A young snowboarder got very lucky the other day at Mt. Hood Meadows, as an alert liftie and an organized rescue team responded quickly to save his butt from potentially serious injury.

The teenager apparently boarded the chairlift properly, but then slipped and nearly fell off the lift as the chair was making its way up the hill. He never put the safety bar down.

His friend videotaped the event from another chair behind him, and as you can see from the YouTube video below, he was hanging on for dear life about 25 or 30 feet in the air. The Meadows liftie shut down the chair and patrollers and volunteers managed to break the guy’s fall and save him from some painful injuries.

In the end the only thing hurt was his pride – although he definitely kept his sense of humor about the accident. His comments accompanying the video are pretty hilarious:

Whee! A good start to the season! I got super lucky, no injuries at all. It could have been way worse! i just slipped off the chair and the safety bar wasn’t down and i just slipped on and was hanging on for life!

Last modified: November 26, 2014