Mt. Bachelor finds chair-fall cause, assures lifts safe

Mt. Bachelor put its Sunrise Express lift back in service Monday after finding what sent an empty chair falling 20 feet to the ground;

We just heard a loud bang, sort of a crashing noise,” said Bend resident John Dempsey, who was on the chairlift with his wife Sunday afternoon. “We looked up, and there was just this chair just hauling down, obviously unhooked.”

Fortunately, no one was on it at the time and no one was injured.

But those who were riding the chairlift at the time got away with just a scare.

“It slammed into the chair in front of us,” Dempsey said, adding that he was thinking, “How am I going to protect myself and my wife from it, if this thing swung too far to the left or the right?”

Mt. Bachelor Director of Marketing, Sales and Reservations Spencer Weimar called it a very rare, freak accident.

“This is a very, very, very rare — extremely rare occurrence, for one of these mechanisms to fail in this manner,” Weimar said.

After the incident occurred, the chairlift was stopped and inspected carefully. The investigation found the chair had suffered a component failure.

“A component in the grip mechanism that allows the chair to realign failed and prevented the grip from reattaching to the line,” Weimar said. “Lift maintenance looks at every chair, every day. And then we do our annual maintenance as necessary.”

The daily inspection does not include a full inspection — the annual one does, but Weimar said there is no cause for concern.

“Maintenance is going through all those (other lifts’) chairs as well, making sure this doesn’t happen anywhere else,” Weimar said.

Dempsey, who has been skiing at Mt. Bachelor for 18 years, said the incident won’t keep him from the mountain.

But he also won’t forget about it any time soon.

“I’ve never seen anything like that. The chair was swinging left to right,” Dempsey said.