Child falls from chairlift. - Child now reported dead....sad news.

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/12/19/boy-critical-after-falling-60-feet-from-sugarbowl-ski-lift/


This sends chills down my spine.
Last year in La Plagne my wife, daughter (10) and myself were shuffling forward for a chair when my wife got a little tangled up in her own skis. She hesitated and missed the gap so i stayed with her to help. My daughter continued to board the chair (that we were now behind) and took off alone. She was too small to reach the safety bar and rode the whole journey without it.
We were in the next chair back shouting at her to keep still and sit back.
I still have nightmares of her falling, us having to watch it and worse still having to ride the full trip before being able to get off the help her.

This is the reason ALL children should be accompanied and i firmly believe the operator in La Plagne in our case should have stopped that lift when he saw my little one board alone.

Scary stuff. It sounds like this kid was on a ski team, and I know with local kids here that it's easy for them to become complacent about lift safety when they are on lifts all winter.

Yep not good .... :cry:

Snapzzz wrote:http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/12/19/boy-critical-after-falling-60-feet-from-sugarbowl-ski-lift/

This is the reason ALL children should be accompanied and i firmly believe the operator in La Plagne in our case should have stopped that lift when he saw my little one board alone.

Totally agree..... I know we can joke about on here but that's pretty scary stuff.... I've sat many a time on chairs in Switzerland with the young ones, the instructors put them on lifts with other adults. The lift didn't have any safety stop bar as in to stop them falling through the gap and the main bar was too far for them to reach.... You have to just hold onto them.

Hope the little lad is ok... :(

Trencher will have a better take on this and I'd be interested to here his views but:

When we skiied in Vermont a few years ago the Americans we shared lifts with were not keen on putting the bar down - they reckoned that getting stuck in there was far more of a hazard than falling off :shock:

is this an indictment on Killington's lift system or true of the skiing population in the US in general?

tragic news about the child though - I pray his family gets some good news for Christmas

there are 3 12 yr olds in our party will b keeping a firm grip on them ,i agree with other posts lift should have been stopped thought the states were really keen on stuff like that!

andyoneil wrote:
When we skiied in Vermont a few years ago the Americans we shared lifts with were not keen on putting the bar down - they reckoned that getting stuck in there was far more of a hazard than falling off :shock:

Yes, it's pretty common in the US for people ride up with the bar up (sorta like not wearing a helmet in Europe) :wink: At the hundreds of small ski areas where the lifts seldom get more than twenty feet from the deck, it is common for there to be no safety bar on the chairs. Never heard of people worrying about getting stuck with the bar down.

Snapzzz wrote:[
Last year in La Plagne my wife, daughter (10) and myself were shuffling forward for a chair when my wife got a little tangled up in her own skis. She hesitated and missed the gap so i stayed with her to help. My daughter continued to board the chair (that we were now behind) and took off alone. She was too small to reach the safety bar and rode the whole journey without it.
We were in the next chair back shouting at her to keep still and sit back.
I still have nightmares of her falling, us having to watch it and worse still having to ride the full trip before being able to get off the help her.

This is the reason ALL children should be accompanied and i firmly believe the operator in La Plagne in our case should have stopped that lift when he saw my little one board alone.

I don't think the liftie wouldn't normally worry about a ten year old riding the lift on their own. You might have tried asking for the lift to be stopped, Most lift operators will normally hit the switch when they hear someone shouting stop stop stop (in appropriate language of course). what good it might have done depends on how steep was the take off. If your daughter was beyond reach from the ground, then it was too late. Not all lifties can read the circumstances. At ten for all he knew, she could have seven years skiing under her belt.

Trencher wrote:

Yes, it's pretty common in the US for people ride up with the bar up (sorta like not wearing a helmet in Europe) :wink: At the hundreds of small ski areas where the lifts seldom get more than twenty feet from the deck, it is common for there to be no safety bar on the chairs. Never heard of people worrying about getting stuck with the bar down.

dont mention the H word.....

but seriously - if its common for people not to put bars down then that may have been a factor in this incident?