Damn you Mild Inconvenience!
So I went snowboarding on Saturday, I felt sure I could get in a few runs with my friends before ducking out a little early and catching some roller derby. But then... Mild inconvenience!
I have been a skier since 1984. I have skied on 3 continents, including Antarctica. I have spent more time on the slopes, than I have spent at some of my jobs. This means I have ridden my share of ski lifts. I have ridden rope tows, handle tows, magic carpets (it's a kind of lift not a real magic carpet), t-bars, poma lifts, chair lifts, highs speed detachable quad chair lifts, and gondolas. Some of these lifts, have been brand new, some have been virtual antiques. But on Saturday, for the first time, I got stuck.
Ski lifts stop all the time, usually because someone isn't paying attention and gets knocked over by a chair, or a ski pops off or a ski pole gets dropped when the chair scoops them up. Usually the chairs begins their climb again in less than a minute as a red faced skier endures the silent smug mockery of everyone watching.
But on Saturday, the lift stayed stopped. My friend and I watched the dwindling number of skiers and boarders descend the hill beneath us. Since no new skiers were getting off the lift the hill emptied pretty quickly. Gently, the chair glided backwards a foot. This never happens. Ski chairs go backwards about as often as bullets do. At that point I knew something was wrong. Luckily it was a relatively warm windless afternoon and both I and my friends were wearing good warm ski clothing. Ten minutes later a ground crew snowmobile roared up the hill underneath us. Ten minutes later, it went by in the other direction. The chair glided backwards another foot. and stopped.
Four or five chairs in front of us, where the contour of the hill brought the hill to within 15 feet of the chairs, snowboarders unbuckled their boards and let them drop. Actually they kicked them to the side. Then they slid out of the chairs until they hung beneath them and dropped. they landed in untracked snow, buckled their boards on and rode away.
Now the ski patrol began to show up and looked at the lift and began speaking into their radios. Presently the grounds crew came back with plastic drums tied to the back of their ATVs and snowmobiles. The ski patrol gathered in pairs, one pair to a lift tower.
That particular lift is a double chair, so two people go up at a time. In a previous weekend I noticed the chairs were numbered, and bored, watched them go by until, the number passed 88 and reset to one. So there are 44 chairs going up the hill and 44 chairs going down. It was a busy day so all of the chairs were occupied, although several of the chairs must have had only one rider. The upper limit therefore of the chair is 88 riders. There were probably 70-75 of us then stuck swinging in the breeze.
I had my ipod, and I can truthfully say that electric six is a pretty good soundtrack to listen to while watching a chair evac unfold. The Ski patrol began moving beneath each chair and yelling reassurance to us. Once they let us know everything was going to be OK and they were going to get us out there as fast as they could, they returned to the plastic drums. They brought out rope, and a sort of bosun's chair designed to be suspended from the rope. and the gun. The gun is a bare bones steel stock and a softball sized rubber ball connected to a bucket of pull string. (this is plastic string designed to unspool quickly and not tangle primarily used to pull cable through a conduit when installing wiring in buildings.) with a loud bang, the ski patrol fired the ball over the ski lift cable and the pull string spooled out behind it. Another ski patroller quickly gathered the ball and attached the climbing rope to it. As the climbing rope was pulled up, it carried a steel tube that fastened to the lift cable, allowing the rope to slide over the lift cable without abrasion. Then the chair was attached to the climbing rope and pulled up to the lift cable, while one patroller held a thin guy rope attached to the bottom of that chair which kept it from swinging and hitting someone.
Once the evac chair was raised to the lift cable, it was allowed to slide to the first chair. The skier in the clair was instructed to put a strap over his head and shoulders, and then slide onto the evac chair. The patrollers then belayed the evac chair to the ground. This procedure repeated for the second rider of the chair lift. Then they took the whole mess down, moved down the hill to the next chair and started over. I was in the chair for about two hours before I got down.
And that is why I couldn't go to roller derby on Saturday night. Sorry.