And how ski lifts are destroyed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4WPSZojtyE
We were shown this video during our training, and our boss said with a very straight face that if she were ever on a chair that started rolling backwards, she would jump off.
The reason "rollback" can happen is because the weight of all the people is only on one side of the line, and that weight wants to come back downhill. The chair has a couple of different kinds of brakes that are supposed to prevent this, but you can see what happens when it fails / is engaged too late.
Two broken legs are better than that.
NOTE HOWEVER: Newer "Detachable" or "high-speed" chairs and gondolas are often designed to run in reverse, so don't immediately jump off one of those if it goes backwards.
I wonder if the "up and down" lifts that go down and up a valley (e.g. there is one at Alpe d'Huez) or over a ridge (e.g. the one at Val d'Isere) suffer from the same problem - even allowing for the fact that I'm pretty sure that they are modern detachables.
Until you work a chairlift they are all fun and games.. after.. well, they are serious pieces of heavy machinery.
On my first day running one I hit the stop button and then watched the chair continue for ~5 feet, which snapped a young ladies Femur clean in two about 3 feet from my face. Safe to say that was not pretty.
I've also seen countless people knocked out by them, seen full derailments (scary) but happily never seen fingers or hands go into places they shouldn't.
Also had guests fall off the chair and die.
so yeah, very serious.
> I wonder if the "up and down" lifts that go down and up a valley suffer from the same problem
My gut says yes, because when all is said and done they are moving a lot of mass from down to up, and all that mass is still only on one side.
Did see 2 guys jump from a chair from about 10m up onto a pretty horizontal surface - no idea what they were thinking fortunately the snow was quite deep so they just looked dazed rather than badly injured.
Her snowboard was dangling and caught on the beginning of the unload ramp. About that time I hit the e-stop, though of course a many-hundred ton machine with a 1200hp drive motor is going to continue for a bit before it actually stops moving. Even with the e-stop a big heavy four-seater fixed grip will go 6-8-10 feet or so. If it wasn't my first day maybe I would have hit that button sooner.
(Side note, they make the chairs heavy on purpose so they are less susceptible to the wind.. Otherwise they blow around and hit towers. I have been sitting on a chair when it slammed sideways into a tower before. Not fun)
Her board caught in the snow and started to pull her forwards off the chair, but her arm through the slats stopped that happening, so the chair started to swing back and load up with all the forces. It got to quite an impressive angle before something gave way, and it was her femur, because it was half off the leading edge of the chair.
Obviously that was a major ski patrol incident, and I had to write witness statements and draw diagrams of the whole thing in case she tried to sue the resort within 7 years (California...)
Another day I watched a liftie raking the top ramp look up just in time for the chair to smash him right on the forehead - he was out cold for 10 minutes.
That same guy was later scooped up by the chair at the top, and the sudden weight in the chair as it went around the bull wheel caused a derailment. The haul rope (cable) came out of the bull wheel (the big wheel at the top). This is a pain in the ass to fix, especially when there is the weight of hundreds of people sitting on the haul rope. That was a full manual evacuation, which takes hours and hours of lowering people down with ropes.
Some of my best days were "saving" people from getting hit. At the bottom once you have worked 100+ days you can see an issue coming three chairs before it happens, so it's like you are Superman. Often kids would be in the worst possible place and were about to get creamed by the big heavy chair. It's not possible to hold the chair back (even if you could , maint. doesn't want us doing that, we can damage stuff) and the e-stop won't stop it in time. I hate seeing kids get hit, so I would run over and tackle them to the ground, holding them down while the chair sails over both of us. Everyone lined up would cheer. It was great fun!
Of course, we screwed around a lot too - holding on the chair and letting it drag us along the snow, sitting on the chair and waiting to be the last to jump off into the powder, trying to "hurdle" the chair as it comes towards you (which was insanely hard because you have to jump the chair, but duck the steel bar at the top)
All in all, really, really good times.
I was out in Aspen two weeks ago and we were wondering if the lifties get drug tested (never thought about it before). I said they have to, they are responsible for other people's lives and safety. My friends all said no way.
What's your experience?
Where I worked literally every single employee on the mntn smoked, so if you were a pain the neck to your boss they would ask for a drug test and you were basically fired.
In Canada, as far as I know, it never happened (I worked there a few seasons, everyone smoked)
I would say on the majority of days that other people lives and safety were in our hands, the vast majority of lifties were severely hungover and/or stoned.