"Colorado skier dangling unconscious from lift...": Sometimes You Get Lucky Edition
From the San Jose Mercury News, January 5:
A man who was hanging unconscious from a chairlift at a
Colorado ski area was cut down by a professional slackliner who climbed a
lift tower, slid 30 feet along the lift’s cable and cut the man
free with a knife.
The harrowing rescue was recounted to The Denver Post on
Thursday by rescuer Mickey Wilson and confirmed by Arapahoe Basin
resort. Parts of the rescue were also captured on video and in still
photos.
“It was one of the most scary things I’ve ever seen,
honestly,” Wilson said. “Just seeing a person get the life sucked out of
them. I kind of stopped thinking and just started acting.”
Arapahoe Basin says the man who was caught in the chair was
taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital, then transferred to a hospital
in the Denver suburb of Lakewood. The ski area declined to provide
information on the man’s condition.
However, Wilson said he spoke to the man through FaceTime on
Wednesday night and said that despite a neck brace he appeared to be
OK.
The resort says the man was trying to leave the three-person
lift when his backpack became entangled in the chair. Still dangling
from the chair, he was swept around the bullwheel at the top of the
lift, at which point the operator shut down the lift.
Wilson, 28, a part-time ski instructor at Arapahoe Basin,
says he was on a chair behind the man. About 30 seconds after he
unloaded, he realized what was happening to the man, whom he described
as a friend of a friend.
“As he tried to get off, his backpack caught, and because he
was on the outside of the chairlift, he went around the emergency
chairlift shutoff (trigger),” Wilson said. “He was not only caught, he
was literally being hung by his neck by his backpack. He was hanging
three feet, four feet below the chair. His feet were maybe only about 10
feet off the snow.”
Wilson said he and a few bystanders first tried to create a human pyramid to reach the man, but the group kept tumbling down.
“That’s when I realized — it all kind of snapped together — that ‘I can
climb this tower and get to him,’ ” said Wilson. He has competed
professionally as a slackliner and has won Red Bull events....MORE
So, what are the odds you've got a guy on the scene who thinks "Yeah, I can do that" and then does it?
