Hypothetical: What if this had happened at ... Alta

F

flyover

Active member
Three days ago, I posted this on FTO’s Midwest Forum, about a chairlift rollback accident last Thursday at a Wisconsin ski resort:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8400

About an hour-and-a-half later, FTO posted this news story:

http://www.firsttracksonline.com/News/2 ... n-Injured/

For a point of reference, this is what a rollback can, potentially, look like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8rXiN_Oys4

Terrifying stuff.

In the three-plus days since I posted, as of right now, the post has been viewed 22 times, and earned one reply.

Now, just as a thought experiment, imagine this accident had occurred, at say . . . Alta. (Maybe the Cecret lift might be comparable in terms of vertical rise?) By now there would have been at least five pages of discussion, including, at the very least: at East v. West pissing match, a critique of SLC’s fine-dining scene, a suburban-cities-suck vs. suburban-cities-rule debate, an acrimonious global warming discussion, some sort of reasonably well-made argument backed by hard numerical data, an equally well-made argument about how numerical data can’t address the whole issue or misses the point entirely, and maybe even a discussion of the relative merits of the beaches of Southern California, Italy and France.

This particular accident, however, occurred in Wisconsin; so we have 22 views, and one reply.

I’m just sayin….
 
Yea, watching that video is truly frightening. Amazing no one was killed during that accident. Funny thing, I was riding an old beginner chair lift at my local ski area last weekend and the chair stopped and started to slide backwards - maybe going only 12 to 15 feet in reverse, but it is still an unnerving feeling when you're sitting on the chair.
 
Humorous point of view. My take:

1) relative lack of mid-westerners on this forum vs those on the other boards (east, west, etc...).
2) Alta (or many other western locations/eastern locations), being considered shang-gri-la. Wisconsin, well, it just isn't.
3) a number of very small western places with questionable maintenance and operations could also have a lift issue and it would not get all that huge of notice. Not so for any of the big names.
4) A lot of discussion and etc... were evident last year when the Whistler Gondi lift tower collapsed (some here, some on other boards). Whistler being one of the big resort players where it is expected nothing can/will go wrong. Small guys, are always kind of iffier in that regard.

Etc... Not a good thing for the industry to happen anywhere, and certainly newsworthy. But on these boards, the topics nearly all lead to shang-gri-la and best-in-world items (at least from our own points of view). The video is an oldie, but fun one from a Winter Park tear down (they were about to rip it down to replace that lift).

Although I also can't figure out how the simple one sentence answer to the 'skiing from boulder' topic has lead to 5 pages of random all-over-the-map stuff.
 
EMSC":1blmh37x said:
Although I also can't figure out how the simple one sentence answer to the 'skiing from boulder' topic has lead to 5 pages of random all-over-the-map stuff.
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Tony slacking off from his moderator responsibilities, and not addressing thread drift.
 
I suspect the YouTube video is the same one I viewed in the Mt. Bachelor lift maintenance thread a couple of years ago, terrifying indeed.

Given the amount of time that can be chewed up online, most of us are selective about where we browse regularly and sometimes get tunnel vision. I have occasionally raised the issue that some regular FTO users are only bookmarking their own regional forum vs. the board index page. Admin complains that we forum junkies don't check his news items much.

EMSC's points are well taken. The Midwest is off-the-radar for most of us, as reflected my my close decision on whether to go to Lutsen last March. It's unfair, but the lift accident did deserve higher visibility and perhaps should have been placed under "General Discussion" to get more attention. I didn't consider moving it, because by strict logic it was in the right place.

Some thread drifts are easier to resolve than others. Most of them there's a sharp break into a new topic. The Boulder thread is all over the place, not that obvious how or whether to clean it up. There are other moderators here....
 
Tony Crocker":3tqe8xc2 said:
Given the amount of time that can be chewed up online, most of us are selective about where we browse regularly and sometimes get tunnel vision. I have occasionally raised the issue that some regular FTO users are only bookmarking their own regional forum vs. the board index page. Admin complains that we forum junkies don't check his news items much.
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I have a direct link to the Western forum. I check in on the Eastern forum from time to time. I think I looked at the Southern Hemisphere forum a handful of times in the past 5 years. I don't remember ever looking at the Mid-West forum. I almost never look at the front page of the site. Not really into racing, or that some little hill in western NY is having some kind of benefit, or what ever else constitutes "ski news".

One other forum I frequent has avoided the entire issue by steadfastly refusing to break the forum into topic-specific sub-fora. Take a look at the http://www.Supertopo.com discussion forum for a true subject free-for-all.
 
jasoncapecod":108mchix said:
One other forum I frequent has avoided the entire issue by steadfastly refusing to break the forum into topic-specific sub-fora. Take a look at the http://www.Supertopo.com discussion forum for a true subject free-for-all.
Click to expand...

you ain't kidding.. only subject not discussed is Man Grooming ..
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From time to time there is outcry and complaints about the signal to noise ratio over on the Taco stand and occasional pleas to split the forum into at least climbing and everything else sections. Of those that care about such things, the majority quickly decry any splitting and demand that Chris MacNamara leave it as it is.
 
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