Arlington Heights friends unhurt in chair lift accident
Only hours before escaping injury in a chair lift accident at Devil's Head ski resort in Merrimac, Wis., Mike da Ponte and some other friends from Arlington Heights speculated whether they'd ever jump from a chair lift if something went wrong.
Before they left that day, most of them found out the answer.
Fourteen people suffered minor injuries after a ski lift malfunctioned and sent riders rolling backward at a high speed, causing some to jump off the lift.
da Ponte started his day of snowboarding at 9 a.m. Dec. 17 and was on his last ride up the lift at 7 p.m. when the mechanism suddenly stopped.
He and his friend Chris Ambler were already near the top and didn't think anything of it when the lift began backing up. But as the lift continued rolling backward at increasing speed, they realized something was seriously wrong.
da Ponte, 21, has been skiing since he was a kid and snowboarding since middle school. He was familiar with chair lifts having to stop or back up slightly when someone has difficulty getting on. But he'd never experienced any sort of mechanical problem.
da Ponte was skiing with a group of seven friends who attended Thomas Middle School in Arlington Heights together but are now students at different colleges. They were meeting up again over the winter break to snowboard.
All were near the chair lift as it began to roll backward. Though da Ponte and Ambler couldn't see what was going on behind them, others who could shouted ahead for them to jump.
da Ponte said the chairs he and Ambler were about 25 feet up when they jumped. The snow was fluffy enough to gently break their fall as they landed generally on the snowboards on their feet before falling backward.
After landing, they saw other chairs lower down hitting poles at the bottom, and one even fell off the lift.
The only one of da Ponte's friends who did not jump was Stephanie Dicola, who was on only her fifth or sixth run, he said. Her chair did stop before running into serious trouble, but she then had to wait while rescuers worked their way up to her.
Though the experience gave da Ponte and all his friends something new to think about, he didn't consider it to be something that would change their love for snowboarding.
"It was scary, but it was one of those one-in-a-million things," he said.
All but one of those injured were released from hospitals within 24 hours of the accident, and the person hospitalized remains in stable condition.
• Daily Herald news services contributed to this report.