Slackliners can do some incredible things. We’ve seen them cross enormous chasms, some with safety gear and some without, but on Wednesday a slackliner reached new heights by saving a man’s life.
Mickey Wilson credits the skills he learned as a professional slackliner that helped free a man who was dangling from a chairlift in Colorado last week.
Wilson was skiing with a group of friends at Arapahoe Basin ski resort outside Denver when one of their buddies snagged his backpack on the chair lift trying to get off. When the chair swung around to head down, their friend was still dangling and loosing consciousness, Wilson told the Denver Post.
The operator stopped the lift but they were unable to reach the man until ski patrol arrived.
“Then I had a eureka moment,” Wilson wrote on Insstagram. “I realized I could climb the lift tower above the chair and climb onto the cable and shimmy down to him. I knew my slackline experience prepared me perfectly for this so I burst into action.”
Wilson climbed the tower and slid down the cable, which he said resembled a slackline but colder and made of steel. Once he reached his friend, rescue crew arrived, but he was already in a position to free him so they threw him up a knife and he cut the man free.
After treating him with CPR, the man regained consciousness at the seen and was said to be recovering at an area hospital. No word yet on whether the ski resort approves of Wilson’s rescue methods as they investigate the incident, but nonetheless he got the job done and everybody is thankful. It probably wasn’t the most advised form of rescue for just anybody.
“I’d like to take this moment now to thank the #slacklife for the skills it has given me. It was incredibly fortunate I was there and able to act quickly,” Wilson wrote.
A similar incident occurred at the Sundance Resort in Utah just before Christmas when a boy dangled from a chairlift by his backpack. In that case, the ski patrol fetched a latter and brought him down.
And just before that, a visitor to Mount Ashland Ski Area in Oregon dangled upside-down from a chairlift.
Dang, seems like something’s up with these chairlifts.
