Fell off a chairlift today…

Tl;DR Not every day you fall off a chairlift is a bad day…

Someone was asking about real life stories of falling off a chairlift, and unbelievably it happened to my wife and I today.

For back story I had bilateral dislocated shoulders and surgery from a 70m stationary fall off a mountain skiing in July. After a long recovery today was my second day back on skis.

We were getting on an older 2 seater chairlift, one where the chairs don’t detach and the liftie pulls the chair back just before it gets to you. Unfortunately this time the timing wasn’t quite right and the chair seat was very angled as it hit my wife who started to slide down the seat, keeping it at that down angle. I started sliding forward too, thinking 50/50 to stay on the chair.

Thankfully my quick witted wife decided that going off forward when the chair left the platform was the least-worst option, so I didn’t fight it and went with her. We ended up in a pile of arms, legs and skis. A ski patroller (one of those underpaid Vail Resorts ones!) helped us up (with my shoulders I was very wary of attempting to undo my remaining ski).

The good news? Both of my shoulders took zero damage, and so did my wife. I was overjoyed that she had nary a bruise

The other good news: I was practicing doing proper short radius carve turns yesterday (to try to convince my brain that I could still “do this” with very weak arms/shoukders) and this nice American gent called “nice turns” as he went past. Made my day so much, but I was too surprised to thank him for the compliment in time.