"Worst $2k I Ever Spent!" Skiing Vacation In Vail

by Rachelle Hruska · January 6, 2009

    Ski Bunnies across the globe have been known to flock in droves to posh places in the snow capped  mountains of the Rockies.  Vail and Aspen are the Harvard/Yale of the elite jet setters.  This season, even with a drop in numbers, there was more than enough excitement out on the slopes.

    "JANUARY 6--In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado's ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Friday morning." [The Smoking Gun]

    More story and photos below:

    The poor guy spent considerably more than $2k on his vacation, and he ends up on countless websites naked?  Ouch.  Here's the rest of the account:

    "The January 2 mishap apparently occurred after the male skier and a child boarded a high-speed lift in Vail's Blue Sky Basin. It appears that the chairlift's fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding. As seen in the photos on the following pages (which were snapped by fellow skiers), the Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair's botched 10:30 AM boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair."