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neonorchid

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I'll see if I can even get up my kids' 1" cotton rope swing with climbing knots in ski boots, although all you have to do is slide down enough to break the fall. With rocks below no way.
Cotton rope with knots :eek: definitely not what I had in mind!
This -
 

Andy Mink

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neonorchid

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I'm not... I'm 48. I am, however, a total wuss when it comes to heights, where "height" is defined as any distance above ground greater than 2".

I like Stowe's lifts as they're mostly quite low to the ground. This is a good thing.
Fear of heights is a sign of intelligence;)
 

scott43

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Rode the gondola with a guy at Whiteface..pulled out 30' of yellow nylon rope from his backpack..we were stopped at the time..and he said he'd never wait for evac, he'd just go himself.. I thought he was crazy... :huh: But..who knows..
 
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pais alto

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Whoa, thought I was the only one with that hair brained idea (fantasy), but yeah, any climbers or ex-stunt men here with advice on the lightest rope and ratcheting handle's to lower oneself if such a thing exists outside of Hollywood ... @pais alto????
Where I work (properly trained and checked) patrol carries 60 meters of 6 mm static kernmantel (climbing) rope, a mini-rescue 8, a locking carabiner, and a loop of 1 inch tubular webbing for a rappel harness, in the back pouch of our vest for self evacuation.

That said, there are a number of ways to seriously hurt yourself or others if you don’t know for certain what you’re doing. The chair lift can restart while you’re out of the chair but not on the ground because you don’t have a radio to know what the status is, you can fall out of the harness if improperly set up or put on, the rappel rope can slip off whatever part of the chair you mistakenly looped it over and drop you, you can turn upside down if you’re inexperienced and possibly fall out of the harness, you can screw up setting up the brake system and it can fail to hold you as you exit the chair, you can lock up the rope on the braking device by improperly threading it and become a mid-air stranded piñata, you can rappel off the end of the rope, the rope can become stuck in the chair when you try to retrieve it and you can’t tell anyone (no radio) and it can become entangled in the lift mechanism and seriously screw things up when the lift restarts, and/or you can fail to clear the rope properly before you start and rappel onto a knot and as above become a piñata.

Did I scare you yet? Also, if you jump, it’s possible that the sudden unweighting of the chair can send a wave on the cable up to the sheaves (carrier wheels) on the tower and lift the cable off, causing total havoc and possibly dislodging passengers in other chairs. I’m not saying that’s likely, but it’s possible, and I’m told it has happened. Then there’s the ice, rocks, and logs possibly waiting just under the surface to hurt you. Don’t jump unless a patroller tells you it’s okay.

@pais alto , what sort of time-frame would you expect for evacuating 160 people?
“It depends.” :ogcool:

How many chairs are those people spread over? How high are they off the ground? What’s the terrain like under the lift? Are there any medical emergencies on the lift that get priority (requiring ascension or extra hands)? Little kids? Adaptive program? Wind, storm? How many trained rescuers are on staff at the time and available? Is there plenty of evacuation equipment available? Any other things going on somewhere else like unrelated injuries or other lift failures? Any structural issues related to the stoppage like cable off the sheaves/carrier wheels? That said, where I work an hour would be the goal/standard, which actual evacs and practice bear out as reasonable.
 

LKLA

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The Lookout Double is about a mile long (5,300 feet). It has a vertical of almost 1,800 and the terrain below it gets pretty gnarly about half way up once it goes past the Crossover trail. I very much doubt they could have lowered people much faster than a person a minute. They would have certainly needed more than 37 people then.
 
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I very much doubt they could have lowered people much faster than a person a minute. They would have certainly needed more than 37 people then.
If one or two rescuers were working on each span (between towers) then an overall rate of 1/minute or more doesn’t seem unreasonable. It would of course depend on how much equipment was available and the number of actual rescuers and their skill.

But yeah, as I described above, there are a lot of factors that would lengthen it, which is what I was asking about.
 

LKLA

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If one or two rescuers were working on each span (between towers) then an overall rate of 1/minute or more doesn’t seem unreasonable. It would of course depend on how much equipment was available and the number of actual rescuers and their skill.

It would have taken them a good 15 minutes to get me down :D
 

tball

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The new American Flyer six-pack at Copper is almost two miles long. How long is that going to take to evac? I wonder if that went into the thinking of putting a bubble on it?

I carry a backpack when skiing with our kiddos. I wonder what I should add to the pack to keep them warm just in case? Not sure what would be best of these quick ideas:
  • Emergency blankets
  • Hand warmers
  • Extra upper layer
  • Glove liners
  • Thermos with something warm
Any other ideas? Is it worth taking off a jacket to add another upper layer given the heat you'll lose doing so?
 
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Carry some large sized chemical warmers in that pack. I’ve seen 5”x9” ones in hunting stores and on Amazon. A couple for each kid could really help. Maybe carry extra layers sized so they can just go over and not have to take anything off. Like one of dad’s old fleeces or puffy.

At some resorts (like Breck and maybe Copper) and lifts (gondolas), rescuers slide down the cable from towers, which can make for a really fast response.
 

dbostedo

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:roflmao::roflmao: I guess that was back when men were men!!! 30ft jumps!! A lot of Fun!!

I was thinking that must have been back when life was terrible, if a 30 ft lift jump and a slog that leaves you more dead than alive is fun.

Of course, 1943 wasn't exactly a banner year for the state of the western world....
 

LKLA

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I've been working at Stowe for 17 years, this is the 2nd lift vac that I know of in that time. I'm not sure that this is a common enough problem that we need to be prepared for it.

This is the first year in nearly a decade that Stowe has had a lift evacuation - an incident happens about three times a year, statewide, in Vermont.
 

KevinF

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This is the first year in nearly a decade that Stowe has had a lift evacuation - an incident happens about three times a year, statewide, in Vermont.

I’m surprised lift evacuations are that common actually. Stowe has one every 10 years or so, there’s 10, 15 ski areas in Vermont... I would have thought the odds would be about one a year, statewide.

I ride Stowe’s double reasonably often (when the quad line spills out of the rope maze). That thing has always struck me as being on the old and creaky side of life. Surprised it doesn’t fail more often. Might be re-evaluating my lift of choice.:eek:
 

Josh Matta

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anything to keep in mind about this evac, is people were lowered on to one of the steepest ungroomed double blacks on the hill, where some of them could have been planning to ski toll road, or sunrise, a narrow green and fairly blue.
 

CalG

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The call for a lift evac is determined by management. It's a pretty strict issue of time. Code 50 alert, then code 50 evac! Adjustments for temperature,time of day, and the lift mechanics outlook are part of the consideration.
We go out in teams of three, each team responsible for a tower span. There is equipment "up high" for twelve teams. At the base, there can be 30+ teams that walk up or get shuttled. EVERYONE on staff gets trained every year. Of course, patrol trains constantly through the year. The good teams get the tough spans ;-)

With 10 teams (37 evac personnel as in the Stowe example), One person per minute would be easy. Of course the real clock on rate only starts when the call to evac is made. That is not the time when the lift goes down. Wind can slow the process considerably.
We only climb towers for chairs on sheave trains. Some places climb every tower to set evac ropes.
Our last evac (on a weekend) took an hour and a half. A quad chair. I don't recall the load. But we all felt pretty good about it.

I would not attempt a self evac for love or money without a lot of low risk training and experience, for all the reasons presented above! Heed the warning!
 

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