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.”
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.