Make Eldora Safe for Kids

My son is a 4yr old Eldorable and I’m really concerned with their lift safety. Specifically the requirement that children are accompanied by a staff member on every lift.

All chair lifts in the state should have safety bars. If cities can require your backyard deck to have a railing, why can't they require a simple safety bar on something that goes upwards of 50 feet in the air?

My 7 year old fell off a chair lift at loading today at another resort, after he got in front of the chair while I was behind it. Operator ignored my screams to stop the lift - allowing him to go up alone, even though he can’t reach the safety bar to pull it down,

My son was in the class last year. He and his buddy were too short to pull down the safety barrier, and so they rode up without the safety barrier being engaged. I'm just glad nothing happened.

Any safety improvements should extend to all ski schools

this is the greatest view of the sundance chair I have ever seen! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSPtnRdKiHQ

Good luck! The resort operators are only interested in money, they dance around the rules and treat us like fools.

I dont get it, if parents dont want their kids riding chairlifts alone why dont they ride the chairlifts with them? Why should the resort have to enforce the parents rules?

>Mandate an adult ride with kids 6 or under? No more ski lessons for young children. Oh come on. Other mountains enforce this and they still have lessons. It is a minor inconvenience at worst to find an adult from the single line to go up with otherwise unaccompanied kids.

Ski areas are shielded from reasonable duty by the "Ski Safety Act" -actually the 'Ski Area Indemnification Act' The Ski lobby team has created that and added to it over the years. Children should receive ski safety training before joining school ski clubs, or it should be part of the lesson. REALLY TOO not just saying 'it already is'

Put a safety lift operator 20 feet uphill who has a kill switch. His job is to stop the lift quickly in all instances of bad loads for children and adults. Also skiers should stop making people feel like crap for wanting the safety bar down. They do this constantly on almost every ride.

Sounds like a plan

There must be safety bars on lifts and everyone should be practicing due diligence for kids'safety.

My daughter, 4 at the time, fell off the lift while in ski school. The response to the situation from the ski school program staff was extremely disappointing and uncaring. I pushed to understand how they record these incidents and the protocol to inform parents when an incident has occurred (when the child appears to be ok). So much improvement needed from my experience.

I 100% agree we need to ensure safety on the ski lifts, especially with the increased number of people at each of the resorts. Many other resorts in Colorado already have the policy of ensuring children ride with adults, Eldora should follow suit here. We love Eldora and do not wan to see any policy be enforced that would hinder any programs, but the ask here is minimal, and should be easily put into place.

I’m a Mom whose kid will learn to ride

At a place that prides itself on its ski lessons for young kids, Eldora needs to take basic steps to ensure that the ski experience is as safe as possible. Thank you.

Mandate/force Eldora to have safety bars in ALL lifts? Yes, absolutely, Mandate an adult ride with kids 6 or under? No more ski lessons for young children. Say bye to the Eldorables program many of us have loved. This means your children won't be able to start group ski lessons until they are 7! The ski instructors need to teach children how dangerous it is to mess around when riding a lift and how a fall can lead to their deaths, and then we need safety bars of course, but if we mandate children ride with adults we make ski group classes impossible.

Kid's safety must be a top priority. The "when available" clause puts kids in serious danger.

7 years ago Featured

Eldora shouldn’t be able to hide behind ski law & waivers when they are negligent like this. Our lawmakers need to carve out exclusions to that law for instances like this when kids are allowed on chairlifts with no safety bars.