With the last accident of the fixed-grip chairlift in Astun and stories of guests having to be evacuated on a couple of lifts lately in Winter Park and Telluride, one might worry about the safety of getting on any lift.

Safety on lifts- Are Ski Lifts Unsafe?

Getting on lifts is very safe. They do get maintained yearly and their parts get changed due to wear and tear. And technology has gotten much more safety in the past years. But accidents do happen.

Most times, accidents are due to human error, as, per example, for not putting the safety bar down, or in the case of surface lifts, due to not using the lift as it is intended. Many times, on surface lifts you see people just slaloming or grabbing the surface lift in a way that is not supposed, and that can cause the button lift or t-bar to derail.

In chairlifts, the safety bar prevents you to jump out of the lift if the lift must do an emergency stop. Have you ever been on a lift where the cable moves up and down after a stop? It is much better to have that bar down! In Europe, almost all lifts I’ve been to, now have a kid’s stopper. This prevents kids to slip down the bar, something I was always terrorised when taking my kids skiing when young. That stopper makes it more uncomfortable to put your poles under your bum when riding up the chairlift but are there for a good cause. In the US, there were some lifts with no safety bar and some with no footrest, which I always found incredible… more in a country where people sue a lot!

It is important not to lift the bar until you are ready to disembark. I always get paranoid that people do not lift the bar at all and you are stuck on arrival, but I tend to take my skis off the footrest before the last tower, and then lift the bar at the last minute. The idea is to try to avoid skis getting stuck with the footrest in the moment of raising the bar!

The accident on the chairlift in Astun, Spain. Are Ski Lifts Unsafe?

Reading through all the comments and different articles of what happened in the chairlift of Astun, although the accident is still being investigated, it seems that there was some mechanic failure of some part giving way to the ropes to fall to the ground on the top station of the chairlift, causing the big wheel that brings the chairlifts back down -that should be parallel to the ground, to fall to the ground and stop by the last lift tower. This made the nearest chairlifts to the end of the line to bounce up and down and make some skiers being ejected of the lift. Fortunately, it was not a rope breaking as that could have caused all the chairlifts to fall and the accident would have been even worst!

There were people that finished in hospital but for what I see, it seems that they are recuperating well. Hopefully they are back to normal soon!

Another accident I remember of is the one of Gudauri in Georgia, that was shown in a terrorising video showing the chairlifts starting going backwards and throwing riders off the lift while doing so. I am not going to link the video as I find it horrible, but here is an article about that accident.

Another horrible accident was that tram that fell in the town of Stresa, in Lago Maggiore, just when Covid regulations were loosening. This accidents caused 14 deaths and was due to not complying with security, as it was proved later.

Evacuations of Lifts – Are Ski Lifts Unsafe?

Evacuations of lifts happen, and for that, ski patrols keep on practicing how to evacuate people all the time.

After the accident of the chairlift in Astun, people were protesting that it took too long to evacuate all the riders of the lift. But that can be a fact when ski patrols have to bring down one person at a time, with harness, and in difficult sections of the mountain.

I remember when I was young, once, the Marte chairlift in Las Leñas closed due to some problem, and my roommate was stuck for three hours before being brought down. I slept in that day, so I have missed being stuck! She was super cold after that! But she was brought down safe and sound by the professional ski patrols of Las Leñas.  And I was happy I slept in!

In 2016 the Panoramic Mont Blanc lift, that unites Punta Helbronner in Courmayeur with Aiguille du Midi, in Chamonix, got stuck, and the passengers had to overnight in the cabins, as the light came down and it was too risky to do the rescue at the time! It was September and even though it might have been “warm” at that time, is never too warm in altitude, and I can imagine that, for those passengers, passing the night in the cabins must have been awful!

I was in Italy at the time, and I remember the Italian TV news was saying that the people on the cabins were calling the Compagnie du Mont Blanc to let them know they were stuck, (as supposedly they run the lift, not the Italian side), and they were getting the answering machine that their offices were closed! The Italian rescue was on site, but it got too dark to make the evacuation and it took some time to get everyone down. Eventually everyone was rescued and taken down safe and sound!

More info:

Ski Magazine – on ski lifts safety and the recent Winter Park and Telluride evacuations.

The Guardian – on the Panoramic Mont Blanc lift evacuation

Georgian Journal – on the Gudauri accident

Nevasport – on the Astun chairlift (in Spanish)

Lugares de Nieve – on the Astun chairlift (in Spanish)

El País – on the Astun chairlift accident (in Spanish)

BBC– Accident of the Stresa cable car

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Featured Image: Peak 2 Peak Gondola in Whistler Blackcomb. Photo: The-Ski-Guru. Are Ski Lifts Unsafe?