Life Imitating Art: Real Life ‘Frozen’ Man Stuck on Chairlift
By Rocky Thompson on February 18th, 2010
A German snowboarder was stranded on a chairlift in the Austrian Alps for six hours after he tried riding the lift down. The crew shut down the lift and the man’s cries for help when unheard. He burnt the contents of his wallet with a cigarette lighter to try to get attention. He started with receipts and business cards then went onto cash. A ski-run cleaning crew spotting him while his last 20 Euro note went up in flames. The worst part is he didn’t even have a cash tip for his rescuers.
Two things: 1. This is almost exactly like the ski movie I haven’t seen, ‘Frozen.’ A person gets stuck on a lift riding it when they’re not supposed to, which is why I think we’ll find out shortly that this was a viral marketing stunt by the people responsible for ‘Frozen.’ 2. What’s a “ski-run cleaning crew,” and why are they skiing 6 hours after the lift closed? If they were checking the runs for lost skiers, it seems they should have passed by this guy, oh, I don’t know, five-and-a-half hours earlier.
via Outside
Help me out here, so if you were stuck and thought you were super hosed and no one was going to come is there a reason you wouldn’t go all Bear Grylls and try skittering your way down the cable? I’m not saying that’s a great idea, perhaps not even a good one (hence the “Bear” descriptor). As I live in the midwest full of non-mountain size chairlifts perhaps my imagined concept of how it would work is off-base. Would it be too steep or something?