I laugh, but man do I feel for the guy.
Heights normally don’t bother me at all; except on chairlifts. It’s weird, but when I look down when I’m riding one, I can almost see and feel myself falling. Too many falling dreams I suppose. Add in being naked in public, I’m surpised you don’t see some guy in a striped shirt, brown hat, and pointy gloves lurking in the background of those pictures. Yeesh.
You think they could have thrown a blanket over him or something as they were getting him off…er…down.
The chair is an upholstered board that rests on a rectangular metal frame (think door frame). The board is mounted to the frame with hinges (like a door to a root cellar), so that at the end of the day the board can be flipped up (opening the door) so that snow will not pile up on it overnight. The board is flipped down (closing the door) in the morning so that people can sit on it. Sometimes a liftie will forget to flip the board down, and sometimes wind will flip the board up – either way, it leaves the skier with nothing to sit on – just an empty frame.
If both the liftie and the skier fail to spot the board that was in the up position, then when the skier is scooped up his butt will fall through the open frame. When this happens, most folks are able to brace themselves on the frame, but sometimes they fall through (particularly if they are either little kids, or if they are on a large four person lift with a big open frame rather than a two person lift with a small frame). The folks who fall through are dragged a few yards until the liftie slaps the stop button. Being dragged sometimes causes injuries, but even then the injuries are usually just bumps and burises.
IMHO, the liftie should have stopped the lift immediately upon hearing shouting, be it from the victim or other people waiting to get on the next chair. Obviously the liftie in this case was brain dead for not initially checking to ensure that the board was down rather than up, for not checking that the skiers were properly seated before the lift went too far up the line, and for not slapping the stop button upon anyone shouting. Could have, would have, should have. By the time the liftie stopped the lift, the chair was so far up the line that the fellow was dangling dangerously, rather than only having been dragged in the snow for a few yards. The safest way to get him down without dropping was to reverse the direction of the lift, backing the chair toward the base of the lift where he could be extracted without danger.
Probably something about falling headfirst from a significant height leading to severe injury or death.
Poor bastard, dangling for fifteen minutes with his kid staring down at his taint. I can imagine the family dinner conversations over the next few decades.
I thought that’s what skiing was all about; at least it is when I do it.
Bummer.
So does “ski bum”.
That’s odd… Heights bother me A LOT… Except on chairlifts. For some reason, probably because I’ve done it many hundreds of times, I know the bar is down and that I’ll get where I’m going if I just sit there and don’t do anything.
Heights off edges of buildings or mountains or stuff like that?
I got woozy just now thinking about the last time I was near a cliff on a mountain.
Not as stupid as a busted head. Your wife sounds like the opposite of mine, she’d try to dress me up in a Sponge Bob costume if she thought it would keep me safer when I go skiing. 
Aside from her opinion that I look silly in it, she thinks I’d take bigger risks if I’m wearing it. Just like I drive like a maniac because my car is insured.
There’s always this helmet.
That’s awesome! I want to get that helmet and just wear it around town.
