Age for a kid to ride a ski lift without an adult?

[tball]

I ask after hearing a troubling story about a 6-year-old girl who fell from a lift at Eldora during ski school last weekend. She was riding a double chair without an adult or a safety bar.

See details in this Daily Camera article:
http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-...tition-eldora-mountain-resort-girl-falls-lift

What's the policy in your ski school for kids riding a lift without an adult? What makes sense?

 

[CalG]

Someone on the chair must be taller than the line displayed on the notice board.

That is the rule and expectation at the local ski area.

 

[Erik Timmerman]

At our mountain it is 7 to ride without an adult in a ski lesson. Of course the kid needs to be big enough to get the bar down. I'd never let a kid ride without me if I hadn't already ridden with them and seen them get the bar down by themselves. Of course the safety bar isn't going to be an issue on that lift.

Sounds to me like it is largely a lift issue though more than a ski school one. A mislead like that should have been dealt with right away. Our policy if you were on the chair and the kid miscoded is to just push them off right away, not to try and pull them on.

 

[graham418]

I think its size more than age. I have seen the sign "You must be this tall to ride this lift" somewhere. That being said, some kids are more savvy than other and ride the lifts with no problem, others not so much

 

[tball]

Someone on the chair must be taller than the line displayed on the notice board.

That is the rule and expectation at the local ski area.

Interesting. I don't think I've seen any "taller than" lines in Colorado, or maybe I'm just blind to them. Do you know the height of the line?

I was really glad when I finally found the rule for Copper:

What about riding the chairlift? At Copper Ski and Ride School, all children 7 years old and under are required to be accompanied by an adult in order to ride the lift.
http://api.coppercolorado.com/sites/copper/files/2017-08/FY18_Scooters_Parent_Guide_0.pdf
​

Quite apropos, as we have 7-year-old twins starting that program this weekend. I'm so glad to hear they won't be riding the lift without an adult, as they never have before. They might be ready, but I'd very strongly prefer they didn't ride alone for another year.

No way our kids were ready to ride alone last year at 6-years-old. That's nuts in my mind, especially on an old double lift without a safety bar. I would have never allowed it and asked for my money back for the lessons when I found out.

I'm also grateful that all the lifts our kiddos ride at Copper have safety bars. All but one of the lifts are also high-speed (slowing down for easier loading). Several are very new and have special safety bars that are even better for keeping kids on the lift that are awesome. It's crazy that Colorado doesn't require safety bars.

It's notable that Eldora, a nearby resort also owned by Powdr has such a different policy than Copper. It shows how much more local control Powdr allows than Vail. Not such a good thing in this case.

I hope Eldora quickly acquiesces to the demands of the Boulder Moms. If they haven't figured it out yet, they are going to lose that battle.

 

[Jilly]

I know at Tremblant, it's height, just like a ride at the amusement park. Also the sign shows how the kids are to line up with the adults.

The new Lowell Thomas chair has a safety device so that the kids don't slip through. When the bar comes down there are posts the now go between your legs, not each other. Something like this might have prevented the incident that happened at Grouse.

Love the message from Boulder Moms.

 

[Coach13]

I know when we first skied at Ski Cooper we were surprised their chairs didn’t have safety bars. My kids were about 7 & 9 then and did fine riding alone. I think age, height and maturity level all factor into a safe lift experience. My kids were always very tall for their age and rode lifts alone by age 5/6 and both were always super mature for their age. They always did fine. I’ve also been on lifts with young super immature teens who I worried about the whole lift ride.

 

[jack97]

The some of the feeder places I ski in the NE has a policy that the ski lift bar must come down.

What I told my daughter when she started skiing was you can ski without me and hang with out with friends when all can reach for the bar and pull it down, until then an adult must ride up. I missed those days when I was the "responsible" adult

 

[CalG]

Just a comment regarding "Comort Bars" and children.

First, note the term, The idea that the foot rests are also "safety bars" when it comes to small skiers is absurd!
The bars invite the small person to lean forward, often wrapping arms around the horizontal "restraint". This is exactly opposite of the safe "Butts to the seat back" seating position.

Slipping out under the bar is the most frequent "missload" incident involving children.

Then there is the entire commotion with "raising the bar" at the top. Commotion that is not conducive to a safe and orderly exit from a moving chair. Fixed grip chairs give little time for screwing around.

So, when I hear the words "safety Bar" used to describe the restraining device on typical open seating chair lifts, I cringe with the false promise of the term.

Being "on scene" to more than a few of these incidents will enlighten anyone.

 

[coskigirl]

Another issue is the lack of attention lifties are paying to ensure each and every chair loads correctly. In this incident and one that I witnessed a couple years ago at Eldora the lifties either didn't stop the lift or didn't stop it until several bystanders were screaming at them to stop it. Today at Copper I noticed that the liftie at Excelerator had rigged an orange cone to act as an amplifier off the speaker and so the music was very loud. To a point of uncomfortable for me standing on the side closest to it. There is no way he could have heard someone yelling if there was an issue just up the line.

 

[tball]

Just a comment regarding "Comort Bars" and children.

First, note the term, The idea that the foot rests are also "safety bars" when it comes to small skiers is absurd!
The bars invite the small person to lean forward, often wrapping arms around the horizontal "restraint". This is exactly opposite of the safe "Butts to the seat back" seating position.

Slipping out under the bar is the most frequent "missload" incident involving children.

Then there is the entire commotion with "raising the bar" at the top. Commotion that is not conducive to a safe and orderly exit from a moving chair. Fixed grip chairs give little time for screwing around.

So, when I hear the words "safety Bar" used to describe the restraining device on typical open seating chair lifts, I cringe with the false promise of the term.

Being "on scene" to more than a few of these incidents will enlighten anyone.

So we are supposed to call them "Comfort Bars" and not "Safety Bars"?

Are you aware of the new restraining bars that are explicitly built to be safer for kids?

The Kokomo at Copper Mountain, a 2017 Doppelymer HSQ that I ride all the time with our kiddos has these bars. A peg from the restraining bar come down between each passenger's legs so they can't slip under the bar. It's fantastic because it's designed to be safer.

Are there any studies showing no safety benefit from the old-school restraining bars? Do ski areas release ski lift accident data so these studies can be conducted? Did all the lawmakers passing legislation requiring restraining bars in various jurisdictions do so on just a whim?

While rare, there are several situations where a restraining bar is intuitively safer. A lift malfunction like the one that killed a woman who didn't have her restraining bar down at Granby Ranch is one. A medical issue is another.

Other events where the bar helps in some way must happen at least occasionally, like this just the other day where the bar allowed a Dad to hold his kid long enough for bystanders to break the fall:
https://unofficialnetworks.com/2019/02/28/boys-save-kid-chairlift-fall/

So please don't mind if we continue to call them "safety bars" until shown otherwise.

 

[tball]

Here's the kid-friendly safety bar on the Kokomo at Copper with some passengers about to unload. You can see how the pegs will come down between the legs:

Photo from liftblog.com where you can see more about the Kokomo:
https://liftblog.com/kokomo-express-copper-mountain-co/

The Union Creek lift also out of the beginner West Village at Copper has a kid-friendly safety bar too, but there are four pegs instead of seven, so between each passenger's the legs, not also between each passenger:

https://liftblog.com/union-creek-express-copper-mountain-co/

Do you think kids are safer riding on those lifts at Copper or the fixed grip double Sundance at Eldora where the six-year-old fell without a safety bar (or an adult) on the chair:

https://liftblog.com/sundance-eldora-co/

 

[Smear]

Here in Norway there is official legal regulations that states that:

Children under the age of 10 should normally only be allowed to ride with a chair lift when they are accompanied by an adult in the same chair.

At the local resort we have 4-seat and 6-seat chairs. Instructor/coach to kid ratio is usually way less than that so to make things work it's needed that some of parents volunteer to help out. Happens both in ski club race training and in the resort ski school. Parents without a pass who help out get a vest and can ride the lift for free, but most people have season passes anyway since they are fairly cheap.

It can be a bit of a mess to have enough parents volunteering in our ski club race training. Sort out how many is needed when 0-50% of the kids doesn't show up without telling and to try to keep the responsibilities somehow distributed between the parents. We have a chaos-system It doesn't end up being evenly distributed between parents, but most are OK with that. And it always works out in the end, even on those days when not nearly enough have volunteered beforehand In total I think a chaos-volunteering works better for everyone than a rigid schedule that is forced upon the parents.

To me everything in US regarding safety seem to be so (overly)-regulated so kind of surprising that the chair riding rules seem more strict over here. But in the US system it might cause more headache to use untrained, uncertified and non-insured individuals to take responsibility for the safety of other peoples kids??? And with 2-seat chairs our way would completely break down....

Safety bars:
If you don't take the safety bar down they will stop the lift, go out and yell at you, and then go back in to start the lift again. If there is a queue, then the public humiliation that follows is very effective in ensuring that this doesn't happen very often ;-) Even effective on teenagers.

 

[Wilhelmson]

Our oldest could safely lower the bar around 8 so that's when he started. Our younger daughter who had probably just turned 7 could go with him without an adult.

 

[mdf]

Having ridden as an adult bystander volunteer with small kids in ski school, what scared me was how much they fidget and move around. After a few seconds I exerted my big adult authority and told them to sit still.

 

[RuleMiHa]

A logistics question. How do you get a group of kids in a group lesson to the top in a double if they all have to ride up with adults?

Where do all those adults come from and does that effectively end affordable group lessons?

 

[coskigirl]

A logistics question. How do you get a group of kids in a group lesson to the top in a double if they all have to ride up with adults?

Where do all those adults come from and does that effectively end affordable group lessons?

When I coached I would often ask other adults to help. I often looked for parents skiing with older kids because they likely had experience with young kids and chair lifts. If they hesitated even a little bit I moved on to someone else as they were obviously uncomfortable about something. Now I try to keep my eyes open for instructors who are looking for help because I've been the one waiting at a lift for a long time because I didn't have it.

 

[Bolder]

Here in Europe it seems 1.25 m is the minimum height but honestly it's more about the child's awareness. Our kids rode short lifts alone where I could watch them around age 8. FYI safety bars are not optional here.

 

[DoryBreaux]

For us at work its 6 and under. Only two skiers per coach, one snowboarder per coach on the toe side. If you have more than two/one kids, you either find another coach/instructor/employee and send two with them, or find a member of the public who is willing to ride with a little and send one with them. Makes me reeeeeally glad I work with older kids 95% of the time.

 

[Bolder]

^^Just to elaborate a little bit on ski schools in Europe -- when an instructor has a group class, there's a singles line designated for ski schools. The lifties make sure that there's an adult next to the kid on the lift, and that if you're the adult you know to keep an eye on them, make sure their gear isn't tangled and give them a little boost getting off the lift.