On peak express, a poor kid didn't get seated correctly and was about to fall! Luckily, the quick thinking of the lift operator stopped the lift and got 6 guys to save the child. Copyrighted by Christopher J. Sakai.
I am always blown away by how friendly and professional the employees are at Whistler. They always go the extra mile. This takes the cake though. Kudos to the lifties and others who took action. This could have ended really badly. Instead, this kid will have a great story to tell for the rest of his life.
+Tomas Antolin Grant Thanks "lifty"!!!!!! He is busily sharing his exciting experience, and from the mom side, hoping he has learned a lesson about leaving the pole behind next time :)
Kudos to the peak chair lifties for stopping the lift in time and the WB staff! Kid is very lucky they stopped when they did- that's easily the only safe spot to be rescued on for all of the chair. Serves as a good reminder of the reasoning to respect why peak (among others) are for advanced and expert skiers and riders only.
Serves as a good reminder to use the safety bar*. While I've never been close to falling off a lift, it just doesn't make sense why you wouldn't use it. Same reason why more and more ppl are wearing helmets. It's just added protection at little cost (safety bar, zero cost)...always pissed me off that ski culture says fuck the safety bar like there is literally no negative to using it, only positive
@@RedemptioINN When we were teens we said fuck the safety bar. Now that we're almost 30 we say Fuck Yes to the safety bar haha my buddy and I just had a talk about that on a lift without the safety bar
+Irish Candy They were hanging on to the kid. You have to understand that the chairs are not fixed or rigid. In trying to pull up the kid, the chair could slip back and then everyone falls off.
+Mike Heller I think that not being able to use the strength of their legs would make it pretty hard. With their legs dangling and the chair rocking they could only use their arm and core strength.
+Mike Laanela I would love to but unfortunately I am currently at the top of peak chair workin so you'll have to ask my supervisor. Call the "Springs" employee office in Whistler and ask for Mike or Jeff.
+Tomas Antolin Grant Hi Tomas, I'm a reporter for Metro in Vancouver. I'd like to interview you about this. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience today at 604-648-3213. Thanks!
+Thandi Fletcher Hey Thandi I am unfortunately working today on peak chair. You'll have to call my supervisor at the Employee office " The Springs" and ask for Mike or Jeff.
+Tomas Antolin Grant Hi Thomas i'm another shitty journalist from the journal go fuck yourself in North Pole I would like to know if you where available for an interview...
crazy, as if I were his Father, my fight or flight response would have signaled my sympathetic nervous system and pure adrenaline would hit me systemically! NO WAY in hell that I could not have lifted him back up into the chair!! Glad he is safe..
I see that this happened close to the base, but it makes me wonder: what the heck is going through people's minds when they dont put the bar down on ski lifts? I went to squaw valley recently and the squaw creek lift was so high that falling meant certain death, but no one puts the bar down. What if there's an earthquake? Or a bald eagle takes a dump on your face? Why do guys act confident about something they have only 90% control over?
+youngflungdung Ikr. I went to Alta once and literally everyone else on Supreme had the bar up and it was a good 40 foot drop. Alta didnt even HAVE BARS until 2010! Even their beginner detach didnt even have bars and at the end it was a good 50 foot drop.
cuz there are skiers, and there are gapers. i bet after.you rode your first chair at squaw after stepping out of the squaw creek resort that you didnt even think of getting on to red dog... 40ft is high? we stomp cliffs higher than that.
damn in europe nearly in every resort its mandatory to put the lift bars down. in the us you can sue companies or ski resorts for everything but apparently not falling out of the lift?
The big question - why couldn't they simply reverse the lift and get him off at the bottom? I'm 99% sure these lifts have that capability. I've even read that Doppelmayr DT lifts measure the grip (clamp holding chair to cable) force as the chair exits the terminal, if it is too low the lift will stop and reverse the bad chair into the terminal for inspection or removal, so reversing capability is mandatory for their design. Would require people get off backwards, but that's easier and much safer than this whole ordeal.
The kid was facing the opposite direction for those wondering why they could not pull him in. If he was the other direction then it be more easy as they could pull him up into sitting position, and probably harder with gloves not getting enough grip. Not saying its impossible just much harder to do and be more dangerous to try.
Insanely surprised there wasn’t some ski dad sitting next to this >12 year old kid who could have just curled him back onto the lift like a mid day single rep work out.
Hi Chris, I'm a personal trainer. If you could get me in contact with the people on lift who couldn't lift the small child back into the seat that would be great! They really need my help.
fuckin A pretty funny comment but tbh I can understand why they didn't - they have no leverage, so they are basically just trying to pull up a dead weight with no counter balance. They could've tried to reach backwards to hold onto the chair, but the big gloves and wet/icy conditions could make even that hard to grab ahold of. Additionally, who knows how old the people in the chair were. A couple of 20 somethings should be able to pull the kid up, but grandma and grandpa? Not so much.
So glad to see the boy is ok. I noticed that there are no skis on the boy's boots when he hang over there. How did they remove the boy's skis before catching the boy? I'm very curious.
Good question. Maybe they got tangled at the start of the lift (which would explain why he was falling off the chair) and the operators didn't notice quick enough and he ended up going up a bit until they stopped the lift.
This also happened to me at Whistler when I was 9. Woke up in the snow with ski patrol staring at me, skis off and my mom screaming like I had died 😂. What is it with the Whistler ski lifts?
I was approaching the lift at Loveland and right out of the lift about 12 or 15 feet high I saw a kid just lean forward and deliberately tumble off the lift into very deep powder. His mother completely freaked of course, but he was laughing the whole time he fell and still laughing when he was buried in pow. It was amazing to see it happen right in front of me.
It has a safety bar, but that's only useful once the person is properly seated on the lift - though also pretty unnecessary in such case as I don't think you could accidentally fall out of one of those chairs once sitting on it. This kid didn't board correctly, was never securely on the seat in the first place, was already falling off before the bar could have helped.
Good to see that the kid had not been injured ! But i don´t understand why the operator did not le the lift run slowly in reverse, in the time the crew needs to pick up the blanket and reach the position underneath the chair it would be back in the station too.
Super late here, but im a lift operator and ski lifts don't go in reverse. If the lift starts going backwards then the emergency brake engages and the lift is down for a solid half hour at least, meaning everyone on the lift is stranded until they complete a full inspection. We don't have a button to press that just makes the lift go backwards. If the lifties could have they would have but its not possible.
Nope....every chairlift load station has "the net"...(or should have)....if it's a sunny day it might even be deployed on the snow inside the uphill fencing at the ready
"Oh, Hey.... they should just pull him up..." He's wearing thick clothing idiots... he would slip out of it. They also have no leverage, they're all sitting down... its not like he's hanging off a cliff and you're pulling him up...
That’s what I’m saying, I’m imagining they had slick gloves on, I can hear what sounds like water dripping so likely hands were moist and the parents were stressed af. Crazy your comment waited here for 6 years only for me to comment on it lol
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