Whitewater has a riblet with safety bars. Basically just 2 little metal rods that individually fold down off the center pole. Safer than nothing, but doesn't feel as secure as a normal safety bar.
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In my resort skiing days, I'm not sure a day passed where I didn't ride an old double without a bar. A few of those ascended pretty darn high with tons of wind exposure; a few times I regretted my decision to get on in the conditions. The wrong kind of thrills.
Regarding the lawsuit:
Just being an old double without a bar isn't negligent
A sign that would deter a one legged codger would be sensible
Routinely running the lift in reckless conditions I think would open the resort to liability
I’m not seeing how having one leg contributed to the guy falling off the chair. We have a very windy mountain and I’ve been on the Riblets in very high winds, sustained forty with gusts to sixty mph. Sling your arm over the back of the chair or around the center pole and you’re good to go. They don’t usually stop spinning until the chairs start hitting the towers.
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t use a safety bar if it was available, I do on our high speed quad and use the bubble, but it’s not that big a deal to ride without if there isn’t a safety restraint.
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Almost every time I go skiing, I am confronted by the fact that people have a hard time sitting down and standing up again. Like, are they just dumb?
Ps, my local hill has some old ass lifts including a couple riblets.
But the mom and pop areas within a couple hours of Missoula also have all fixed grip lifts of varying sizes, including triples and quads and people STILL have trouble with loading and unloading.
Again, are people just dumb?
Also, towers have guides. The chair stops swinging side to side around the tower. What a loser.
I don't have a fear of heights, but I put the bar down every time. The story years ago about the lift spinning backwards all of sudden will never leave my mind. I know or "hear" that it cannot happen with modern lifts, but shit happens. And if I'm sharing the ride with some kooks I don't trust them to not fall off and grab my skis on their way down. Which makes me smile as my buddy Johnny 'had' to jump off the Couch right at the base (I forget why, but probably dropped a glove as he was getting a joint) and he briefly grabbed my skis for a millisecond and let go [emoji33]. We laughed our asses off afterwards.
And the town lift at Park City didn't have a bar and that thing is up pretty damn high. My kids were fairly little and on the chair behind me. That's when it crossed my mind also.
In this bubble wrap society I'm shocked we can have a chair without a bar these days.
But yeah, people suing ski areas should be shot...unless it's Vail or Alterra. [emoji23]
I was on a Riblet decades ago and leaning forward to look at a skier below when it stopped short and I had a serious oh shit moment. Since then, if I'm on a chair with no safety bar I pretty much always have a hand around the center pole or the back, regardless of conditions.
I sued a ski resort, and won.
The year was roughly 2007-2008. The resort, SnowBasin, Utah. It had been snowing heavily for almost a week and the strawberry gondola had been shut down during the storm. I and a few friends timed it right and were on the lift drooling at the fresh tracks we were going to consume. As the lift neared the top a snowcat grooming the trail directly under the lift was approaching. I could see clearly that the increase in snow levels wasn't accounted for and the boom of the cat was going to hit the gondola I was in.
I stood up and tried to run to the other side of this small gondola when it hit. That's all I remember.
I woke up in a life flight helicopter on the way to the hospital, my world was nothing but pain. Eventually I was on the path to health when the medical bills starting coming in. I called Snowbasin assuming they would have no problem paying the tab for the life flight and hospital stay. Boy was I wrong - they denied it ever happened, they tried to tell me I faked the whole thing, they told patrollers nothign happened (as recounted to me by a good friend who was a patroller) They took the busted up gondola out of rotation and hid it.
I was unemployed with 30k in medical bills. I called a lawyer. He wanted me to go for as much as I could, I held back his intentions and settled for enough to cover the bills. In hindsight I was dumb as to this day I still have pain from that incident - I should have sued them for every penny they had.
Ski resorts are businesses, many are just evil empires, with a few exceptions. When they do wrong, Sue the hell out if them.
I’ve worked with adaptive skiers for more than 10 years. This situation makes little sense.
The article sez he’s an experienced sit-skier. It also sounds like he was riding independently (no able-body assist necessary to load/unload)
At least here at Mt Brokenchair Independent sitskiers do not get buckled into the lift. And the safety bars on the mountain’s Dopplemayer chairs do not provide any restraint for a bucket (sitski). We hook our student’s buckets to the chair backrest by web and a ‘biner. But we have an instructor and a volunteer on each side of the bucket to assist the loading, securing, unsecuring and offloading.
Independent bucket riders sit to the far side of the chair so they can use one rail to brace as needed.
So i don’t understand how the lift operator was supposed to secure this guy to the chair. And if a lift operator was needed to secure him to the chair when loading, just how was the rider supposed to unsecure himself at the top?
That idea ended with The Pig War of 1859
Mine wasn’t as bad but in 98’ I was riding a lift at Indian Head and it started swinging side to side, kept getting worse until it swung into the tower and got caught on the tower guard. It pulled the chair back then ripped it off the cable. I and the chair fell 20’ and broke my arm and thumb. Indian Head blamed me for shaking the lift. Engineers report found they had modified the tower guards putting them too far out and made it so the chair gained sideways momentum. Attorney was totally incompetent and just kept pushing us to settle. Mediators recommended $50k in damages but Indian Head refused and offered $25K. Attorney told us we had little choice but to accept or spend $10s of thousands of dollars to take it to trial. Engineer cost $10k, attorney took $8k, and the health insurer who paid my medical bills took $10k. His practice went under a year later.