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Welcome to the Ski Jungle Blog
- periodic thoughts and anecdotes from a ski bum - winter sports
and global warming, ski instructors, chairlifts, snow chains, ice
climbing in Wales, Rock Hudson & Austrian police...
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25 February - Incident on the Riggli
Chair
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This is a tale about Ismael.
He was riding on the Riggli chairlift above Murren last Thursday with three
other thirteen year old class mates and I was coming up behind him with his
instructor. We were about eight chairs behind when they came to a stop.
Nothing unusual in that because beginners often have a tricky job getting
off this lift.
Most high speed chairs come in at speed, slow down at the landing area,
allow punters to stand up and ski off, and then move slowly round the wheel
and off down the mountain. With this one you have to wait till it's turned
at right angles round the wheel before getting off, otherwise there's a two
foot drop to the landing area. (Click the pic with Jessica conveniently
posing)
Ismael and his classmates were caught in the trap, and in the ensuing
tangle of their skis, poles and bodies which should have stayed on but
didn't and then those that tried to get off but couldn't, he joined the
second category. I've seen it all before as I learnt some years ago
that to see them tidily off this chairlift one needs to be first up to
help them. There is no lift operator to give a helping hand. He sits in
his nice warm cabin dreaming about Heidi and lunch. After all this is
Switzerland not America. In Switzerland you wipe your own arse.
So Ismael is still on the chair but from where we are sitting seems to
be lying face down on it holding the back of the seat with his arms. |
Top of the Riggli chair
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His
waist and legs are dangling over the front of it and he is screaming like
nothing I've ever heard before. It turns out he has moved beyond the safety
netting on the way back down and is suspended a good fifteen feet above the
ground. After thirty seconds, the dozy lift operator, who should have
stopped the lift earlier, presses the reverse button and after another ten
seconds the screaming stops. A few minutes later we arrive at the top.
Ismael is sitting in the snow, being consoled by another instructor and his
friends. He is a large well fed boy of about fourteen with parallel corn
rows' plaits of hair running front to back from his forehead, and he's
dressed in a scarlet two piece. He is crying silently and I don't blame
him.
Piz Gloria - alt 9600ft |
I get
my lot off the lift and direct them to the top of the mountain Piz
Gloria restaurant for their lunch. I then go back to see how Ismael is
getting on. He's now laughing and joking with his mates so I ask him if
anyone got some good pictures I could put on my website. 'Yeah man I
fink so, they'll cost yer'. That's when I discover he's called Ismael
and after a bit more banter I ask him how much?
'Twenty million three billion and ninety six pounds man'. His
negotiating skills run rings round his arithmetic. |
'I'll tell you what. I'll give you three trillion Zimbabwe dollars', I
say.
'That's only a pound man' he replies. He's sharper than he looks.
That's not the end of the story. I go into the mid station restaurant and
sit on the balcony with some friends and wait for my class to come back
down from the Piz Gloria. This is the revolving restaurant at 9600 feet
made famous by the Bond film, 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'. Anyway I
see the cable car arriving and walk out to meet them. There is a crowd
coming along the passage and a lot of fussing around someone in a
wheelchair. It's Ismael. He has an oxygen mask on. Whilst having lunch he's
come down with altitude sickness.
I somehow feel he won't be skiing again.
I never did find the pictures.
See all the
images from this week
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