A person was airlifted to a Montana hospital on today following an incident on the Triple Chair at Red Lodge Mountain. “Red Lodge Mountain Patrol Dispatch received a call at 11:51am regarding an incident that occurred with the Triple Chair,” the mountain said in a statement. “Patrol was on-scene of the incident at 11:53am,” the statement continued. “A patient was transported to the base area where the patient was loading into an emergency medical services ambulance at 12:23 pm.” A local TV station reported the person was later flown by helicopter from Red Lodge’s hospital to a larger one in Billings. The rest of the 135 passengers on the chairlift were evacuated by rope and the mountain was closed for the day.
It was windy today in south-central Montana and Red Lodge acknowledged the incident may have been wind-related. The resort posted on X at 8:45 am that all lifts would start the day on wind hold with gusts forecasted as high as 55 miles per hour. Three base area lifts, including the Triple Chair, began loading passengers at 9:30 am. After the incident a few hours later, Red Lodge Fire Rescue said strong winds prevented the patient from being airlifted directly from the ski area.
The Triple Chair was built by CTEC in 1983. It spans more than 5,000 feet from the base of the ski area with 195 chairs on the line. Owing to their age, the chairs do not have restraint bars. Red Lodge Mountain said the lift will remain closed while an investigation is completed. Unfortunately a parallel lift called Willow Creek has also been closed since February 23rd due to maintenance. That leaves just The Stache Express for out-of-base access.
Montana’s Board of Passenger Tramway Safety was disbanded in 1997 so there is unlikely to be any state investigation. Parts of Red Lodge Mountain are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service and the Triple Chair runs partially within the Custer Gallatin National Forest. In addition to oversight from the Forest Service, ski areas like Red Lodge are also typically inspected by their insurance company.
Update 3/11 6:30 pm: The Carbon County Sheriff’s office reports the victim of this incident, a 37 year old male from Billings, died today of his injuries. Local media reports he was thrown from the chair he was riding on the upper part of the lift line.
Lift Blog 
Two incidents in one day? Wow.
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Oh man, first Kicking Horse and now Red Mtn. Two lift incidents in one day is certainly an unfortunate coincidence…..
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Red LODGE Mountain, which is in south central Montana.
RED Mountain is located in BC
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I didn’t know the US Forest Service was in BC
Look at the map
Montana
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Regardless of cause (we don’t know anything yet, windy conditions, etc.), it really hasn’t been a great season for lifts. Maybe we’re just hearing about it more.
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Until the industry starts paying serious wages for a serious job, keep expecting to see more and more lift incidents.
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That’s frequency bias. It’s probably just a period of bad luck for the chairlift industry (and this incident seems to have been weather related, so not a case of metal fatigue like the Kicking Horse and Winter Park incidents).
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Because you’ve been working in the industry as a ropeway technician for 20+ years and have watched the consistent loss of talent due to stagnation of wages and explosive growth in cost of living?
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Get Real with the whole “Bad Luck”analogy. Do believe if we hang a horseshoe in the motor room, cross our fingers or wear two different colored socks. That’s the best way to improve lift safety????
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And ‘frequency bias’ 😂? Sounds like some lovely corporate speak for ‘continue to sweep the root causes under the rug’, perhaps you could find gainful employment with resort marketing or mountain management, or maybe you already do.
Stuff happens, however the last couple of years of a historically higher frequency of lift incidents is the direct result of mismanagement and refusing to invest in qualified personnel.
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No ski mountains are making a lot of margin. The problem is the wages they are paying are no longer living wages to live in or near the ski mountain. I think we can connect this to the cost of living in ski towns, rather than corporate greed.
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Vail Resorts reported yesterday their margin is 29%
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People will keep the safety bar if the wages are higher?
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Read the article bootlicker, there was no safety bar.
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My “calm down Che”-comment was removed but calling someone a “bootlicker” is okay?
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This is why you keep the safety bar on, people.
R.I.P. to the skier…
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Safety bars are often not on chairs in the USA west. For some reason the insurance companies in the USA do not require them as they do in Canada. They are not only required in Canada but the resorts must do due diligence insuring their clientele put them down. This chair lift had no safety bar. Many older chairs in Utah and Colorado resorts have no safety bars.
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This is truely insane…
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There are no bars on this lift. Built in the early 80’s before it was common.
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https://x.com/redlodgemntn/status/1899477021299724787
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At Least Palisades is open, and that is considered bonus terrain to Red Lodge Mountain
How many seasons in a row was Palisades terrain open?
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It’s been a rough winter, lift-wise. The snow has been great, though ( at least out East). I wonder if those are correlated somehow.
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It has largely been an average or below snow year for the West. There have also been periods of abnormally warm weather.
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Climate Change
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The climate has been changing since the beginning of the climate. Big deal.
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@Ryan G I just love this line of reasoning.
I asked GPT to enumerate some of the “highlights” of planet Earth’s ever-evolving climate:
Hadean Eon (~4.6 – 4.0 billion years ago) – Earth’s early atmosphere was mostly hydrogen, helium, and volcanic gases like methane and ammonia. There was no oxygen, and surface temperatures were likely extreme due to constant asteroid bombardment and a possible thick CO₂ atmosphere. You’d be dead instantly.
Archean Eon (~4.0 – 2.5 billion years ago) – The atmosphere was rich in methane and CO₂, but still lacked free oxygen. Cyanobacteria were just starting to produce oxygen through photosynthesis, but levels were nowhere near survivable.
Great Oxidation Event (~2.4 – 2.0 billion years ago) – Oxygen levels started rising due to photosynthesis, but this was actually toxic to many of the anaerobic organisms that had dominated before. This was a mass extinction event for them. Meanwhile, the ozone layer wasn’t fully formed yet, so UV radiation would fry you.
Cryogenian Period (~720 – 635 million years ago) – A global ice age may have covered most of the planet in ice, making conditions uninhabitable. Extreme cold would kill you before you even had to worry about the atmosphere.
End-Permian Extinction (~252 million years ago) – Massive volcanic eruptions led to runaway global warming, toxic hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere, and ocean anoxia. The air itself may have been poison in some regions.
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@Muni
The difference this time is that humans are directly involved. If we can do something to stop/slow global warming, why should we not care about it?
Also, the examples ChatGPT found for you were examples of entire periods and eons of different climates (all hundreds of millions of years long), not an abrupt change.
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The Canadian Rockies have seen a slightly below average winter, BC has been incredible this season.
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What exactly was the incident? I didn’t see it in the article. Just the injury.
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They are being very tight lipped about it. Just lots of mention about the strong winds.
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A few more details have come out. The victim was male and he was thrown from the chair on the upper part of the line. He was very gravely injured unfortunately.
This may be a watershed moment for these old lifts without safety bars. Choosing not to put the bar down is one thing but not having one at all is tough in 2025.
Also Willow Creek has been closed for a few weeks due to a carrier failure. That one dates back to 1959 with no bars either.
https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/red-lodge-mountain-faces-lift-safety-concerns-after-passenger-fall
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The sheriff’s office reported the victim has died. Just terrible.
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https://www.skitalk.com/threads/red-lodge-chairlift-accident-3-10-25.37042/
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Safety bars and using them could help in these situations.
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Montana disbanded their Board of Passenger Tramway Safety to save $56,000. Arkansas’ Act 155, passed after the news of the mountain bike lift near Bentonville, requires more oversight than the state of Montana.
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Both Montana and Arkansas lifts are inspected on the same schedule to the same ANSI standards, and no resort could get insurance otherwise. Having a single paid government position to work a couple days a year and check a box on paper that’s been done adds no value. And ironically, having these boards actually reduces liability for the resorts, and the boards themselves can’t be sued due to government immunity.
Furthermore, the board had no legal basis to mandate upgrades of old lifts.
And it has become apparent that this was not a maintenance issue, but an unseated passenger issue, with the major factor being a wind gust.
Also, this being a rare case, I find it unlikely that a state board, ANSI or an insurance company would have it on their radar to mandate retrofits of safety bars on old lifts.
That being said I think the industry is risking its reputation for safety, and the reactive approaches of regulatory and insurance in the past aren’t the best way. The days of controlling the narrative through influencing the news outlets are long gone.
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Has it become official that it was the boarder’s fault that he fell? Was there excessive swinging, bouncing, or jerking of the chair? I’m wondering about during a stop, or an emergency stop. Normally a three person chair is heavy enough to not swing excessively, even in high wind. But, if the haul line tension was off, or there was a derailment, or ….? As a 12 year chairlift liftie, my sad opinion is that often snowboarders don’t use care and caution when using the chair lift (loading, riding the lift). Unbelievable the amount of static we get about backpacks and safety leashes. We don’t have safety bars, but I’m sure people would fight using them also.
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As a snowboarder I think this comment is remarkable (not in a good way).
I’ve been on Six Chair on Peak 8 at Breckenridge in very high winds. The lift has a safety bar and I use it, but I can tell you that a sudden 55-mph wind gust can pull on a dangling snowboard with quick and very unexpected force. I try to be sure my board is tilted towards the wind and nose-up, but that comes from experience on high-exposure lifts. We can’t assume that everyone who rides a lift has the 1000s of rides up that I have.
Slamming snowboarders generally for, in this case a rider who – my guess – perhaps experienced a sudden gust, esp if from an aft or rear angle, grabbing their one-foot-dangling deck and pulling them off the safetybar-less chair feels really harsh.
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There was a derailment and the word is it was particularly violent which from history implies multiple factors and it suggests the lift didn’t stop instantly. Those old design mechanical sheave sensors are not infallible.
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RalfW,
I’m not slamming all snowboarders, just ones who uncaringly act reckless. I understand that new riders don’t have the skill level yet to load/unload as smoothly as longtime riders, but it’s those impatient, oblivious riders who know better, but still load and set the chair swinging, or try to reach out and slap stickers on the towers, etc, that I’m referring to. I’m glad though that you point out how the wind can affect the surface area of the board, particularly a bad gust. Definitely something to be aware of as a boarder. It sounds like there was some kind of derail, which caused a severe rope bounce or drop. It is really a horrific incident.
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Make whatever justifications you need to, I have never derailed a lift in high winds, whether there were public on the line or not. Most experienced technicians know their machines limits and call a wind hold before something unfortunate like this happens.
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The claim of no experience has no bearing here because it’s such a rare event, but everyone realizes you have an ax to grind – that you’re super talented and underpaid.
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Reading the comments surrounding the above comment, and the others above it. May be the decision to run or not run a lift on a given day needs to be expanded from “is it safe for the lift to run today” (will the lift be damaged) ie will the lift be okay that it will not derail in this environment? (expanded to) is it safe for riders to ride today, such that EVERYONE can survive the expected wind gusts today, that the riders can have reasonable expectation that they will arrive at the top of the lift without being blown off? If we are making a decision to operate in higher winds because it might affect to image the resort has on Social Media (if we shut down) , then we might want to consider that we might be making moral decision on the value of the life of the lift riders versus the Resort image ( Ie: we never shut down in bad weather) over time. Hopefully most resorts consider the “our guest’s lives matter” to be the top factor in the hierarchy
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Not really Jon. I make a good wage, in fact just a little to good to justify quitting, but the overall trend in the industry is not a good one, and I’m just one person and I need a consistent crew and am tired of the constant retraining of personnel to have them stick around for a year or two and then move on.
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And I would add one more point that it’s not just money, but supplies, facilities, and enough qualified staff to get it all done. It’s a giant elephant, and there’s a large difference between a small Mom and Pop operation vs. large scale high volume ski resorts, but when the end goal generally is faster better cheaper, and never admit any problems with the industry….
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There is no bars on those chairs ? People can just fall out of the chairs with nothing to restrain them or hang onto ? I’m not an alpine skier.
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that not unusual at all.- lots of ski areas have lifts without safety bars, especially smaller ones (even some major resorts have older and/or non-primary lifts that they never retrofitted with safety bars) there are hundreds of ski lifts scattered across the country without safety bars.
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We can hang onto the chair itself, but yeah, with most older lifts, there is no comfort bar. Given the commonality of comfort bars and footrests on newer chairs, it’s not super surprising that folks aren’t used to self-restraining on these older models. I grew up in the West, where there is a culture of not using comfort bars even if they are provided, to the point where I regularly see people hanging an arm over the back of the chair and sitting sideways uncomfortably rather than pulling the bar down. That said, I would totally understand if they either become voluntarily more common or even compulsory. I’ll admit that this winter I’ve found myself dropping the bar a surprising amount and just the other day was very happy to be holding one in my hands when an E-stop was thrown on our bottom-drive Chair 1; I was close to the bottom, so it was more violent than usual. This specific incident at Red Lodge is one I’ve kinda wondered about throughout my 42-year skiing experiment. What happens when the worst happens? I am sad for the family and friends of the deceased. Riding a lift is exceedingly rarely dangerous, if ever, and they have to be wondering “what if?”
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Ugh. Should be capital punishment for the ski resort. Shut the place down for good.
Whatever little umbrella insurance they buy won’t be enough to pay for this. Bankrupt the place and close the lights. Terrible.
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That would be needlessly destructive to many families.
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So a lot of people should lose their jobs because one person lost their life. Got it.
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kits are available to retro fit safety bars. My first time sking out west i witnessed two incidents where skiers were thrown off lifts. That was forty years ago. I would have thought all lifts would been upgraded by now
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In the Northeast it’s required to have safety bars on lifts, and it required that riders put the bar down. Not all put the bar down of course, but most people do….
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A few more details have come out about the deceased. He was a snowboarder, and sometimes snowboarders sit sideways on the lift with their board propped up on the chair. Given the wind conditions, the board positioned like that would have been perpendicular to the gusts, acting like a sail.
When he fell, he landed on his head. It’s likely the board caught the air and flipped his feet above him, making him land on his head.
This raises some tough questions about lift safety for snowboarders, especially in high winds. Should boarders be allowed on old lightweight chairs during high winds?
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As a snowboarder myself, It is not hard to control my board in the wind at all, and lightweight chairs themselves are still significantly heavier than the people it caries.
Maybe different ideas?
Falling though might possibly flip the person, I agree with that
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As a 12 year liftie veteran, I’ve unfortunately observed many boarders acting without respect for safety, and generally acting reckless and irresponsibly. A three person bale type chair is generally heavy enough to not swing excessively, even in strong wind, but it’s helpful if a single rider is loaded as to balance the chair. When boarders LEAP into the chair when loading, or sit sideways during the ride, they are causing the chair to be unbalanced. This can contribute to swinging, or greater risk of derail. And I’ve seen so many riders (both skiers and boarders) either high, or rocking out to music, messing with their phones or cameras, or whatever else, and not paying any attention, literally NOT holding on….. So, I am curious what more is learned about this incident.
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I’m a boarder, but I can’t say I’ve ever sat on a chair when a 75 mph gust comes. Those old chairs weigh no more than 150 lbs. I disagree with any suggestion to ban boarders though. Just make them use a safety bar when it’s windy. It has to be an option though.
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Those old chairs can and the majority of them do, weigh more than 150 lbs.
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Those CTEC chairs weigh about 350lb with the grip, I have bumped many.
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New article, photo and GoFundMe. Consider a donation! https://people.com/montana-dad-dies-after-falling-from-faulty-chairlift-at-local-ski-resort-amid-65-mph-winds-11696233
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Been a lot of lift incidents this year!
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