Three snowboarders suffered serious injuries when they plunged six metres from a Thredbo chairlift after their boards acted “like a sail” during a gale-force wind gust.
The incident in August last year was the third time in eight years that a chair has come off its cable in high winds at Thredbo. It has raised concerns about the safety of chairlifts at all Australian resorts as the 2024 ski season gets under way, with the first significant winter snow falling this week.
Ski patrol attends to the injured snowboarders after their chair fell last year.
Documents released to the Herald under freedom of information laws show that days after the incident on the Kosciuszko Chairlift, SafeWork NSW ordered Thredbo to work with the lift’s manufacturer to eliminate or at least mitigate the risk of any more chairs falling off in windy conditions.
The resort says it has complied with all such requirements since the incident. SafeWork says it has been working with Thredbo to install technological solutions that will better manage the effect of sudden strong wind gusts.
The agency’s investigation into the August 19 incident found there were few rules dictating how ski resorts should operate chairlifts during bad weather. It said more needed to be done to improve the “deficient” Australian standard, pointing to Canada as a possible example of how to do things better.
The detached chair seen from the top station at Thredbo.Credit: Tim Johnston
Two women and a man, all aged in their 20s, suffered severe back and facial injuries in the incident. The two most seriously injured were flown by helicopter to Canberra Hospital for treatment. SafeWork said it was hoped the trio would eventually recover from their injuries.
The Kosciuszko Chairlift, which opened in 1990, stretches over 1800 metres and takes skiers from the base of Thredbo to Eagles Nest 560 metres higher up the mountain, providing access to mainly intermediate and expert terrain.
A seasoned Thredbo skier contacted Safe Work NSW within days of the incident last year, to tell investigators they had been so worried about the wind conditions they had stopped riding the Kosciuszko Chairlift hours before the chair fell. They thought the lift should have been put on wind hold.
“I had never experienced the extent of movement in 30 years of riding the chair,” the skier said. “I chose not to go on the chair again through the day for fear of safety. I did not think at this point the lift should have been running … at two points, our skis were almost whipped off by wind gusts near the top station.”
Skiers and snowboarders ride a chairlift at Thredbo in 2017.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Investigators found a wind gust measuring 71km/h swung the chair the snowboarders were riding as it approached the top station at Eagles Nest about 2.20pm.
That swing caused the chair’s guide wheel to not engage properly with the guide rail as it entered the station. That meant it came in at an angle so that the chair’s hanger arm struck an overhead metal plate, knocking the chair off the cable and allowing it to fall. A lift operator had pressed the “service stop” button before the chair reached the tower, but this action has a six-second lag.
SafeWork noted that an almost identical incident had occurred at Breckenridge ski resort in the United States eight months earlier, in December 2022, when a chair also fell while entering the top station in high winds. However, it was unclear if the lessons from that incident had been discussed with ski resort operators internationally or shared with other lift manufacturers.
SafeWork decided it would not take any further action against Thredbo over the August 2023 incident because the resort had done what was “reasonably practicable” at the time to train staff and maintain the lift, and to operate it in windy conditions.
‘I had never experienced the extent of movement in 30 years of riding the chair.’
Thredbo skier quoted in the Safework report
Thredbo had also already improved its practices for windy days after a skier fell 10 metres off the nearby Gunbarrel lift in 2019, when a chair struck a tower in high winds and dislodged. The skier escaped injury. In 2016, an empty chair also fell off the Gunbarrel lift when it struck a tower.
SafeWork said in its report that the standards and practices for Australian snow resorts were deficient because they made little reference to operating lifts in windy conditions. The manual for the chairlift in question also did not include any such instruction.
“More industry guidance is needed for the safe operation of chairlifts during inclement weather to prevent a recurrence of this or a similar incident in the future,” the report said.
Thredbo told the Herald it had been advised by SafeWork that the matter had been closed in January.
“Guest safety is paramount to Thredbo and we will continue to apply our high standards of safety and risk management across the resort,” a spokeswoman said.
It declined to reveal the wind speed threshold for the Kosciuszko Chairlift and whether this had been lowered in light of the incident, or what other steps it has taken to mitigate the risk of chairs falling in high winds.
But a SafeWork spokesperson said the agency had been working with Thredbo to implement new technologies for this year’s ski season.
“The equipment manufacturer is working to install devices that will slow chairlifts in the case of sudden high wind events,” the spokesperson said. “The new technology is currently installed and operational.”
Lift manufacturer Doppelmayr has been contacted for comment.
SafeWork said it had held talks with NSW ski resort operators before the season opened last weekend and had visited all the snow fields. Its engineers have been inspecting chairlifts across the resorts and ensuring compliance with any improvement notices (such as the one issued to Thredbo last year).
Perisher said it had sophisticated wind and weather monitoring systems in place to guide the operation of its chairlifts, and its new Mount Perisher 6 chair could tolerate higher winds.
A spokesman for Industrial Relations Minister Sophie Cotsis said the government supported SafeWork’s “improvement efforts” at the state’s snow fields.
Thredbo attracts about 700,000 visits every winter, while Perisher and Charlotte Pass pull in about 1.1 million.
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