Speaking of the subject, I have never fallen off a lift midway, although some years ago (and not in the past two ski seasons), I have had plenty of my share of mishaps loading or unloading chairlifts.
Here are some of my examples:
In 2007, my dad and I made a two day trip to Crested Butte. On the first day, we made a trip up the Teocalli lift. This taught me to dislike centerpole lifts, since I somehow got pushed away out of the loading area, and ended up riding with another guy one chair behind.
In 2009, I have had two cases (of which I either read or have experience myself).
On January 10, 2009, we were skiing in Breckenridge. While the day went normal in every way, the electronic boards at the base areas were displaying this message:
"
Witnesses to incident at Mercury lift please contact lift attendant or call __________."
You can obviously guess the lift I mean. I can only confirm that, on Peak 9, some incident of some sort happened that involved the Mercury SuperChair. While I rode the Mercury SuperChair four times that day, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary of the lift, although either my dad or my sister saw a guy being taken down in a stretcher. If correct, someone probably had jumped from the lift.
That March, my dad and I were in Keystone, and loading the Montezuma Express lift. But with a ski school group in front, we were trying to give them a little space for the attendant to load the little kids into the chair (you know, the people who are so short their bottoms aren't above the chair seat when standing). I think we may have waited a bit too long, so we were moving up to the loading area just as the next chair was completing its turnaround. What happened next ended up with one of my skis coming off, having to come up two chairs behind us. It made it very awkward to get off the Montezuma Express lift at the top.
I should also note that a high speed quad is defined as "a chairlift that has the ability to carry all four people needed for a self-contained mishap at the unloading area, including the skier who made the misunloading first, the skier who ran into him, the skier who ran into the first two, and one witness." A high speed six pack is a chairlift that carries all four people needed for a self-contained unloading mishap plus two more, including the skier who made the misunloading first, the skier who ran into him, the skier who ran into the first two, the skier who ran into the first three, and two witnesses.
This post has been edited by DonaldMReif: 12 October 2009 - 06:01 AM