Australian snowboarder dies after becoming caught on ski lift in Japan

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/australian-snowboarder-dies-after-becoming-caught-on-ski-lift-in-japan/

11 Comments

  1. FacetiousInvective2 on

    I’m sorry this happened. I still don’t understand how the person died. All I understood is that she was hanging from her backpack.. so.. did she have a heart attack?

  2. Japan’s ski infrastructure is usually top tier, which makes this kind of freak accident especially heartbreaking

  3. What a horrible way to die. Strangled by your backpack.

    Back from a snowboarding trip to Myoko I can only confirm that the nationality is not surprising. At this time of the year there are more Australian snowboarders in the slopes than Japanese.

  4. I’m not someone who enjoys skiing (specifically downhill) or snowboarding. You can’t win against gravity. This however just adds another layer of “nope” when it comes to this sport.
    RIP lady.

  5. spaceandthewoods_ on

    This almost happened to a friend of mine; we were both hopping off a lift with a lap bar and somehow the hood of his jacket got hooked on the end of the bar as he lifted it up and slipped off the seat. I was mid-exit at the time, and as he slid down the slope off the lift, his weight pulled the bar down on me. I ended up trapped, folded up at the waist beneath the bar which now had his full weight dangling off it stopping me from lifting it.

    Even worse was that he was being dragged by the lift whilst still slipping down the slope on his skis whilst hung around the neck by his hood and was just out of reach for me to unhook him, and I could barely breathe as I’d been caught under the bar weirdly.

    It was a scary couple of seconds before the lift guy noticed what was happening and yoinked his hood off the bar. Almost some real final destination shit

  6. Still hard to determine what happened based on the article. The way it reads is that she tried to get off, got stuck and dragged a few feet, the operator stopped the chair, all in the matter of seconds.

  7. Witchy_Wookie5000 on

    Terrible way to go.

    Why do people ski with backpacks these days? I am older now, but used to ski a lot. I never wore a backpack. I had all my gear on. Just seems odd to need something like that. I wouldn’t want to be dealing with it getting on/off lifts. The poles were enough.