Flying Skiers: Who is Responsible? | The Gudauri Ski Lift Malfunction 

CORRECTION: On a well designed lift, brakes activate automatically upon a power loss because they are held open with power. The backup power allows the console to continue to function during the emergency. thanks @csabasipos6525 & @chadlucier 🔸Become a Member: ru-vid.com/show-UCuCd4H8swyV19RpFLWGt1Mgjoin 🔸Donate: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=CH2XJQTH298U4 🔸Twitter: twitter.com/1ButteredNoodle 🔸Discord: www.discord.gg/VKfQ3NDrE5 🔸Twitch: www.twitch.tv/ButteredNoodies

I’m working in whistler as a lift operator and I would say the manufacturer, lift maintenance, is to blame for there not being a rollback safety device

Holy shit, imagine being at fault for something you were not properly trained for by your leadership. For something that isn't built by you, bought by you, or even implemented by you. Fuck that shit. I would sue whoever runs that Ski Resort, the CEOs, and Directors for negligence.

The resort is at fault, 100%. I'm a ski lift technician, every resort I've been to, operating the evac drive (or any operating of the lift with safety systems other than RPDs bypassed) is STRICTLY prohibited unless a technician is physically present at the lift either doing it or guiding the operators. The issue is the coupling: it connects not to the drive shaft but via bolts through the service brake disc, sometimes accessory belts for things like the oil cooler get in the way and the disc brake has to be bypassed and moved by hand. You should never switch the controls to evac mode until you're coupled since with the controls in evac mode A. someone could start the evac engine remotely whilst your hands are in the machinery B. in any mode except evac the e-brake will deploy automatically if the service brake is bypassed manually. This has nothing to do with bad design, it's actually very important that a trained technician be able to take un-restricted control of the lift during certain emergencies or for testing purposes, however these fully manual control systems are not intended for use by the lift operators. All that being said, newer Doppelmayr lifts use hydraulic pressure from the evac drive to release the e-brake in evac mode so it's physically impossible for all 3 brakes to be open unless the engine RPM is high enough to move the lift.

I had to double check that you only had 572 subscribers -- amazing work!

This same accident happened at Bartaloche years ago. Popping one’s skis off would have been hugely helpful before jumping. Great video.

As a lift mecanic and maintenance foreman for the last 22 years, the narration of this video has a lot of inaccuracies. Modern lifts all have systems to prevent rollbacks in the event of power or mechanical failure. It takes a crazy sequence of events that include human error for something like this to happen. My staff and I do daily, weekly, monthly and annual testing and maintenance of all brake systems as well as load testing every 7 years where we put 110% of the rated load on the lift (trash bag lined boxes filled with water, 187 pounds per passenger) and test that each of the 4 braking systems will automatically trip and stop the lift from rolling back independently. Procedures were not followed (poor training) and systems were disabled (negligent operation and/or maintenance) that allowed the accident to happen when problems with the power or machinery occurred.

Loved this video! Wanted a deeper dive into how the hell something like that happened! Appreciate the content my guy! Top tier!

Amazing work as always

I did not know that that could happen on a lift! Crazy! I hope all the lifts I ride have all the safety measures in place, and no convoluted safety procedures.

As a lift operator this doesnt make sense. Service and emergency brakes are held open with electricity. If there was no power, they should have remained closed. If there was power to open them them the system should have been able to detect the rollback and close the brakes. In the US lift safety is way different, even the design. Most lifts not designed to go in reverse have whats called a 'dog leg' which is designed to drop into the bullwheel if it goes in reverse.

I’m a ski lift operator and I firmly believe that the resorts at fault. Doppelmayr is my favourite company for ski lifts and this lift did have a rollback prevention device but it malfunctioned severely

The "well designed ski lift" explanation is majorly incorrect. You dont need any battery power at all for the breaks to operate, that is the whole point of failsafe break design. You need power to keep the breaks released, once the power is gone, the breaks apply automatically, which it did in this case. This was a clear operator error, as they disengaged the main shaft (which had the breaks applied) before they connected the auxiliary diesel generator.

Doppelmayr lifts are unsettling nowadays. My local ski mountain, Mont-Saint-Anne, have gondolas, whom's manufacturer is Doppelmayr. That lift had 2 accidents in less than 4 years appart. In the 2020 season, the gondolas suddenly stopped (that happened twice in the same season, before they closed the lift for the rest of the season!), causing a havock inside each cabins and there were about 50 injured. The lift was closed for the next 2 years. December 2022, the lift wasn't open yet, one of the cabins fell off and was crushed.

Great video man, you earned a sub!

YEETED!! BUT WHY?? Sorry these people got hurt but that vid caption and screenshot lmao awesome. Learned a lot about ski lifts, very informative.

Ive been seeing this clip on instagram tik tok and other socials, nice to finally get a good, thorough, and correct explanation. Good Video :). Also I liked your accent i thought it made the video more entertaining.

I really don’t think the lefties should be charged with such a hard sentence. They tried the procedure, sadly failed and that was probably when panic struck them. It’s not that they didn’t do anything and just let the lift be. The poor design of the lift and the resort not willing to spend some extra money on safety mechanisms should be the main blame

This was a great video! Surprising that you only have 755 subs with this video having 56k views, you definitely deserve more subs, keep up the hard work!

wow, great video. you are very underrated.

Great video. I remember when the clip went viral but never made any research as to why it happened. RU-vid recommendations, you've done it again! 😅

Lets goo! you deserve more man!

Really well explained!! Thank you

Great video. The buck has to stop at the resort. They are responsible for training their employees properly and they are also responsible for purchasing safe lifts, not whatever cheap thing they had installed. Imprisoning low wage seasonal workers for messing up at work does zip to make the resort safer.

great video. I loved every minute of it.

The "No fucking way" at 8:57 made me LOL.

I work with around lattice boom cranes, and there's always a long lever above the operator that everyone in the industry calls "the oh sh*t bar." It's very simple how it works... pull the lever, and it stops the boom from free falling when the drum brakes fail. No electronics, no procedures, just pull, and nobody gets squished or goes flying... hopefully.

suppppper interesting stuff, really enjoyed this.

deserves more views bro

Complex explanation!

Thank you!

Great video!

If this happened on an icy day instead of a pow day, things would 've been a lot worse. I'm gonna check every chairlift I hop on for the emergency brake now 🙂.

I’ve been skiing my whole life and I’ve started to notice ski lift operators just sitting on their phones and not paying attention to the people on the lift and the lift itself. Just the last weekend one person had fallen and the operator didn’t stop the lift causing everyone to fall and run into wa h other. Half the time they are on their phones too and I just feel they need to have more training and be stricter on the employees.

This information is not entirely correct. I cannot believe that the emergency brake is not spring loaded and does not close in case of loss of power. I do understand that it could be bypassed in case of doing the procedure with the diesel system though and that that might have been the cause of the accident. About the big emphasis on anti-rollback: on this kind of old-fashioned lift it maybe makes sense. But a lot of lifts out there run backwards on purpose in case of garaging the chairs so for those lifts anti-rollback wouldn't work.

To be clear; the problem was not the voltage drop, neither forgetting to engage the diesel generator after the voltage drop as the lift came to a proper stop. The accident occurred after the operators incorrectly followed an emergency recovery procedure. First you should engage the Diesel Engine, afterwards you may disengage the emergency brakes. They did it the wrong way around, they disengaged the emergency brakes without engaging proper drive first.

Hyak near Seattle had a similar lift event.

The lift should have no physical ability to reach that kind of speed..

W content my man 💪

I've worked on a modern lift in the Aletsch Gletscher ski resort (CH) and something like that is unthinkable, everything that can go wrong always results in the safety brakes being applied, also all brakes are tested every morning, there were 4 redundant braking system in the lift I worked at, one of the you could trigger directly pneumatically. Also bypassing the safety system in a socalled "Überbrückung" requires a lift tech on hand with a special key, and the speed is limited

great video, you've earned a subscriber

Seeing that chair send the people flying so far really gives me a newfound respect to the fact that momentum = mass * velocity

"One rider even returned to the mountain that same day!" Priorities.

Our old shitty Riblet is equipped with anti-rollback dogs. Our main electric panel (sabina), or LV (low voltage) panel and our wind system were designed by some random old bucko who has passed and left the blueprints in his estate so we dont really have any idea how it works nor can we fix it if it goes wrong. Yet that old dilapidated shitbox of a lift has anti-rollback devices to make sure this doesnt happen. I would have thought it would be mandatory to have this fail safe in place no matter the age of the lift, and this case is one of i’m sure many that prove just why it should be mandatory

Only 600 subs? Commenting to please the algorythm! Subbed :)

Poor training of the operators was the ultimate cause. And the roll back safety feature is standard, did Doppelmayr build this lift? I am surprised they would certify it without a roll back brake.

Insane that lift didn’t have an automatic transfer switch to switch to generator power. A manual interlock on a multi million dollar lift blows my mind.

100% not the lifty's fault. They're trained for some emergency situations, but a rollback fault is supposed to stop the lift. If that fails, and the emergency brake fails, then there's really nothing they can do.

What a ridiculous system, how they thought ANYONE could carry out those steps in an emergency is ridiculous. What a joke that the operators where held responsible for this. The ppl who designed this and the CEO should have been blamed.

This happened years ago, any info on the verdict? Were the people, responsible for saving money on safety features ever put on trial?

In my opinion Doppelmayr is to blame. They made it possible to buy a ski lift with sub standard safety features, and there is nothing (I assume) on the boarding area that tells the skiers this is a cheap and dangerous version of a proper ski lift. Imagine if you could buy elevators without emergency brakes. Some things should not be an option just because it's possible. If a ski lift is built in 2007 then you would assume it's built to standards in that time. If the ski lift was 50 years old then I would assume it was built to standards back then, BUT updated to new standards.

As a lift operator, first thing you would press is the emergency stop it takes so fing long for them to stop it It literally takes one second to push the emergency button

You would have been a good lawyer for this case and maybe would have kept the operators of the left out jail. The many people that had designed and approved and sold this system should be jailed.

I wonder how much lift operators get paid to make risk of jail-time when failing to follow impossible procedures worth their while....

cant even blame the lift operators, the resort and lift manufacturer are definitely at fault for the lift lacking extremely basic failsafes

Oh my God this is the worst ski lift function I’ve ever seen LOL

The person at 2:10 was not frozen. She was stuck because the other guy got stuck on the bar and she couldnt get it up

The chairlift moving dangerously fast! About 25 mph (40 km/h)!

By the way some ski lifts are'nt all on one cable and the chairs come of at one end so it can slow down in the station for a smooth boarding and disembarking

youtube has been pushing the hell out of this video to me for the last few days😂 I finally gave in

dang. underrated

i broke my thumb while skiing this weekend and it was completely loose from the base

I had the job of running a new lift in a beginner area while doing field ops for a ski area. Was carnage lol, first timers + a ramp the designers were dreaming when they designed

It really sounds like aWTF situation. I thought there were a bunch of safety protocols in place, especially in this day and age!!!

We making it out the trenches with this one

How can a lift even be certified without brakes that are only open if power is available?

With the advancement in technology these days ski lifts should at minimum be designed with a dynamic braking system

Why not unplug the ski lift? All jokes aside the fact that the employees got in so much trouble isn't fair. It's pretty rare that this happens and I'm sure it was the operators first time ever seeing this, and the amount of stuff that needs to happen just to stop the lift is ridiculous. It was definitely a poor design and should be illegal not to have an emergency stopper on the wheel, I don't think the operators had very much fault in this situation, and you also have to consider the amount of panicking and stress the operators were put under.

Dopplemayr has apparently never heard the word "failsafe."

Certain countries have always had a reputation for doing things on the cheap, mostly Eastern European ones, this does not surprise me, in a lot of cases they used to buy older second hand lifts from other countries, often there would be a simple contract with the manufacturer to install these but not bring them up to the latest standards. About 45 years ago I was on a small 2 person chairlift that failed due to power issues, worse the generator failed as well, fortunately only a fairly short but quite steep lift, they wound everyone down by hand with two chaps turning a manual winch system with some sort of ratchet which you could here clicking as they slowly wound you back, then a 25 minute walk back to the village in ski boots fortunately almost on the level

imagine this happen and then you return the same day😭. what was he thinking??

3:08 that would be me lmao that's how addicted to snowboarding i am lol

Good video, barely anyone covers ski stuff properly

Isn´t there a manual valve that you can close and stop the lift? You should be able to close it thus stoping the lift.

liked and subbed

I will never ever understand why people would just sit in the chair while everyone is screaming at them to jump. I don't care if you're a brittle 90 year old skier. Sliding off near the bottom and getting a little bruise is highly preferable to getting swung around violently and potentially getting crushed under a tangle of lift chairs. Idiotic.

Is mind boggling they don’t have a mechanical emergency break if the lift wants to go backwards, that wouldn’t need any electricity or human input

,y dad once took a spill on a mtn to avoid crashing into a kid, and he twisted his leg around. the patrol came up and took him down to the medics. they said. itwas probably a sprained ankle. he walked up the stairs. toour hotel room and even drove home like 15 hours. then he went to the doctor locally and found out the leg was broken in 3 places. Although the leg healed up, he doesnt ski much anymore

So we can blame the resort for not updating a lift or replacing it for a new version

I totally get the guy who went back that day. Definitely a get back on the horse situation. If I didn't do it that same day, would probably quit the sport out of fear.

I cannot see blaming then2 poor souls that were operating that lift. The manufacturer, the owners of the ski resort and the safety inspectors that signed off on that crappy design should be responsible

If you make something so it can never happen it will never happen. If you make something so it should never happen it will happen eventually

the chair full of four people had to be the most stupid group of all. How do you watch that many people get injured and then have 20+ people yelling for you to jump and then continue to sit there as if nothing is wrong, even if your frozen by fear there’s no way all four of them just sat there unable to move

i fucked up my knee, but it was entirely my fault

The brakes should be designed to engage on power failure in addition to manual and automatic system operation.

That one lady in the yellow jacket who got flung could have seriously injured someone with her ski.

Poor design. A power outage should not require the manual application of an emergency break. Instead, there should be a breaking mechanism that is held open, under powered operation, allowing for a fail *safe* in the event of a power cut, or fluctuation. Alternatively, I can think of at least three, completely passive designs, that I could probably mock up with technic LEGO in under an hour. There's no excuse for that kind of negligence and myopia in engineering. The manufacturer should be held liable.

Ditto !!!

I went where every weekend 😊

I think it is a very far stretch to try and make doppelmayt responsible for this. I would assume that this lift was probably built before automation was really usable/implemented in ski lifts. In the same way the lift already seems very old. Therefore, it is wrong to try to judge the design of this lift by todays standards. If someone is to blame, then it should be the resort or the georgian government. They are responsible the regularly check the safety of the lifts in their country and make laws and regulations that would prohibit the use of such lifts nowadays as they are unsafe. The argumentation of this video is like making a car brand responsible for an accident with an oldtimer that doesn‘t have seatbelts.

It's not so bad 😂after all the skiers learned to fly 😅😅😅😅

CTEC or DOPLEMEYER?

In my opinion it’s a lack of training that prevented proper operation

The operators should be convicted & someone should go to prison. However the implementation of correct procedures was not applied, maintained, or activated. Whoever had the ultimate authority to make sure the system was working & that emergency training was in place & that a rollback mechanism was not in place. I do hope that prison is in store at least for the main person responsible for ensuring such systems existed & were in place & tested long before there ever was an accident. I cannot believe that they didn't have a rollback feature. The owners of the company should go to prison. The staff cannot be held responsible for no rollback feature. Owners are supposed to make sure that procedures are trained, learned, & followed - with evidence of emergency training for staff every staff member as a condition of employment. The chief owner should go to prison - not his staff - unless it is proven he had trained all the staff properly & they simply shirked their duty.

Who's responsible?? The snowboarder , obviously.

I mean we're they trained

its not a month ago when a gondala fell down and injured 4 people badly

Shouldn't you be off cheering on yugi in some duels or something? Since when is Joey Wheeler a ski lift expert?

If they're being that careless with the kind of machinery they install, they might also not have proper training for their operators so that they can confidently react in an emergency. Generally the company would be legally responsible rather than an employee for this reason. Because training and making sure proper procedure is followed is the employer's responsibility. If they're allowed to just let the employees take the blame in cases like these, why would they bother investing in safety?

Na the lift was broken when ur in stress u aint think so fast 5 years prission aint be fair for those two people!