, which means i have to either drop him first or jump together and push him away at the last moment, which seems unlikely.

So i'm assuming the best practice in this case is to jump the f*ck off. It certainly was for those folks. Question for lift mechanic types, lifties and others in the know, when the sh*t what hits the fan (of a roll back persuasion), just jump?

Preface: Lift mechanic/Builder of 12 years:

IF! a full rollback happens (which it shouldn't) there's still no right answer. I was in NZ to build a lift, and the inspector wanted us to prove the service (normal) brake would stop a full rollback. It's not intended to, that's what the rollback brake is for (there's also an emergency brake, emergency and rollback brakes are identical in design but activated by different safeties) Anyhow since we were doing load test we had 110% of designed load with boxes of water on chairs. We ran the chairs to the top, Manually locked open both emergency, and rollback brakes (still able to be closed by releasing a hydraulic valve) and I was somehow nominated to manually open (with a lever at the brake) the service brake. This was a detachable, so the inspector wanted it to get close to operating speed before stopping. Operating speed is 5 meters per second, it only got to 2 m/s then stopped accelerating. I'm sure I'd be safer unloading a detachable at less than half speed backwards than jumping from anywhere. Not to say that I think the people who jumped in the video were worse off, but there's a lot of variables in play in this question.

Oh and jumping with, here's a link to an an accident. For some reason I remember in early articles they believed some injuries were caused by the three falling on each other, but I can't seem to find them anywhere. http://www.waaytv.com/content/national/472384783.html

[Shred Baron]

I have yet to see a one way bullwheel bearing on a modern lift. I have in fact purposefully crept a fixed grip backwards. It was loaded with boxes of water, and the inspector wanted to do one more brake test, but the boxes had reached the top so we either had to back up, or pin it all the way round. It a bit of a process to take off the rollback wand (the switch that tells the lift it's going the wrong way), and then release the rollback pawls ( one way teeth like on ratchet)on the gearbox. I could mechanically feather the brake open the brake and the lift would slowly roll back. Also I'm not sure if rollback pawls in gearboxes are required by code anymore.

[skizix]

I have always thought about jumping off the lift when it was stopped if i wasn’t high. I’ve never even thought about a high speed reversal. I bet the safety gets 10x harder to get up going backwards.

Btw: ski conditions in the video looked amazing.

Jumping off the lift has the potential to de-rope the lift (after you bail, the weight of the chair bouncing back up can cause the haul rope to hop off the sheave-wheels - notice how shallow the groove is on those wheels). A de-rope would disable the entire lift, precipitating at best a full rope evac (and it could potentially launch other folks from their chairs too).

I think this is probably very rare (but was part of my patroller training). But obviously, ski areas seriously frown upon recreational jumpers - if you're busted , you'll probably lose your pass (even if nothing bad happened).

OTOH, if you experience a full-on rollback, by all means: quickly figure out your best bailout point, and...execute!

The videos are stomach-churning. That one from the Georgian newscast...that was a lot of fucking blood on that chair!