Posted on 01/06/2009 7:05:32 AM PST by Red Boots
JANUARY 6--In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado's ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Friday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at thesmokinggun.com ...
ping
In his defense, it's a high speed lift, so you're quite a ways out pretty quickly, if anything does happen And,the article does says it was chair malfunction.
Is that like a wardrobe malfunction? The only times I’ve ever seen anything like this was when the passenger screwed up. There is very little that can go wrong with the chairlift that would cause such an event.
There, fixed it (at least in reference to this poor "chap"...)
It sounds like the lift ops failed to fully put the seat down when starting the lift for the day. I think the seats are put up at night to keep snow from accumulating.
If I remember correctly, the baseball player won $110,000 on America's Funniest Home Videos with that video. He had to OK it to be used, so I guess he was OK with it.
These photos make the guys case pretty convincingly, don't they ? Vail Resorts will probably compensate him handsomely.
This just might be one of those when life gives you lemons, make lemonade type situations. I mean, if it's on Drudge, it's everywhere.
It appears that the chairlift's fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding
Unnngh!
Got to be one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. The guys (and possibly a gal) coming to his rescue don’t seem to be in too big of a hurry to free Mr. Johnson.
We found Bridger Bowl in Montana very much like that.
I have never skied either place. Aspen, though fairly close by, is too expensive for our family, and there are so many great places in Colorado that we never go anywhere else, except Park City. That is a great family place to ski !
I bet the blood was really rushing to his head.
Name ought to change from Vail to Crested Butt.
poor guy, at least he got his 15 minutes of fame
Looks like he dropped his poles. Bummer.
my monitor is so bad, all i couldn’t see anything.
i’m probably better off.
Probably.
Too bad it wasn’t some famous hollywood ahole.
I saw a kid start to fall off a lift just after leaving the pickup point. The mom had a grip on the kid's jacket, was screaming, and the (probably stoned on pot)operators rushed out with a big net to catch the tike, who was about 25 feet up. I never knew why they didn't simply reverse the motor and bring the kid back. Anyway, the mom was screaming to help her kid, but when they got the net out and said "Drop her!" she started screaming "NO!". Long story short, mom's grip grew tired after a few more seconds (she was using the other arm to wrap around the bar) and the kid fell. Everything turned out alright. Someone yelled "Buy that man a doobie!", and we laughed.
Yikes!
Well, he will never forget that ski trip.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.