A teenager has today spoken of his lucky escape after falling 45 feet from a ski slope chair-lift in a terrifying moment caught on camera. More than 1.6 million people have watched the YouTube video which shows Jacob Gutierrez's six minute attempt to hang on to the lift in the Ski Sante Fe resort before dropping onto the rocky snow-capped mountains below. He was left with liver damage, a broken skull and collapsed lung in the fall on February 2 as he fooled around trying to throw a snowball at friends on another chair. Lucky escape: Jacob Gutierrez, pictured, suffered a fractured skull and collapsed lung in the accident on February 2. He fell from the chair lift after throwing a snowball and failing to secure the safety bar Holding on: The 17-year-old is filmed dangling in the air as the ski lift climbs higher and higher Going, going, gone: Gutierrez can't hold on any longer and lets go dropping 45ft Badly injured: Video footage captured Gutierrez hitting the snow after falling 45ft which resulted in him suffering a fractured skull and collapsed lung
Speaking today he said he recalled the moment he felt his grasp on the chair loosen. 'It was pretty terrifying,' he told ABC'I was thinking if I fall wrong or if I land wrong on one of those rocks I'm probably going to get really hurt or die. I'm just hanging on and I just lose grip. I remember it all. I remember falling - it feltI hit a rock and next thing I know I'm looking up at the ski The 17-year-old, of Albuquerque, was with friends on a day out snowboarding when they got into a snowballHe was traveling on the chair with female friend, Breezy Maupin, when he lost his footing. She desperately tried to pull him up but he eventually lost his grasp and fell onto the mountain-side. He had to be air-lifted to University Hospital in Albuquerque following the accident and was put in intensive care. Scared: Dallas Meiering, left, filmed his friend Jacob Guttierrez, right, fall 45 feet off a ski chair lift in Sante Fe earlier this month. The dramatic video has been viewed 1.6 million times
Terrifying: The snowboarder's friend, Dallas Meiering looked on helplessly as Gutierrez clung on for dear life. He said today he thought he was dead He has ongoing liver problems and a scar on his head as a result of the fall which has scared him into taking the slopes more seriously. 'I hit my head on the rock and there wasI was in shock. I'm definitely going to wear a helmet from now on,' he said. His friend Dallas Meiering filmed the incident and posted it on YouTube on Monday. He can be heard screaming 'Dude!' as he watches his Sandia High School classmate lose his footing. 'As he was falling it was pretty scary. I thought he might die,' he told ABC. A 19-year-old college student died last year after falling off a chairlift while skiing in Park City, Utah. A boy also had to be rescued by strangers after he slid out of the chair and dangled 25ft in the air at the Hidden Valley Ski and Snowboard Area in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin in 2012.
Casey Neistat may have pioneered a new sport in his latest viral video. The filmmaker and YouTube mainstay took a snowboard, plenty of cameras and a custom-built drone powerful enough to lift a human to a Scandanavian ski area to transform himself into a "human flying drone." With help from Samsung and fellow YouTube star Jesse Wellens of the channel PrankvsPrank, Neistat takes flight over a small Finnish ski village and also gets pulled around the winter wonderland and even up the ski hill like a waterskier. While it may look like Neistat is holding on, action-movie style, by only one hand as the mega-drone lifts him into the sky, he's actually connected to "Janet," the huge octocopter, via a snug body harness. Check out the behind-the-scenes video for more on how they pulled it off. The whole thing is very reminiscent of another, more improvised Neistat video that featured him snowboarding through New York City streets following a big storm. The drone also carried a Samsung 360-degree camera and a 360 version of the video is set to be uploaded soon.
SpaceX launch heaps new history on top of old in major first This is my NextAnother chairlift has failed at a ski resort in Maine – the third time in six years – but no one was hurt because it happened in the summer when the lift was not in operation, officials said Wednesday. The top unloading terminal of Sunday River’s Spruce Peak Triple lift toppled when the foundation separated from the mountaintop, causing the structure to break apart and the cable and chairs to drop to the ground. It could’ve been a catastrophe had it happened during the winter with skiers onboard. “Thank God it happened in the summer when it was not in use,” said Mark Di Nola, a ski safety consultant in New Hampshire. Sunday River’s lift manager noticed the structural failure Sunday evening, and engineers have been on the scene this week in the town of Newry to determine what happened, Sunday River spokeswoman Darcy Lambert said. No one witnessed the structure’s failure, she said.
And ski industry officials said that type of failure was unusual. The National Ski Areas Association could point to only one other similar failure, at New Hampshire’s Gunstock Mountain Resort in 1990, when the foundation of a newly installed lift separated, causing the terminal to fall over. After that incident, workers installed additional rock anchors to ensure the concrete foundations of other lifts didn’t detach from the mountainside, said Greg Goddard, general manager in Gilford, New Hampshire. In Maine, it’s too early to say what happened, but the Maine Board of Elevator and Tramway Safety is alerting other ski areas in the state to ensure that the lifts are properly anchored, spokesman Doug Dunbar said. At Sunday River, there had been rain before the lift failure. It appears the foundation separated from the soil, then the weight of the cable and chairs pulled it down the mountain, Lambert said. The structure fell to the ground in a jumbled heap. The Spruce Peak lift is 30 years old and is part of the early development of the ski mountain.
It had passed its annual inspection, which included an examination of the foundation, last fall, Dunbar said. A decision on whether to repair or replace the lift won’t be made until engineers from the resort, MountainGuard insurance and the Maine Board of Elevator and Tramway Safety complete their investigation. The incident follows a pair of chairlift failures at Sugarloaf, which, like Sunday River, is operated by Michigan-based Boyne Resorts. Last year, a mechanical failure allowed a lift to move backward, and in 2010 a cable slipped out of its grooved wheel, allowing chairs to drop. Fifteen skiers were hurt in the two incidents, which were mechanical in nature. Nationwide, chairlift accidents are rare. There have been only seven causing injury since 2000, the NSAA said. Di Nola said he’d like to think all three events in Maine were outliers but he has concerns about aging lifts. “My gut reaction is that lifts are getting older,” he said. “I’m not sure that their useful life is infinite.”