Scary lift rides

Can you remember a lift ride that was particularly scary or uncomfortable because of steep/rocky terrain, nasty weather, mechanical sketchiness, weird/intimidating passengers, etc?

I rode the Red Dog chair at Squaw for the first time in Jan 2012.  It made me feel somewhat antsy.  Parts of the ride appeared to be 200' off the ground and there is an impressive view to rider's left as the terrain rapidly drops off to the valley floor below.   I hear the download on Red Dog will REALLY get your attention.

These photos of mine don’t do this lift justice with respect to pucker factor:

Nearby terrain:

The silver queen gondola at ajax is over 200 ft up at times but your indoors. The lodge peak ride at highlands is right on the ridge and has a few exposed spots that make you put the bar down and hold on. Locally....nothing to scary but those 7S lifts with no bar make me wonder some.

sailandski22 wrote:

Locally....nothing to scary but those 7S lifts with no bar make me wonder some.

The old Gunnar triple...I don't think it had a bar and it swayed like crazy if it stopped in the wind

The Vanoise Express tram connecting Les Arcs and La Plagne in France is pretty wild.  Almost 6000 ft in distance with the highest distance to the valley at 1250ft, without a single pylon. The cabin on each tram is double decker and I believe there is a glass floor on the part of the bottom deck, if my memory serves me correctly.

The Peak2Peak gondola at Whistler Blackcomb is even higher with its highest point at about 1430 feet above the ground with a distance of about two miles.

The old KT22 double chair at Squaw with no safety bar went about 500 ft above the rocks and about 1/2 mile between poles as it did so.  Prior to about 2000, if you wanted to ski serious terrain in the west you had to ride chairs with no bars.  I have never understood how the operators could get insurance.

The tram at Big Sky. 15 people per car standing shoulder to shoulder. In bad weather, it was terrifying as the car swayed in the clouds several hundred feet above the rocky Big Coulior.

Aspen Highlands had a lift with no bar in the 80s that was pretty high, strung across 2 peaks with a valley below.  I don't recall ever being on anything higher up than that one.

Sandia Peak Tram in Albuquerque get's pretty scary in high winds. At 2.7 miles in length, it was at one time the longest tram in the world -- all of it at least several hundred feet over jagged rocks. The tram is fun to do, and the view from the top is pretty spectacular with 100 mile views possible on clear days. On good days you can see both Colorado and Texas from the top. The tram provides about a 3800 foot vert climb. The Sandia Peak ski area is pretty uninspiring, though - even in good snow years, which don't happen that often..

https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0LEV1YQ5bxVBYsAJqVXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyN2M3cGJhBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjAxMjNfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=Sandia+Tram&fr=yset_ff_syc_oracle

Serious question: back when no or few chairlifts had safety bars, was there a frequent occurence of people falling from the lifts?  I'm asking because several of the posts above seem to suggest that the lack of a safety bar on a high chairlift makes that lift inherently scary and dangerous.  I grew up out west, never saw a safety bar until I was an adult, and I do not recall ever hearing about someone slipping off of a high chairlift.  I'm sure it happened, but I suspect it was extremely rare.  No bar, so you held on tight.  I do recall seeing a video of a kid falling from a chair at Liberty (I think) last season, and I am pretty sure that chair had a safety bar.

Good questions.  I have been told that presence or absence of a safety bar makes no difference in accident frequency, a very rare event anyway.  When you look at the empty chairs going down, they are tilted backwards enough that it looks very safe.  Some of us, however, have psycological issues with exposure.  Its a little different than fear of heights, I think.  To me, no gondola or tram ride is scary because its enclosed, but sitting in a chair with no safety bar is scary  I grew up skiing in New England and never saw a chair without a bar until coming to the mid Atlantic, where all the lifts at Snowshoe and 7 Springs used to be without bars.  Started going west in the 80s and no bar was then the norm.  A few years ago Utah passed a law requiring bars, previously Alta had none, even the high speed quads.  To get the best of the west, one just had to suck it up and ride those things.  

In the 40 years of living in N VA I hiked Old Rag at least once a year, often several times.  The highest point on the summit is a giant boulder.  You can stand on top and have about 4x4 ft.  It always bothered me to do that yet not at all to stand beside it.  This particular form of fear of height only kicked in if I was the highest thing in the area.  The same thing occasionally kicks in at the top of a steep exposed ski run, even knowing that it is within my ability.  The problem is getting worse with age.  I will still do such skiing but only if my mood, the snow, and the company are all just right.  If not I’ve given myself permission to back off from the situation.  

"back when no or few chairlifts had safety bars, was there a frequent occurence of people falling from the lifts?"

I don't think that bars make chairs safer. They do make it harder to do unsafe things. Over two decads ago I was riding one of Rountops slow doubles and decided to reach forward to do a boot adjustment (bar up). At that point that chair came to a sudden stop and pitched forward (as the old fixed grip chairs always seemed to do). I almost fell out. It would have been my fault because I was really doing something pretty stupid..

The Snow Ghost Chair at Schweitzer freaked me out. I'm not sure how high it was, but it was an old double and gave me some good anxiety.