How Safe Is That Chairlift?

A FATAL ACCIDENT focused attention on chairlifts, but they're still the safest way to travel the hills.

For a device originally designed to haul bananas, ski-resort chairlifts have a remarkable record for safely transporting humans.

In the past 23 years, only 13 U.S. skiers have died in chairlift-related accidents - in spite of an estimated 8.4 billion lift rides over the same period, national ski-industry officials say. Non-fatal accidents, though more common (187 since 1973), also are rare.

Yet a mysterious, fatal lift accident Dec. 23 at Whistler, B.C., has skiers around the nation casting a newly suspicious eye upward at the hook-and-cable mechanism keeping them aloft over mountainous terrain.

Of particular interest to skiers are high-speed "detachable quad" lifts, such as the one that failed at Whistler. Until safety inspectors and insurance representatives finish their homework, no one at Whistler will speculate about the cause of the accident, which killed a 25-year-old Vancouver skier and injured nine others. But basic facts about the accident are known.

On the afternoon of Dec. 23, the Quicksilver Express, one of the resort's busiest high-speed shuttles, was "downloading" skiers from the mid-mountain level to the Whistler Creekside base. Downloading (riding the chairlift downhill, rather than up) is rare at most ski resorts. Typically, it's done only during emergency evacuations or by lift employees shuttling back to the base. But it is commonplace in early winter at Whistler, whose massive vertical drop (5,280 feet) means ski conditions can be great on the upper mountain, but the ground might be bare and unskiable near the base.

Skiers on the mountain that day said the Quicksilver lift was running about half full, with skiers loaded onto nearly every chair. Many other resorts that download riders load only every other chair, to reduce downhill weight loads. But the Quicksilver lift "is designed and certified for 100 percent download capacity," said Whistler spokesman David Perry.

Winds were light that day, and temperatures well above freezing. No unusual problems were reported by lift operators. But around 3 p.m., on a lower, particularly steep section of the 1 1/4-mile-long cable, a chair with two skiers aboard broke loose from its cable grip, sliding down the cable and colliding with the chair in front of it. The first chair broke free from the cable, crashing more than 30 feet to the rocks.

Up on the cable, a chain reaction ensued. The chair hit from behind by the first failed chair also slid forward, striking another chair, which slid and struck another. The three chairs dangled aloft until they struck a lift tower, at which point all three plunged to the ground.

Each of the four chairs involved in the accident had riders aboard, Perry said. In addition to the fatality, nine people were injured, some seriously. The lift was shut down, and 155 stranded skiers were evacuated with rope slings.

The Whistler accident could not have happened on an older, "fixed-grip" chairlift. Fixed-grip chairs, as the name implies, are physically attached to the moving cable. A poorly maintained chair conceivably could fall off, but it would drop straight to the ground, not tangle with other chairs.

Conversely, detachable quads aren't permanently attached to the cable. They ride on top of it, with a grip mechanism specially designed to clamp onto the cable - and not let go until it is "told."

These lifts, introduced in Colorado in the early 1980s, solved an age-old chairlift dilemma: Getting skiers up the mountain quickly, but slowing down in time to make loading and unloading safe and easy. During loading and unloading, the metal poles that support the chairs slowly ride an overhead rail system built into lift stations at the top and bottom of the hill. Once skiers get on or off, the chairs are automatically transferred onto a fast-moving (13 feet per second, in Quicksilver's case) cable, where the grip mechanism latches on for the quick ride up or down.

Failures are exceedingly rare. Veteran ski officials say they can't recall another incident like the one at Whistler.

After the accident, rumors spread that riders on the first chair to fall were rocking it severely, causing it to swing and perhaps jump off track. Whistler officials won't comment, but industry officials say it shouldn't matter: Lifts grips should never release in mid-flight.

Detachable quad lifts are $2 million-plus machines that operate under strict tolerances with redundant safety systems. If something goes awry or weather gets too bad, the lifts either shut themselves down or are shut down by operators. Other resort operators are eager to find out why that didn't happen on Quicksilver.

The accident investigation might not be complete for weeks, and the lift is closed indefinitely. But the focus has shifted to the chair's manufacturer, Lift Engineering Ltd. of Carson City, Nevada. The company, whose chairlifts are identified as "YAN" lifts, is one of four major high-speed chairlift manufacturers. The others are Poma, Doppelmayr USA and C-TECH.

No YAN lifts are in use in Washington or Oregon. The new high-speed quad chair at White Pass is a Doppelmayr. Crystal Mountain's Rainier Express, Timberline's Magic Mile Express and all three new detachable quad chairs at Mount Hood Meadows are Poma lifts. Doppelmayr built the Glacier Chaser at Big Mountain, Mont., and all the detachable quad lifts at Blackcomb Mountain and Mount Bachelor.

However, many YAN lifts similar to the Whistler lift are in use at Lake Tahoe-area resorts, and a fair number are sprinkled throughout the Northwest. Schweitzer Resort near Sandpoint, Idaho, has a YAN lift, the "Great Escape" quad chair. But it's a different design and hasn't caused problems, said spokesman Bill Mullane.

The greatest Northwest concentration of YAN chairs is at Sun Valley. The resort, which invented the modern chairlift in 1936, borrowing a design from a hook-and-lift machine used to load bananas into ships, has spent millions in the past decade on high-tech lift construction. Twelve of the resort's 17 lifts now are YAN chairs, including all seven high-speed detachable quads. The mountain has a good safety record and has experienced no unusual trouble with YAN lifts, a spokesman said.

But that hasn't been the case everywhere. A Reno newspaper reported the Whistler accident was the fifth in the past 10 years involving a YAN lift.

Indeed, Whistler's Quicksilver Express, built in 1991, was troubled earlier this year. In November, a chair plummeted from the lift during testing. Whistler retooled all the lift's grips after that incident and pronounced it safe.

That fact has left some Whistler skiers wary: The mountain employs two other other YAN lifts. Both are of a different design, and no unusual problems have been reported. But skiers still wonder: Are detachable chairs as safe as they think?

Operators and inspectors say yes.

Virtually every chairlift in North America is inspected not only once, but as many as three times annually by engineers.

In Washington, chairlift safety falls to Washington State Parks. The state hires two engineers, each with more than 20 years experience, to inspect all state chairs annually, said Chief Engineer Tom Boyer.

The state has legal authority to close a lift if it doesn't meet standards. But it's not likely to be exercised. Boyer said any Washington resort would shut a lift down on its own if safety was a question.

If they didn't, their insurance carrier would.National insurance companies specializing in ski-lift coverage have their own engineering departments that conduct annual inspections.

Also, most Western ski areas operate on U.S. Forest Service land, and a safety inspection is part of each resort's annual federal use-permit process.

Similar inspections are conducted in Canada, where British Columbia's Aerial Tramways Branch has government authority over lift safety.

The bottom line, most skiers and industry officials agree, is that chairlift travel is remarkably safe: Much safer, in fact, than driving to a ski resort - or plunging down a mountain on skis or a snowboard.

That only makes the accident at Whistler, widely regarded as North America's premiere ski resort, all the more intriguing. If it happened there, couldn't it happen anywhere?

It couldn't have. Shouldn't have. But did.