A higher than normal number of people have been falling off of ski chair lifts — with some of them dying — in Colorado.
Chris Oxford, who spoke to the Colorado Sun, recounted how he and his friend, Donovan Romero, were skiing in December. Oxford and his friend were riding a ski lift when he said he felt a “jolt,” and looked over to see his friend dangling from the lift chair.
Romero fell from the lift, 47 feet into the snow below. He had to be airlifted to a hospital in Denver for treatment, but he ultimately died in May.
The incident left Oxford shaken.
“It’s been really hard. I haven’t been able to get back up snowboarding. I didn’t have the mental or emotional strength, you know,” he told the Colorado Sun.
Romero’s deadly fall was one of 18 chair lift falls reported to the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board during the 2024-2025 ski season. It was unusually high when compared to previous seasons, and was especially troubling at least eight of the reported falls involved children.
More than a third of the 149 reported falls to the safety board since the 2014-2015 season involved children or teens.
Romero was the fourth person to die from a chair lift fall since 2016.
The last time 18 falls were reported to the safety board was in 2020-2021, though that spike could be attributed to more people spending time doing outdoor activities due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s unclear exactly why the numbers have shot up again, especially because recent seasons have logged fewer falls. In 2021-2022 there were only nine falls, while in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 there were 12 falls each season, with one fatality between both seasons.
Many of the board’s reports attribute the falls to “skier error,” including Romero’s. However, Oxford told the Colorado Sun that his friend hadn’t been doing anything he thought could have contributed to a fall in the moment before he slipped out of the chair.
Oxford did admit that he and Romero hadn’t lowered the restraint bar on their chair lift that day — a decision Oxford says has sat heavy in his mind.
“The lift before we lowered the bar. A week earlier we had loaded a chair lift and this guy asked if he could lower the bar and we said of course and he told us about a run-in with some younger guys who were pissed when he lowered it,” Oxford told the Colorado Sun. “I really don’t know why we didn’t do it. We were a little winded. We were heading up to meet a friend. I really don’t know … believe me I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”
On top of the pain of losing a loved one, the family of some individuals hurt or killed due to chair lift accidents are also frustrated at what they see as a lack of transparency from ski resorts regarding the incidents.
Victoria Sanko-Perucco’s husband, John, died in 2023 after he fell from a chair in Breckenridge during a March ski trip. John Sanko-Perucco was an expert skier, with 18 years of volunteer service as a ski patroller at the Grand Geneva ski area in Wisconsin to count toward his experience.
He even saved a seven-year-old girl by catching her when she fell from her chair.
Victoria Sanko-Perucco believes that John’s fall was not the fault of operator error, and said her husband always had his restraining bar down when he rode the lifts.
“My family is trying to understand what happened and we have been very frustrated trying to get answers,” she told the Colorado Sun.
She and her family filed a lawsuit in March arguing that Brekenridge and its owner, Vail Resorts, were negligent in maintaining the chair lift on the day her husband died.
“The event that killed Mr. Perucco is the kind that ordinarily doesn’t occur in the absence of negligence,” the lawsuit says.
The Independent has requested comment from Vail Resorts.
“There is no higher priority to us than the safety of our guests and employees. We are fully committed to upholding the highest standards of safety, and proactively invest in safety measures and tactics, such as our leading Yellow Jacket safety program, signage in slow zones, and our Kids on Lifts safety program,” Nadia Guerriero, head of Vail Resorts’ six ski areas in Colorado and Utah, told the Colorado Sun in a statement.
Part of the issue may be ski culture itself and some skiers’ aversion to lowering restraining bars on ski lifts.
While lowering the bar is common in the eastern US — in Vermont there is even an active campaign to warn skiers that riding without the bar lowered is against the law — out west there’s more of a tendency for skiers to ride with the bar raised.
A study from 2023 analyzing 24 lifts at eight ski areas across four regions of the U.S. found that only 41 percent of skiers lowered the restraining bar. Only 9 percent of skiers lowered the bar in the Midwest, while 80 percent of skiers in the Northeast lowered theirs. Just under 40 percent lowered their bars at resorts located in the Rocky Mountains.
The study, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, determined that “with continued education and promotion (as happened with helmet use campaigns) chair lift restraint bar use will ultimately reach high levels across the U.S. as happened with helmet use over time.”
Despite the high number of incidents in Colorado this year, deaths and injuries related to ski lifts are still quite rare, especially when compared to injuries in other active hobbies.
According to the National Safety Council, approximately 1,000 bicyclists die every year while riding their bikes. Just over 240 people on average die every year in National Parks — though some of those deaths are not related to hiking or sport activities.
