Opinion: Ski resorts not doing enough to protect children
By Dick Penniman
For some people, the idea of “safe skiing” is an oxymoron. Isn’t skiing all about pitting your wits and skill against the raw mountain wilderness? Certainly that was true when skiing was first invented. And, it’s still the case for the backcountry, but not at today’s mountain resorts.
Modern mountain resorts are doing everything they can to make themselves into “family resorts;” theme parks where mom and dad can bring the kids and everybody has fun. But resort operators are not telling you about the real dangers, including those that can be easily fixed but aren’t.
Less than 50 percent of the chairlifts in California have safety bars.
Tragically, in December, a young boy was killed when he fell 60 feet from a chairlift at Sugar Bowl near Lake Tahoe. It is difficult to imagine how such a thing happened at a “family” resort.” But looking realistically, one can see that chairlifts are little more than park benches hung from a cable that bounce across steel towers high above the ground at 1,500 feet per minute.
Most of us wouldn’t deliberately put our child alone or with other kids on a park bench built for adults with no restraints whatsoever, and then allow a forklift to hoist it 60 feet in the air to cruise down the street at 1,500 feet per minute. But this is essentially what is allowed at most mountain resorts in California every single day.
As trusting parents, we often put our precious, young children in the hands of the mountain resort ski school assuming the “professionals” will watch out for them and not allow them to ride on the chairlift without an adult. But, this is exactly what can and often does happen because the resorts have no specific mandate to do otherwise. Even the most disciplined child has a hard time sitting still for more than a couple minutes. It’s not a question of “if” a catastrophe will happen; sadly, it’s a question of “when”.
Tips for parents
Given mountain resorts’ approach to chairlift safety, parents must:
• Ensure the resort has chairlifts with restraint bars and a mandatory policy to lower the bars.
• Ask the resort to see its child chairlift safety policy.
• Learn and teach your child how to ride the chair safely. Make sure they know never to ride up without an adult.
• If you put your child in ski school, inform the instructor about your child’s abilities and challenges, including behavior and special needs. And make sure their policy is to always have an adult ride the chair with the child.
• Make sure your child is properly dressed for the weather and wears his or her helmet properly and at all times.
• Visit SnowSport Safety Foundation for an assessment of safety practices at the resort you intend to visit.
Dick Penniman is the chief research officer of the SnowSport Safety Foundation.
How many kids or adults have fallen from a chair lift while in ski/board school? Everyday I see parents allow their kids to ride on a chair by themselves when not in school or any resort sponsered activity. Don’t just blame the resorts, blame the parents even more.
I was put on lifts at 4 or 5 and taught how to ride safely. I am FAR more concerned about the speeds they lets riders and skiers hit on beginning runs. That, I am sure, causes far more injuries and deaths.
Helmets are required for minor children at ski resorts. Safety bars should be required for all children riding chairlifts.
All in with you Lisa.
The biggest safety issue facing resorts in the young adult skier/rider who likes the speed but lacks both judgment and control to handle that speed on runs that are heavily populated.
It’s a tough fix attempting to slow down skiers/riders since that’s most the fun, but I’ll tell you getting slammed into by a 160 lbs adult if you’re a kid or a woman can be very dangerous.
I like speed but I do my skiing early before the crowds arrive.
I agree completely that not enough is being done to address child lift safety. I have looked at every resort in Tahoe and have found the existence of quality safety bars on chairlifts and or available puma lifts (which are much safer) to be severely limited. It’s as if the ski industry passed children by – high speed / high elevation lifts were installed to accommodate volumes of adult skiers, and very few of the lower elevation lifts and pumas/t-bars/rope tows that are safer for kids were left in place.
I’ve been skiing my whole life (since age 3), but until the situation is addressed adequately in California, we will need to find other, safer things to do with our children.
Yes, how about parents do more to protect their own kids? Teach them how to be safe on a lift. Ride with them. Gosh, pay attention to them instead of palming them off on somebody else. How have several generations of skiers survived to adulthood before there even were safety bars to deploy?
Steve, what in the heck are you talking about? Or do you know? Every lift in the United States has pull down safety bars. There has never been a documented case of someone falling out of a lift after pulling down the safety bar.
What is the problem?
Oh good grief, okay I am wrong. There are more by number old double lifts than there are major lifts. True, not the problem, but true. These are old double chairs that are going away, but these lifts carry a small fraction of the people high speed lifts carry during a year. Also, how big of a problem is this. One in a million, or is it 2 in a million this year?