OMG - how terrifying are ski lifts?

[bbcessex]

😱😱😱 just watching a video on my friend’s Facebook page; she’s been skiing.

I’ve never been - quite fancy the skiing, but there is absolutely no way I could get on an open ski lift.. I don’t like ‘open heights’ - makes me tremble just watching the videos 😱😱

AIBU to think you have to be a dare devil for even the ski lift, met alone the black runs?

MrsJosh yes... I was thinking of approaching the top of the M d G rather than the bottom. I don’t mind the ladders at all but no matter how many times I go down that arête I have to give myself a bit of a talking to in the tunnel!

On another trip a kid in front fell & knocked me off a drag lift, I knocked someone else off, got thrown across the mountain, got a ski in my head & needed the mountain doctors. I refused to get in the body bag on skis so skies down with my head bandaged up covered in blood. I looked like a skiing zombie version of the children in need bear.

They only have open lifts where I am, so I can't see the problem with them.

I've been skiing my whole life though, and work at a ski resort, so it's not likely that I'm your target with this thread.

Give me chair lifts over drag lifts any day. My cheeks are burning now remembering once when I refused to let go of the damn thing despite having already fallen off. The Aussie lifties were killing themselves laughing at me...

That's a T-bar to you.

I bloody hate taking my kids on chairlifts!!

I dropped my DD off a chairlift once 🙈

She must have been 6 years old.

It was a really old rickety 3 man. I was too busy paying attention to her and hadn’t realised a fat bloke had got on with us. Because of the weight imbalance it swung one way and then the other and there was no side to it so DD just slipped off.

I had hold of her but the lift wasn’t stopping so I decided it would be best to drop her before it got too high.

She landed on her skis and was absolutely fine as it wasn’t that high, but all I could hear was “Mummy, you dropped me!!”

They did stop it eventually and put her on a later chair.

I refused to go on that chairlift with my children for the rest of the holiday!

The place I work had this old chairlift open until it was decommissioned in 2010.

It would only open in the most crystal clear, perfect conditions, and it took close to 40 minutes. No ski rests, so your skis would be hanging the whole time.

It was fab.

The ski lift in Blizzard Beach, Orlando was enough to put me off the idea of ever going on a skiing holiday!

I wish I hadn't read this thread. Meant to be going snowboarding again next year and it's reminded me how terrified I am of the lifts.

It says a lot about how wonderful skiing down is that anyone is ever prepared to get on a lift/ button/ gondola a second time ever!

Oh lord those clips are brilliant Nanny

Had me absolutely crying at Kevin

Very CatsandCairmgorms I saw people going out at the top and it looked terrifying. And I thought I was a mountain lover with a good head for heights.

I love the mountains & I love the ski lifts. All of them. (Just not tow ropes, but fortunately they’re rare these days.). I FAR prefer ski on/ski off though, as carrying skis is a hassle.

It’s FAR less enjoyable when you’re responsible for small people. In fact, the whole ‘ski thing’ I find FAR less enjoyable with kids.

One time we were on a ski on, ski off lift, we’d put our non skiing friend in the middle of a four man. We all got off at the top...when I say we ‘all’ I really mean 3/4 of us. K was going around the end and back down, in a bit of a panic. We were helpless with laughter as she was shouting ‘you didn’t tell me to get offffffff’ 🤣😂🤣. I think we all thought it was pretty obvious...we were at the top, lifting the bar & saying ready...but apparently not.

Good times.

CatandCairngorn - what the eff is that?????

LeighaJ - I don’t mind rollercoasters - I do make sure the automatic bar is defo locked though!!

Ski lifts are the stuff of nightmares.

Chair lift wise it was once so cold I felt that I was frozen in place my husband had to yank me up and push me off.

Another time when I was learning (lessons) the skier with me skied over my skis so I could not get up and missed the exit so they had to stop and i had to jump down into the arms of a poor canadian woman!

As for other lifts they are worse

I'm a keen skiier and had absolutely no problem with chair lifts as a child but the older I've got the more I seem to be bad with heights. Last time I went skiing I felt quite sick on the lifts. We once had a gondola break down and our friends had to be rescued by helicopter we were not high up when it broke so we were told to just jump down - they then had to remain in the gondola for hours while they attempted to fix it then called the helicopter out. They can laugh about it now!

My kids are just back from a week of skiing lessons and "using a chairlift" and "using an anchor lift" are in their little book as skills to be mastered. They didn't even put them a lift for the week last year...
The kids are luckily too young to have any fear. At their little race at the end, I watched the two of them get on the anchor lift together, start an argument, come to blows, fall off and then have to ski down a really steep bit to go back into the queue. Pair of muppets

I went ski-ing once. Had a complete meltdown the first time on the chairlift. By Day 7 I was loving it like a fairground ride

I fell off a chair lift the first time I went on one. I hadn’t sat back far enough in the seat and was trying not to clash my snowboard with the person on skis who’d squeezed in with us. It didn’t have a bar (or we hadn’t pulled it down - I can’t recall) and when it jerked up to start going higher, I fell right out! They had to stop the lifts and rescue me. It was embarrassing but I hadn’t injured myself thankfully. The worst thing was having to get straight back on the lift and try again, this time without my boyfriend, otherwise I was stuck on my own. I just about managed it.

Yanbu. The main reason I don't like skiing!

"Kevin is an absolute liability!"

I have just snorted so hard and nearly choked on my coffee pahahaha 😂😂😂

Nanny, thank you so much for those clips, the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, really cheered me up!

I have been on the Val d'Isere lift that goes over the mountain. Going down in a lift (which hardly ever happens) is always much scarier than going up because the ground looks so much further away, when you are not looking into the slope.

But the prize for scariest lift goes to the one at Alp de Huez, which I got onto without know where it was going and what I was letting myself in for. It started out perfectly flat then went through a concrete tunnel, that I later realised was going under the end of the altiport runway. Then, as you emerged from the tunnel, it went over a cliff and you found yourself looking down at the bottom of a valley several thousand feet below you as it transported you downwards to the next mountain...

I like chairlifts a good deal better than the old fashioned T bar ski lifts. I fell off those so many times before I got the hang of using them.

I actually quite like chairlifts now that I'm used to them. You just need to be ready to ski off them when the time comes.

It is a bit cold, though.

They terrify me, also agree with the ones in Japan. A lot of them have no bars at all so you are basically just sitting on a shallow swaying park bench - which rises to vast heights. Utterly terrifying, I had to ask the person next to me to hold me in. I had a terrible fear I would throw myself off the thing.

Everyone else always looks so nonchalant and casual about the whole thing.