General Ski Lift goes haywire

ShatsBassoon said:
Cant turn off gravity. All safety failed, it was coming down by it's own force
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it isn't gearing down to that slow gear for the corner...usually makes that turn at like 1/3 speed and then speeds back up for the straight section

so sketchy...I would have jumped off up the hill like some folks did...could really fuck somebody up if they thought they were gonna stay on and ride it uphill like normal...I bet somebody got badly injured in that debacle

Had to jump off of one once cause it was stuck, luckily the drop was only like 15 feet and there was some powder to land in

edit...Nevermind what I posted, just noticed it coming down backwards..runaway ski lift
 
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If you look, you'll see that they are coming down backwards.
This is called a rollback. Worst case scenario.
There is nobody on the side of the lift that's now coming, and every chair going up hill is full. When power is lost or other mechanical issues occur and the line stops being hauled up hill it starts to roll back.
The operators have less than 10 seconds to hit the e-brake (usually literally a giant chunk of steel dropped into the spokes of the wheel at the top/bottom that the cable is going around.

After that nothing but catastrophic failure ends it.

If ever start rolling back and it doesn't stop, jump off the lift while you still can, before it picks up speed.
 
MountainMedic said:
If you look, you'll see that they are coming down backwards.
This is called a rollback. Worst case scenario.
There is nobody on the side of the lift that's now coming, and every chair going up hill is full. When power is lost or other mechanical issues occur and the line stops being hauled up hill it starts to roll back.
The operators have less than 10 seconds to hit the e-brake (usually literally a giant chunk of steel dropped into the spokes of the wheel at the top/bottom that the cable is going around.

After that nothing but catastrophic failure ends it.

If ever start rolling back and it doesn't stop, jump off the lift while you still can, before it picks up speed.
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ya that is so messed up

makes me look at steep incline chairlifts a lot differently...so much weight on an incline
 
Watch that second video. About 4.5 minutes in is where the semi controlled chaos starts.
The power and pure carnage (no people, just cinder blocks) is impressive.
 
MountainMedic said:
I had to watch this"classic" many times in trainings. Somebody else here must remember this?
Click to expand...

intro music is amazing
Great video
those guys(5:00ish) almost got hit by blocks. Why stay so long lol? I would have bailed

rest of video is oddly entertaining, testing and trying to break the lift cable

The heat generated at the turn is very enlightening...all that friction and force
 
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Luckily in my country snow is so scarce and skiing so expensive that if I ever even tried to got near a ski lift, trained snow poodles would immediately smell the poverty on me and armed polo players would have me escorted back to the poor house.
 
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