What's worse than being stuck on a ski lift?

[CentralMass]

3. Wow that is something that you would never expect to happen.

I can recall two stuck on a chairlift incidents in my youth. One was at a long since defunct ski area RoundTop Mtn up in VT. My brother and I got stuck on a stalled lift one Saturday. It was pretty cold and windy and had started to snow. The ski patrol was lowering skiers down with harnesses and ropes from the top but it was taking forever. We were cold and even worse missing out on some runs we could be taking on the other lift line. We were over a steep pitched section with some pretty powdery snow and up pretty high. My brother decided to jump. So he dropped his poles and grabbed the arm on his side of the chair and pivoted so his skis were pointing diwn hill and dropped. It was along way down. And they say I was the crazy one. So seeing that he survived I followed suit and did the same. The steep pich of the mountain and deep powder is probably all the kept us from breaking our legs.The ski patrol weren't to pleased with us but we didn't stick around to discuss the matter.

The other memorable chair lift was at Jackson Hole, WY in the 80's. The chair lift back then did not have safety bars and leg rests. There were some areas where the chairlift towers spanned some gorge like area with some really high distances from the ground below. The chair lift automatically shut diwn if wind speed got above a certain speed (I think it was 40mph) to help prevent the cables from slipping out of the pulleys. One morning right as a friend and I were over one of those sections with the big drop the lift stopped. It was really windy and the chairs were swinging back and forth and side to side. With no safety bars or leg rests it was a scary situation. We had to hold on to the char arms to keep from sliding off the chair as it pitched around. To make matters worse we had tied one on at the tavern down in Teton Village the night befire and were pretty hung over. The wind eventually died down and the chair lift started up again. I can't imagine roping down from the height we were at in those windy condition.