Posted on 12/23/2011 8:25:24 AM PST by BenLurkin
The death of a 7-year-old boy who fell 52 feet from a chair lift at a Lake Tahoe ski resort is under investigation.
John Henderson, a second-grader and a seasoned skier, was riding with fellow members of a local ski team Sunday when he fell off the Mount Lincoln Express chair lift at Sugar Bowl, a popular ski resort near Squaw Valley...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
That poor kid.
Prayers for his family.
Was the safety bar down...?
If he was with his ski team, it was possible they were horseing around the way kids do, punching each other in the arm, reaching across, whatever, and slipped under the bar.
The story give no accounts or details. No matter how it happened, it is still a tragedy.
They have some of the scariest chairlift rides around. I could barely stand it when they came to a stop and your over one of the cliffs with an amazing distance to the ground. I can’t imagine the horror not only of the fall, but of the poor kid left in the chair alone.
Just seven. There really should be an age limit older than that to ride on a chair without an adult. Seven shouldn’t be without an adult. Really. Not on those lifts.
“was riding with fellow members of a local ski team Sunday..”
I’m sure those fellow members know exactly what happened — I hope it wasn’t horse play that included pushing, or someone is going to have to carry quite a load of guilt for a long time.
NO! NO MORE REGULATIONS! I'm sick of a perpetual nanny-state world - this is a parent's responsibility, not the ski resort's!
To a statist every tragedy is an excuse to pass a new law. We are always one law away from paradise.
I’m with you- i am not for a GOVERNMENT regulation, but the ski resort itself could impose this rule
The trouble with these rules is its not really the responsibility of the ski resort to care for 7 yr olds.
Its their job to provide a safe environment against expected risks. Skiing is dangerous and you can get hurt.
Letting 7 yr olds ride a chair lift by themselves is idiotic of the parents or adult chaperones.
Good thought. The goal of the statist is a world without risk. Every activity is regulated, and every accident is a crime.
How sad, I doubt there was any natural snow for him to land on... Very dry up there this year...
They don't all have safety bars and I suspect this one didn't.
Any number of things could have happened to a kid that size, horsing around being one of them. Or he could have been leaning forward messing with his boot like I've done many times.........
True enough. He could have been horsing around, or turning to say something to another kid and slid off the seat. Or any number of things.
If it didn’t have a safety bar, it should have. Even so, I see many people on the ski lift going up the mountain with the safety bar up.
Having started skiing when I was 4, my buds and I were damn good skiers at age 7. Virtually every non school day was spent on the slopes, our parents dropped us off at 8:30 a.m., gave us money for lunch then picked us up at 5:00 p.m........
And keep in mind this kid and his buddies were members of a team and all skiing together......
I've seen adults trying to get on lifts who obviously had no business in even leaving the lodge.......
Sugar Bowl does not have much for beginners or intermediates, the place does have some serious terrain, I have skied there back around 1990 and I actually worked for Heavenly down at South Shore.
There was a movie filmed there about a blind Vietnam vet, a really good serious and funny actor, I forget the name of the movie but the scene of the gondola being pepper sprayed was interesting, they used a gondola from another ski resort. And when the baddie was cut in half and fell down the cliff, well that was just Hollywood magic.
It always blows my mind how many people I see ride the lifts with the bar up... don’t know if this happened here, as a second grader he certainly could have slipped under the bar even if it was down.
Having started skiing when I was 4, my buds and I were damn good skiers at age 7. Virtually every non school day was spent on the slopes, our parents dropped us off at 8:30 a.m., gave us money for lunch then picked us up at 5:00 p.m........
And keep in mind this kid and his buddies were members of a team and all skiing together......
I've seen adults trying to get on lifts who obviously had no business in even leaving the lodge.......
I just checked Sugar Bowl’s webcam. They have hardly any snow, you can see terrain poking up through what’s there.
This kid must have hit pretty hard.
The only way to get up the hill is on a chair lift. This particular chair was a quad - with a safety bar. Unknown if the bar was up or down, but it's not that hard for a kid to slide off the seat, under the bar, even with it down. Ski pants can be slippery, and the seats can be slippery.
With an adult on a 4 person chair - even if in one of the two middle seats, s/he may not be close enough to grab a kid sliding off. When you move to a 6 person chair - clearly all that adult could do would be to try and have the kids pay attention to their situation, as it's not possible to be close enough to everyone on the chair to intercede.
Then you have the issue of liability. In a case like this, the people on the chair were on the same team but no reports that they were siblings. The resort isn't going to staff chairs with kids on them - too expensive and too much liability. Parents usually don't ski with the team - many of them don't ski as well as their 7 year olds. Why then would a random adult - either associated with the team or not - be willing to take on the liability of the "required adult"? I often help out the ski school instructor who has a pack of kids and ride up with some of the kids on a chair. However - if I had to be a legally designated adult for that chair, I'd certainly pass and ride up with my ski buddies. Why should I put myself in that position?
A sport like skiing has many risks. Coming down the hill is usually much riskier then going up the hill. It's sad when you read these stories, but when you live around a bunch of resorts, you unfortunately see them every few weeks. Most of the tragedies happen when coming down the hill, but chair lift accidents do happen.
Thoughts and prayers with the parents.
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