A 16-year-old snowboarding girl was rushed to hospital Saturday after falling from a chairlift, despite the presence of a team of patrollers with a net below her who would have convinced me to let go… before escaping it.
“The ski patrol let this girl down today, totally failing to catch her with the net after convincing her everything was fine! Just telling him to jump. I heard the ski patrol say that they had never done that before (…) Mammouth must do better,” insisted a witness to the incident, sharing a video filmed at the Mammouth ski center in California, according to the “New York Post”.
On Saturday, the young girl was going up one of the slopes of the Mammoth Mountain ski area aboard a chairlift when she allegedly slipped from her seat, held with difficulty and misery by the three other skiers alongside her.
It was then that around ten individuals, including patrol officers called to the scene, tried to help him, positioning themselves under the seat to try to cushion his fall, using a net, can we see in the images shot by the skiers in the chair just behind.
Except that after being convinced to let go, the young girl fell several meters, hitting the ground without cushioning, according to horrified witnesses.
The young girl was reportedly transported to the local hospital “for evaluation” in an unspecified state of health, according to the American media.
For his part, a spokesperson for the ski center would have indicated that the teenager was not “completely seated” in the seat when she boarded, so that she would have slipped during the lift, he would have indicated by press release, according to the “Daily Mail”.
“Five Mammoth Mountain employees and eight (skiers) immediately responded and placed the deceleration net under the guest. When she escaped from her chair mates, the net slowed her fall, but did not stop her,” the ski center argued.
According to the National Ski Area Association (NSAA), 86% of chairlift accidents are due to poor behavior or human error. In total, 30 deaths were recorded in a chairlift between 1973 and 2020, including 22 caused by a mechanical malfunction, human error or an undetermined cause, according to data reported by the “NY Post”.
The other eight were apparently caused by a medical condition that occurred during transport.
