mmm life, then moving to the oh Fuck, why, why me...can I jump off from here, no its all to high, how many mins until we get to the top, will there still be a top.....

All went through my mind, sitting on the Waterfall express lift at Whakapapa in Sept 9. Last run of the day and Ruapehu decides its timeto belch.

chalky wrote:

radiusq wrote:For some reason this reminds me of something I read about Sir Winston Churchill. Apparently, he couldn't stand on a train platform for fear of jumping in front of the train. He wasn't suicidal, he just feared getting an urge to jump. He never did, but he avoided train stations so he never really knew if he actually would. I then start to think if I it would be possible to have a similar urge to jump from a chairlift. I then usually spend the rest of the chairlift journey trying to clear my mind of all thoughts.

I fully had that feeling the other day, I was standing on the roof of a building looking at weather instruments when I looked over the edge and started to think about what it would feel like falling all the way down, and found my self tense and almost jumping over.....wierd

I get that a lot Driving along, thinking "I wonder what it would be like to drive into a power pole" There's a name for it

scatter wrote:

chalky wrote:

radiusq wrote:For some reason this reminds me of something I read about Sir Winston Churchill. Apparently, he couldn't stand on a train platform for fear of jumping in front of the train. He wasn't suicidal, he just feared getting an urge to jump. He never did, but he avoided train stations so he never really knew if he actually would. I then start to think if I it would be possible to have a similar urge to jump from a chairlift. I then usually spend the rest of the chairlift journey trying to clear my mind of all thoughts.

I fully had that feeling the other day, I was standing on the roof of a building looking at weather instruments when I looked over the edge and started to think about what it would feel like falling all the way down, and found my self tense and almost jumping over.....wierd

I get that a lot Driving along, thinking "I wonder what it would be like to drive into a power pole" There's a name for it

I have similar thoughts whilst on the Motorway, but swap pole for big truck wheels

radiusq wrote:Usually I fixate on the cable snapping. I try to calculate the odds of surviving a fall from the height of said chairlift. I wonder if the snow would break your fall, or do nothing at all. I then spend some time recollecting all the stories I've read about Alpine disasters. A couple of the big tragedies with dozens of deaths have been due to fires in mountain trains (which exist in Europe). For some reason this reminds me of something I read about Sir Winston Churchill. Apparently, he couldn't stand on a train platform for fear of jumping in front of the train. He wasn't suicidal, he just feared getting an urge to jump. He never did, but he avoided train stations so he never really knew if he actually would. I then start to think if I it would be possible to have a similar urge to jump from a chairlift. I then usually spend the rest of the chairlift journey trying to clear my mind of all thoughts.

Yep, I kind of can't help but think about similar stuff - not really in a morbid way, more of a curious:
"hmmm, my body really would splatter quite nicely on those rocks if I fell, ouch, that would hurt...man how long would it take for the emergency folks to find me....it wouldn't be a pleasant 30 minutes to an hour waiting there on those rocks..." and that type of stuff.
For me it's just my brain thinking about all the possibilities and generally focusing on the "worst case scenario" and then thinking that through in detail and how I would handle it etc...I don't really consider that morbid at all....

Wanting it to happen would be morbid, but thinking about it....not really...

scatter wrote:

chalky wrote:

radiusq wrote:For some reason this reminds me of something I read about Sir Winston Churchill. Apparently, he couldn't stand on a train platform for fear of jumping in front of the train. He wasn't suicidal, he just feared getting an urge to jump. He never did, but he avoided train stations so he never really knew if he actually would. I then start to think if I it would be possible to have a similar urge to jump from a chairlift. I then usually spend the rest of the chairlift journey trying to clear my mind of all thoughts.

I fully had that feeling the other day, I was standing on the roof of a building looking at weather instruments when I looked over the edge and started to think about what it would feel like falling all the way down, and found my self tense and almost jumping over.....wierd

I get that a lot Driving along, thinking "I wonder what it would be like to drive into a power pole" There's a name for it

Assburgers syndrome?

I have also had those thoughts on a chairlift, about the best course of action should the cable snap, or a tower collapse. I have watched the T-line derail on Whakapapas valley T-bar (cause by users deliberately trying to ski/board way out to one side while its pulling them up the mountain. It was like watching all these little ants fall over as it came down, then you realise the pressure/weight on the line and realise it could easily chop somebody in half, luckily though, no-one hurt.

2 times I have been really scared on a chairlift. The first was the one and only time I ever rode the National Downhill chairlift at WHakapapa, they only ever use it when there is way too many people trying to get up the mountain, normally on a Saturday morning when Turoa is closed. I was sitting there heading up and marvelling at how rickety the whole arrangement was, when I saw the chair about 3 in front of me stop at one of the towers, and the whole thing kept going. The next chair smacked into the back of it and stopped, and still we kept going. Just as I was working out how to avoid losing my legs, the next chair hit those 2 and dislodged them, and we carried on up to the top. Whew!

But by far the most scariest was at Jackson Hole. They call it the Tram, basically there is one at the top and one at the bottom, one goes up, one goes down. They hold 120 people each, so you can imagine, everything is massive, the towers, the cable, etc. The line would have to be about 4kms long I suppose, with only 3 towers between the bottom and the top, so massive gaps between, and obviously your height above the terrain at times is huge, I reckon over 500m in places. Half way up it goes over the brow of a very high cliff, and this is where you pass the Tram coming down, this is also where any crosswinds hit you the worst. And on this day the conditions were marginal, we were on the very first tram to go up in the morning, and after that 1 they didnt run it again for about 3 hours until the wind died down. But for about 5 minutes we sat there suspended above certain death, and swaying like a, like a, like a really swaying thing, I was clutching at a pole and looking at the side as it changed from sky, to certain death, to sky....you get the picture. What you have to remember is, as a snowboarder, it is important to maintain a high level of 'cool' at all times, especially in front of skiers. I found it impossible though, and just wanted to get out of there, or else curl up in the corner and sob until mummy made it go away.
They would try and move it a couple of meteres, then stop suddenly as another gust hit, then repeat ad nauseum. Im in no hurry to try that again I can tell you.

I ofton play the , I wonder if I could have gotten away with overtaking around this blind corner or over a blind hill, game.
I reckon 9 times out of 10 you would be just fine.

ThingOne wrote:I ofton play the , I wonder if I could have gotten away with overtaking around this blind corner or over a blind hill, game.
I reckon 9 times out of 10 you would be just fine.

Heh, yeah I used to have a mate that thought like that. Man we used to have a lot of fun in cars.

His funeral was a pretty sad event though.

scatter wrote:

chalky wrote:

radiusq wrote:For some reason this reminds me of something I read about Sir Winston Churchill. Apparently, he couldn't stand on a train platform for fear of jumping in front of the train. He wasn't suicidal, he just feared getting an urge to jump. He never did, but he avoided train stations so he never really knew if he actually would. I then start to think if I it would be possible to have a similar urge to jump from a chairlift. I then usually spend the rest of the chairlift journey trying to clear my mind of all thoughts.

I fully had that feeling the other day, I was standing on the roof of a building looking at weather instruments when I looked over the edge and started to think about what it would feel like falling all the way down, and found my self tense and almost jumping over.....wierd

I get that a lot Driving along, thinking "I wonder what it would be like to drive into a power pole" There's a name for it

There is a name for it - It's called "anticipating". Very interesting.

dented wrote:But by far the most scariest was at Jackson Hole. They call it the Tram, basically there is one at the top and one at the bottom, one goes up, one goes down. They hold 120 people each, so you can imagine, everything is massive, the towers, the cable, etc. The line would have to be about 4kms long I suppose, with only 3 towers between the bottom and the top, so massive gaps between, and obviously your height above the terrain at times is huge, I reckon over 500m in places. Half way up it goes over the brow of a very high cliff, and this is where you pass the Tram coming down, this is also where any crosswinds hit you the worst. And on this day the conditions were marginal, we were on the very first tram to go up in the morning, and after that 1 they didnt run it again for about 3 hours until the wind died down. But for about 5 minutes we sat there suspended above certain death, and swaying like a, like a, like a really swaying thing, I was clutching at a pole and looking at the side as it changed from sky, to certain death, to sky....you get the picture. What you have to remember is, as a snowboarder, it is important to maintain a high level of 'cool' at all times, especially in front of skiers. I found it impossible though, and just wanted to get out of there, or else curl up in the corner and sob until mummy made it go away.
They would try and move it a couple of meteres, then stop suddenly as another gust hit, then repeat ad nauseum. Im in no hurry to try that again I can tell you.

Whoah. That gives me the jeebies just thinking about it. I've been on one of those super-sized gondolas in France, and with the combination of weight and ferocious wind that must have been pretty exciting! Those experiences are a million times more titillating than anything you find at Rainbows End that's for sure.

I don't think I've had any major scares on chairlifts (other than ones created by my own thoughts <g>). The only one that springs to mind was when I was on my own on a small 2 seater chair in Val D'Isere when all of a sudden the chair came to an immediate stop and dropped about 5-6 meters in an instant. Honestly, my first thought was "fuck, this is it, I'm dead", but the chair simply sprang back up, bounced a bit and all was good. I still don't know what happened. ... I've been stuck on a broken down lift on Turoa. Conditions were awful, high wind. It was about an hour before they got us off the lift. I only had one layer on under my jacket and I was getting worried. That was the coldest I've ever been in my life.

I scare myself quite a bit whilst boarding. Usually it's my sense of direction that let's me down. I'll always tend to end up either traversing across tracks to far and find myself staring down a really steep chute (having totally missed the easy looking face down that I was supposed to take) or take a route down to the chair only to find that I've totally gone the wrong way and have a good 60minute hike back out - and at 3:30pm in the afternoon, that's not cool.

Snowboarding is so much fun though that's it worth the regular bouts of mental torment :P

dented wrote:

ThingOne wrote:I ofton play the , I wonder if I could have gotten away with overtaking around this blind corner or over a blind hill, game.
I reckon 9 times out of 10 you would be just fine.

Heh, yeah I used to have a mate that thought like that. Man we used to have a lot of fun in cars.

His funeral was a pretty sad event though.