A quad chair detached mid-line on Attitash’s Flying Bear lift this afternoon, injuring one person. A photo posted to the Ski the East Facebook page showed the chair and skier fell around tower 6 and he was conscious before being taken down the mountain in a toboggan. A Carroll County scanner alerts Facebook page reported the 49 year old male was transported by ambulance with a lower back injury. Attitash’s lift status page showed the lift closed for the day. In a late afternoon statement, Attitash General Manager Brandon Swartz said “We can confirm an incident occurred on our Flying Bear chairlift today, Sunday, February 2, 2025. The safety of our guests is our top priority, and we are investigating the incident.” Attitash acknowledged one patient was transported to Memorial Hospital in Conway.
Flying Bear is a Doppelmayr detachable quad constructed in 1995 and features DT-104 model grips. It runs nearly a mile with 82 chairs and 17 towers. In early December, Vail announced Attitash would share one general manager and an operations manager with Wildcat, a sister resort located 17 miles away which historically had its own GM. Attitash has been looking to hire experienced lift mechanic(s) since at least early January.
This is the latest mishap in a difficult season for Vail Resorts. On December 23rd, five people were hospitalized when two chairs collided at Heavenly. Four days later, the Park City ski patrol went on strike, causing major disruptions there over the holidays. Patrollers returned to work 12 days later and Vail offered guests 50 percent credits for next season as an apology. More recently, a number of lifts have suffered extended down time at Whistler Blackcomb, Wildcat, Seven Springs, Mount Snow, Keystone and Park City.
Lift Blog 
Well shit.
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Vail resorts is a diester. So many lifts are down at there resorts. I’m interested to see the rate of their incidents concerned to Alterra, Boyne, & Powdr. It’s sad to see so many resorts having their potential ruined by Vail. I wonder if the non-core/normies will start to notice this trend.
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“A quad chair detached mid-line on Attitash’s Flying Bear lift this afternoon.”
The next time I see one of these reports about a fallen chair, I would like to know the date and time and not just
“this afternoon.” These reports already spark off a temper fit without being vague. I was skiing at Attitash on
Friday afternoon and I was preoccupied with fallen chairs and why they’re not made to be more safe.
The first report I saw was posted in the morning hours so I don’t think this happened today which is Sunday
February 2nd.
I think about fallen chairs every time I ride the lifts and I don’t see any excuse. It’s the most incredible violation of
my trust.
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I’m here at Bear Peak right now, this just happened. We were in that lift earlier today.
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Easy now. This website is a hobby to the owner. There is no team of investigative reporters, yet he manages to be a very reliable source of good information. He doesn’t owe you anything.
As far as safety is concerned, have a look at the sats and you’ll realize it’s one of the safest modes of transportation. If you feel so incredibly violated, there is the option to take up ski touring.
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Thoughts and prayers to the victim. I hope they’re okay.
After this season, I have serious questions about Vail’s lift situation.
This isn’t typical, even if Vail does have a lot of lift hardware. There are either a) questions about maintenance, b) questions about larger capex needs and many lifts at EOUL, or c) they’re getting really unlucky.
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With Comet and Flying Bear, these seem to be cases of grip attachment failures.
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I can only comment on Glacier Express and Red. GE had a gear fail only 2/3 of the way to expected lifetime. All scheduled maintenance and inspections had been performed. Red had a blower fan on the motor come apart. It’s a non maintenance item that should last forever, except we got three years out of it. Never seen one fail before.
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W-B alone is definitely in the “unlucky” camp even if it does have a number of big upcoming capex needs.
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Are spare parts available from the old Jersey Cream that could be used on Glacier, given that the recently removed Jersey Cream had the same design, or must all new parts be sourced?
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We are reusing some parts from the old Wizard and Solar Gearboxes. Good thing we kept them around.
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Add the South Face Express at Okemo to that list. I’ve skied there 20 days in the last 2 years and it’s down a lot and have been stuck on it twice for over 20 minutes.
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I am a lift supervisor at okemo, usually in charge of South face, and we have not had any downtime the last two year exceeding 15 minutes which is the hot chocolate coupon threshold. This year we have not had any downtime exceeding 5 minutes. Check your facts before spreading okemohate. Sometimes it may feel longer than it is…
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Seems Vail has been very cheap
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Vail Resorts should really trademark the term “Epic Fail”
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Not really. This could just be a case of bad luck. I’d wait until the investigation is complete before pointing fingers.
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Sorry, I don’t buy bad luck. It’s a case of lack of skilled workers.
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That’s you pointing fingers. We don’t know what happened beyond this looking like a grip attachment failure.
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I agree. Vail Resorts seems to have far more “bad luck” than any other ski company. Just earlier this week they had a shuttle van going down I-70 missing all but 2 studs on one wheel. That wasn’t bad luck, it was either a failure by the mechanics, failure of the driver to do a pre-trip inspection, or both.
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Hi Donald,
I respect your approach from reading you here and on SkiLifts.org. I think the argument being made is that at some point the statistical chances of so much bad luck become unrealistic to people. It may be just bad luck, like the two recent air crashes in two days, but people feel it is not. Without doing an analysis, for which none of us have the inside knowledge needed, we can never know if it is structural or bad luck. We do not even really have enough data to see if it is an unusually large number of issues – by analogy larger airlines will have more crashes becuase they are larger.
So, I agree with your points fully and would add we do not even know enough to understand it it is even bad luck.
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Back in the 70’s Vail dropped a gondola and killed people. They are more about the schmaltz than the substance. The Carnies of the ski resorts.
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That was almost 50 years ago. I don’t see what that has to do with a grip attachment failure.
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It’s amazing all those ski areas on the epic pass. Haven’t seen one on the ikon pass. That’s why I’m always on the ikon.
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I actually have 2 friends, one was the first person on the scene when the cabins fell, and the other was tasked with tracking down and notifying the families of the deceased.
Vail had another major incident on the Lionshead gondola back in 2019, when 20 out of 24 tower bolts failed. They got very lucky on that one. Same alignment as the first accident, but newer gondola.
There was a skier who died in 2020, in the Back Bowls, when he sat down on a chair where the seat hadn’t been folded down, and he was strangled to death by either his clothing or backpack. I was standing in line when that one happened. They’ve also had at least 3 on-mountain employee deaths since 2020.
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This is blatant neglegaince by Vail/Attitash. The state of NH sent out of an advisory a few weeks ago telling all mountains with Doppelmayr DS/DT grips to inspect their equipment. This clearly could have prevented today’s grip failure. Nothing was learned from the last accident even when a warning was sent directly to the mountains. Vail does not care about skier safety.
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You are making a VERY big assumption stating that a check done days or weeks ago would have prevented this. Until cause is determined, everything is speculation.
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And like airplanes or automobiles, even the best maintained chairlifts can experience unexpected problems.
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your daddy own vail or something buddy? You’re all over this comment section defending them
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you are correct, but when the same company, has multiple issues. In the same year. That reportedly allot of staff have left…..I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
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@ bail on vail, how about we let everyone express their opinion without the personal attacks.
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I ski attitash every weekend and last weekend this lift had a late start because of “spacing issues” between chairs. Something has clearly been wrong for at least a week in whatever controls the grip detachment/attachment. I don’t trust they have the staff to fix and run these lifts. I don’t know if I will let my kids ski attitash attitash next weekend.
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spacing issues do not usually have anything to do with the mechanics of the grip. It’s usually more like ice on the grip or terminal tires having low psi.
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When I was last at Attitash 6ish years ago, the lifties said it was throwing the “duckbills” that smooth the transition from bare rope to riding over the grips while going under compression sheaves. They were asking anyone skiing underneath to return them to the bottom terminal if they found one. The maintenance here seems really lacking. A detachable chairlift is not the kind of machinery where you hear a loud bang and get a fault, so you just re-start it and see what happens. I wonder if this has a grip force sensor and one of those thingys that faults if the grip is not the right shape and position to fit on the departure side.
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It definetly has grip force sensors and sensors that ensure the grip is in the proper position when leaving the station. It’s possible that grip force on this lift was in bypass, however I don’t think it’s possible for both stations to have them in bypass at the same time, so it should have been reading values at at least one station.
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Wildcat has gone downhill since Vail purchased. I was hopeful that they would invest in and upgrade one of the best natural mountains in the East. For example adding a new trail or two and putting a summit lodge back at the top like they had in the past. I have been skiing Wildcat and Attitash for 50 years but no more. Vail is the evil empire that keeps on taking but not giving to both skiers and employees.
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they put in the mountaineer. That was pretty major I think…
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yes Ryanvt but mountaineer was a new lift at Attitash not Wildcat. Wildcat has gotten nothing since Vail bought it. Ask any longtime Wildcat skier and most all will say it has gone downhill. Reason: Vail. Cheap with no appreciation of one of the best classic skiers mountains in the East.
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Lift maintenance is an issue all over the US. Resorts are seriously understaffed, no one is jumping at the jobs. I ski sugarbush and they also have multiple lift maintenance jobs posted, even with signing bonuses, still open. They just opened Castlerock ( one of the prime areas) last week because of lack of seasonal maintenance- in late January?!? The snow has been there, lift crews, have not.
It seems to be an industry wide issue, and it’s coming to a head as we speak.
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Blatant negligence from Vail once again. The amount of accidents, injuries, failures, etc on lifts at Vail owned resorts in the last year is terrifying. Of course nobody can be sure of the cause until an investigation is done, but when reports continuously point to staffing issues, maintenance problems, and overcrowding, Vail has some clear fault in this. When the same GM over from Wildcat who oversaw a grip failure (fixed grip instead of Doppelmayer in this case) is now out west trying to stop lift ops from unionizing it just adds to the irony of Vail’s mismanagement in NH.
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I’m guessing Donald Reif works for Vail. But yes, Vail has safety issues and has for a while. Look at Stowe’s zipline death. It was because the employee was using an old piece of webbing. They did not follow protocols defined by the manufacturer to save money. Vails head of safety should be reconsidered.
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Just because I don’t hop on the “Vail Resorts sucks” bandwagon doesn’t mean I work for them. Vail Resorts probably doesn’t hire outsiders to comment on their behalf.
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Agreeing with Donald here…
Not making an opinion or blaming Vail immediately when there are no hard facts to confirm what happened and why is very reasonable and everyone should be careful when making bold assumptions (If you have evidence that’s not anecdotal, please, share!). I don’t think anybody here has attempted to defend Vail beyond not making assumptions. Remember, coincidence does not mean correlation, and correlation does not mean causation. It might very well turn out to be a systematic Vail issue (I think it’s likely), but before we know that, we shouldn’t make massive assumptions and attack people when they don’t think the same.
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Attitash is also hiring for senior health and safety specialist along with lift maintenance…
Wildcat also had a chair fall off the line 3 years ago. Wildcats operations have been a wreck this year.
This should raise some SERIOUS questions about their operations at these resorts.
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Wildcat’s incident was at least partly the result of a misload.
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so I’ve done some digging and I see you’ve been commenting on chair lift tragedies for a while. What’s up with that Donald?https://liftblog.com/2022/01/08/chair-detaches-from-wildcat-lift/comment-page-1/
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With a cafeteria worker running the lift instead of a liftie…
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I witnessed a chair fall off at Wildcat about 7 years ago. Luckily it was empty at the time. It was a fixed lift, not the detachable. The lifty stated ” it wouldn’t have fallen if someone was on it”…..
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if they are concerned about the skiers/boarders they would not be allowing an unreasonable hence unmanageable number to enter the ski area. Sunapee is an example of this.
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Note that “GM” Brandon Swartz is the common factor between Attitash incident, and was the former Lift Ops “Manager” at Heavenly. Brandon leaves disaster in his wake, and Vail Resorts is itself a massive disaster.
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It’s unreal how that pissbaby has managed to fail upwards.
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Saw a pic of the grip from a different angle. The mobile jaw broke. There’s service bulletins about that for the DT.
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This would then be NDT issue. When was this grip NDT. 20% is the normal frequency with an indication in a critical area 100%.
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True on the inspection criteria. But NDT does not predict future indications, only existing ones.
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Here’s a photo:
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They better close that lift
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Looks like its been cracked for a while judging by the rust. A metallurgist might be able to tell you how long for.
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We only have stationary chairs on our lifts at Pajarito. What is this grip supposed to look like? Can you post a pic?
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I believe this is a larger verison but the same basic design.
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The corrosion on that break means it’s been there for awhile. Wet mag would have picked it up. I wonder what year it got tested.
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2022. 3rd party
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They might have had the same issue we did where there is too much paint see through
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That’s going to be a 100% ndt grip inspection.
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Good grief.
Really, the only thing I fear about ropeways is something like this, an undetected crack or inclusion in a grip casting. Thank you for sharing this picture.
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So it sounds like the grip was damaged (for a while, and possibly in a way that was relatively easy to detect via non-destructive testing).
And it also sounds like it triggered the lift to stop when it passed through the station (whereupon the operator decided to override and just keep things moving).
And it also sounds like this is happening in the context of a resort that is severely understaffed, with local management stretched across multiple mountains.
And it also sounds like it’s happening in the context of a conglomerate with numerous lifts down across several resorts, with other equally concerning incidents (e.g. Comet), to an extent entirely unmatched by the other large operators (Alterra, Boyne, Powdr).
Seems increasingly obvious: Vail Resorts needs new leadership.
And all of this is frankly the optimistic scenario. I mean, do we want to live in a world where well-inspected and well-run lifts just suddenly see their grips fail mid-line? Do we want this to be the sort of thing that “could happen to anyone”?
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@Muni:
That’s a great summary of the situation for Vail. I’d add that even if many of these things are beyond their control, and even if this was just a freak accident at Attitash, the optics aren’t great.
It’s becoming a brand issue.
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Well…looks like 18 grips failed the NDT inspection, that’s very scary
https://mm.nh.gov/files/uploads/fmo/remote-docs/tramway-minutes-030325-draft.pdf
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There’s an eyewitness who says he heard a loud bang when this chair went through the bottom terminal. The lift stopped but was restarted. He also says two chairs slid into each other before the one fell.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/373166805383197/posts/669898405710034/?comment_id=669995435700331
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This sounds almost identical to what happened on Comet.
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Not even close.
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A grip force fault on that type of lift can be reset from the operator control panel. A grip position paddle switch has to be physically reset in the terminal. On a Doppelmayr lift of that vintage. If a grip force fault occurs the lift must be reversed and the carrier brought back into the terminal. The carrier that caused the fault must be unloaded and the grip inspected before the carrier is relaunched.
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THIS.
As you point out, because there are no safeguards built into the control systems, we have a policy in place where lift operators are only permitted to reset a small number of specific faults (safety gate as an example). For all others, a lift maintenance tech must be called. In addition, if any faults occur from a pre-determined list of “critical faults”, the responding maintenance tech has to perform a double-check procedure where they confirm the action they took matches the manufacturer’s procedure for that particular fault. They perform their double-check with the supervisor, lift maintenance manager, or another pre-determined qualified lift tech that is on shift.
It’s too easy for a lift-operator to just hit reset / start.
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7Springs has the North Face Quad down currently and have issues with others lifts being down but lucky they were fixed. Whitetail’s HSQ has had several issues this season with it going down. Not if it is true one of triple/triple is down at Hidden Valley, PA.
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7Springs has the North Face Quad down currently and have issues with others lifts being down but lucky they were fixed. Whitetail’s HSQ has had several issues this season with it going down. Not if it is true one of triple/triple is down at Hidden Valley, PA.
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lol at everyone crapping on vail but don’t remember anyone complaining when they bought their epic pass for cheap.
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While I agree that Vail makes their pass structure more affordable, that does not give them a pass (no pun intended) to fall short of maintenance standards, or alienate themselves from other areas with low-wages for their employees.
There is a huge gap between the decision makers and the community, and that’s why they get the hate. Every time.
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and you support all of their issues every season when you buy an epic pass.
People are wild trying to have their cake and eat it too.
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A-Basin hasn’t been on the epic pass for years and is now owned by Alterra. Is bet $10 tucker has an Ikon pass or Alterra/Ikon multi pass that employees can get.
bold of you to assume we all still ski Vail mtns :)
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I don’t know Brandon from Mike at the bar—but last year, Attitash had a General Manager and an Ops Manager (Deedre Reilly).
This year, Attitash and Wildcat share a General Manager, with no Ops Manager in sight.
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What does that have to do with anything? Do you really think that one person can’t run two mid-sized mountain a few miles apart? I know for a fact, since I have worked at several, the GM’s of ski areas of that size have very little to do. Or at least do very little.
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Doppelmayr DT grip users. Have a look at Doppelmayr SB-07-013 service bulletin and see if it applies to this failure??
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One more Doppelmayr DT grip SB-10-003
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thank you! everyone should be doing this!
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From the Boston Globe this afternoon. It looks like it was inspected by the state in November: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/03/metro/investigation-continues-into-how-chair-fell-nh-ski-lift-sending-man-plunging-20-feet-authorities-say/?s_campaign=8315:varf
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a state inspection does not mean every grip was looked at individually.
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A state inspection would not physically inspect all the grips with non-destructive testing. Depending on the protocalls at most a sample would be visually inspected. Largly, a govenrment inspection is about ensuring paperwork and maintence is complete as well as a sample of lift components in effect to keep the mountain honest and from getting away with obvious corner cutitng. This is nothing agaist the government inspectors, it is just the framing of how they are designed.
For those familier with the aviation context, a lot of the issues Boeing is having is becuase the FAA delgated too much inspection to company workers instead of doing it themselves – leading Boeing to ‘get away’ with cutting corners. I do not beleive this is the case at all in lift inspections but may help understnad roles.
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we had a similar failure to one of our grips a couple years ago dt-104, 1995 manufactured year, failure occurred in the same location but was propagating from the top side of the mobile not bottom like the picture suggest.
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Another NH resort (state owned) with a lift issue this week
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-02-05/cannon-mountain-evacuates-dozens-of-skiers-after-ski-lift-fails
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18 failures, yikes
https://mm.nh.gov/files/uploads/fmo/remote-docs/tramway-minutes-030325-draft.pdf
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