Ski Lift Chairs Collided In Lake Tahoe Leading To Bad Scene
If you’ve ever been on a ski lift, there is something so beautiful, so majestic and for some, so terrifying about it. But it’s safe, right? What can happen? This article can happen, as two ski lift chairs collided leading to an incredibly awful scene earlier this week that resulted in injuries to five people.
It happened at Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe on the border of Nevada and California. The “Comet Express”, which brings skiers and snowboarders from the base to the mountain above, had an incredible failure. While the resort has been mum about what exactly took place, photos from independent journalists tell the story pretty clearly.
How Two Ski Lift Chairs Collided
On Monday, December 23rd, the Comet Express at Heavenly Resort experienced a hold. The lift was off, but why?
Well, according to LiftBlog.com, pictures show that one of the ski lift chairs collided with one behind it as it was climbing up the mountain. The impact of a chair sliding at that decline would almost certainly injure people in the chair behind them, which is exactly what happened. The riders were transported to a Reno hospital where their condition is unknown.
Some eyewitnesses say many of the guests fell off of their chair while another eyewitness recalls seeing one person pinned between the chairs. A pretty awful sight.
So how does something like this happen? Chances are you’ve been on the ski lift on Mount Charleston (and if you haven’t you should, the views are lovely in even the summer) and you’ve looked up. Your ski lift chair is connected to the line by a “grip”.
These grips are tightened onto the line to ensure that the chair stays put. Obviously, something happened that caused this grip to fail, leading to this terrible situation.