This chair is not used for going up and down the "mountain" - this is in the Espace Killy skiing area, with multiple valleys and 186 miles of groomed runs. The chair is for getting quickly from one valley to another and back again, so you can ski back to your resort at the end of the day instead of getting stuck in the wrong valley and having to pay for an expensive taxi ride.
Have done that there. had to ski and traverse mountain sides on multiple short poma lifts because of bad weather and ended up in the wrong valley in a mountain restaurant that was closing for the night .... had to ski down the wrong valley with the restaurant owner as guide and then thank him and take a train and a bus back to base .... I was back home around 23:00hrs after a very long days skiing and walking. Not really my fault in fact as the weather forecast was for good clear skies but turned out to be wrong and changed within minutes. That was an expensive day out too as the buses and trains know they've got you but the short and curlys.
It is at the extreme end of Val D'Isere. It connects Le Fornet with Solaise. If you get stuck in Le Fornet you ski down to the Le Fornet cable and get the free shuttle back to Val D'Isere. You would only face a taxi ride if you ended up in Tignes and needed to get back to Val D'Isere (or vice versa).
Park City has the same thing to get to the Canyons resort side of the mountain. It's pretty cool because that side is all Blacks so its way less crowded and much better snow.
To anyone who thinks this one is scary, try going to Sochi’s Rosa Peak… you’ll be clenching your cheeks on the first stretch up the mountain, it is far gnarlier than this. This one is just beautiful.
When I first went on this, my mates told me we we're getting off at the top, so i started to put the safety bar up, only to realise we we're going over a hill with a huge drop on the other side! Was not nice!
You haven't seen a scary lift until you've been on a miserably slow old two seater with a pole in the middle, an icy seat, no arm rests, and no safety bar during 90mph winds over a 200ft drop.
When I was a kid I rode lifts like that many times. Once, my sister messed up and got on my side of the center bar and had to ride all the way up sitting on my lap. It was very foggy so we couldn’t see the ground or how far remained to go, and it was our first time at that ski area. I was trying not to drop her, which was difficult since she was older and bigger than me! Somehow we survived, and she has never heard the end of it.
A few years ago, we had family move out to east-central Arizona. There's a quite good ski area out there run by the Apache, and one of their lifts is a wood-slat two-seater that goes about 200 feet in the air (tribe _really_ dislikes big investments). And, since it's big sky country, the winds get horrible. Haven't experienced the worst of it, but you'd go out there in the morning on a powder day and the ones that were parked at the top would have 3ft long horizontal ice crystals on them from the winds.
The “scariest” ones I’ve been on are similar to this where you come over a ridge and there’s a huge drop or valley and you go from 20 ft off the ground to 50-100 ft off the ground quickly. Weird feeling coming over those for the first time.
This can be classified as scary if you are tempted to jump off the chair at the summit as it is jumping height (about 2 m max). There are always tracks of skiers who have done it who then have an off piste choice to ski back into Solaise or Le Fornet.
@@pearceclayton8498 I've done that, just make sure you jump just before the summit when still going up, as this will press you into the mountain and makes sure you don't overshoot.
Wow, I remember that. My father told me that before that new chairlift there was an old 2 places chairlift even higher and when the wind blew it felt that the wire was going to tear up. I went there 8 years ago and spent of the greatest weeks of my life, that resort is absolutely amazing
Idk about scary, but I've spent my whole life riding uphill on chairs, and the last few years I've worked maintenance for my local slope and I still can't get over how weird it feels riding downhill on the chair
I was on this a few days ago. It's a pretty breathtaking view as you come over the top (I came first from tignes direction) but I didn't find it any more scary than any other lift with a big drop underneath. Awesome powder up there though.
You do get a nice feeling in your stomach when you go over the peak of the mountain for the first time, like you are dropping over the edge. Its not what I would call scary, but is breath taking and makes for an interesting ride!
Yeah did it about 20 years ago snowboarding with 3 mates, we got chased by the lift operator at the bottom. He didn’t catch us! We did on the last day incase we did get caught and they took our lift pass away ....I still remember it today ....such good untouched powder. warning it’s a longer drop than you think!
Squaw Creek at Squaw Valley was the scariest lift I've ever been on. Really high up, the support poles were leaning at like 70 degrees, and the tiny safety bar had little reassurance. At least you had a good solid safety bar haha
Now, I have never skied there, but honestly it doesn't look scary at all !!! Scariest chairlift I was ever on had to be the old Olympic chair at Lake Louise in Alberta Canada. It was a double chair, built in 1966, and was fast even by todays standards. But what made it the best (or worst) was the extreme distances between towers, and its height. If you were between towers, and the lift stopped, you were in for one wild ride!!!
John Macfarlane That's the old Schindlergratbahn, unfortunately has been since 2019 replaced by a shitty modern piece of scrap 10-passenger gondola lift. I am extremely pissed at Doppelmayr and Arlberger Bergbahnen for what they did to it and I hope to bomb the shitty modern gondola along with all Post-2014 10-passenger pieces of crap gondola lifts that have no other place to go but hell since that's where they f*cking belong as they are rammed with tech, they are boring as they have no mechanical differences, they're ugly and too mainstream and city-like, and they raise toxic expectations and give people stupid reasons to complain, as do they encourage the authoritarian c*nts to force modernization on all ski resorts. 10-passenger modern gondola lifts can burn in hell for all I freaking care. Old ropeways are 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 times better than modern piles of scrap.
I call it the "ooh" lift. We went over the top and all went "ooooh!" at the beautiful view of the mountains. Then we heard the following chair give a chorus of "oooooh!" too!
The ski lift that malfunctioned and the seats got jammed at the carousel and was throwing people onto the ground was the scariest ski lift I've seen. A huge pile of people tangled in the detached seats and skis just kept getting bigger and bigger . The lucky few jumped 6ft to the ground to avoid the pileup.
@@mikosoft I've never been on one . Probably is a switch in the control panel or on a post outside, like emergency shut-off switches at gas stations in the U.S.
@@jimwednt1229 I noticed there are usually several safety stop buttons on the pillars (especially on the surface lifts), there's also a bar on the top and bottom station and a couple of safety stop buttons as well, usually pretty well marked in red.
I went on this chair a couple of weeks ago and it is more scary than this video makes it seem. And it is not going from Val to Tignes but is at the far end of the resort coming from Le Fornet to Solaise. Worth the ride.
As a seasonaire boarder quite a while ago, it was the done thing to lift up the bar and jump off the lift at the peak. You then had to race down the mountain or the pistairs would take your lift pass off you. Was pretty exhilarating doing it, surprised i didnt break my ankles... On landing the top was a bit icy... Cheers Phil. Who made me do it, lifetime of memories from that place.
Done that on skis. It is about a 2m drop or less (depending on snow depth). Had a soft landing when I did it. Quite rocky on the Le Fornet side, relatively easy on the Solaise side. Never got chased in those days (1996)
Before they put the high speed chair in you could get to the top and drop out of the chair. You then on the ridge for skiing or riding down between the crags. Old chair was a lot slower
Pretty scary. But the Paradise chair at Louise is pretty scary too when you realize how far you are going to go without a tower and how high up you will be on a Yan lift.
Last week I was skiing from Montgenèvre/Claviere in France back to the Italian side of Via Lattea. Due to lack of snow, we had to detach our skis and sit with them in our lap in the lift going all the way down to the Cesana. That was scary as hell.
I did it last week, in a big fog with children crying next to me on the descent ! Amazing experience. Also did it the next day with the sun shining and recording exactly as you did.
The Olympic T-bar at Perisher Valley can beat that. It has a dog-leg and it's best to get on it by yourself. If you get on the right side, with a beginner on the left side, and they push you to the right, you are over the edge whether you like it or not.
When we go over this lift we always sing frank Sinatra’s “start spreading the news” at the opposing lifts and it’s surprising how many sing the next line back!
The summit Poma at Lake Louise is far scarier. Mostly because you have to ride a surface lift up a slope that's pretty steep. There are places on the lift you don't want to fall off. They actually have ropes on the side because otherwise you probably can't stop yourself from sliding all the way down.
I rode that chairlift in the mid-80s when it didn’t even have a safety bar. I was clinging for dear life to the back of the seat as I went over that ridge line
Never skiied there. Went to Tignes in 2003 which was incredible. Just came back from a week in Plagne 1800. Would love to do Val-d'Isère one time and Les Arcs too. Both Espace Killy and Paradiski are amazing areas, pretty near to each other. Really snow sure too which matters in these times!
There's not enough space for a detachable midway station without a ton of excavation (detachable midway stations are twice as long as the end stations because you have the decelleration/accereration equipment laid end to end instead of bent in a U shape) and they don't want to patrol the terrain under the lift. This lift is just used to get people between two different areas.
Looks incredible. There's one at Telluride at the base of the mountain (this was 2013) with no bar and very steep. I'd vote for any lift without a bar.
I agree that those scare me. What was the worst was sharing the chair with a little skier and their butts would be right on the edge of the seat. They would swing their legs around with no fear and seemed to be so close to falling off.
The old Killington double from the base lodge to the top. Scary for that initial towerless stretch going so high above the trees but mostly for constantly stopping while you're at the friggin high point in high winds. Was so glad when they ditched that sucker.
i have been over this chairlift several times. i can confirm it is indeed scary. in all my time skiing i have never known anything quite like it. the video just cannot capture that feeling.
I’ve been riding chairlifts for well over half my life. Feel very comfortable on them, still feels weird going downhill on them though. I think it’s perspective, going up your focused ahead on higher ground, so it doesn’t seem that high, going downhill you’re focused down the hill so it’s seem a lot higher. Not to mention downhill the chair sometimes leans a bit more forward making it feel like you will fall out.
Squaw Valley in Tahoe California has a gondola that carries I think 25 people thousand feet up and when it crests the Mountain it rocks to and fro. That one scared the crap out of me when I was 8 years old. It still is a crazy ride now that I'm older and can handle heights.
Got stuck on that chair a few years back at the peak in a blizzard. When we got off 1.5 hours later after almost considering jumping off, shivering and soaked we had no explanation from lift staff :-$. Will never ride it again haha
No here in Utah there's an old original two-seater from when the resort was built and it's not very high but it's sketchy. This one looks stable and new.
Jumping off at the top used to be quite popular, but the current lift is a fair bit higher than the old one was, so jumping off is significantly more sketchy.
@taylorlutz the lift isn't meant to be ridden down the mountain. the person is just riding back down to the base of the lift. the chairs don't just stay at the top of the mountain... they have to go in a circle and come back down.
