Ski area lifts in New York State are examined regularly and frequently by state inspectors, insurance inspectors and sometimes Federal inspectors, all using as minimum safety guidelines criteria developed by the National Ski Areas Association for the American National Standards Institute. Other states where New Yorkers ski have similar regulations, including New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Colorado.

Accurate and complete figures are hard to come by but an informed guess by one student of ski safety puts liftrelated accidents at no more than 10 percent of all skiing mishaps. According to insurance company figures, less than 15 percent of those lift‐related accidents are caused by actual malfunction of the machinery.

What is not safe about lifts, apparently, are the skiers who ride them. Insurance company statistics indicate that the majority of lift‐related accidents are caused by the carelessness or inexperience of the skiers themselves, skiers who ‘fall when loading or unloading, get clothes, hands or pieces of equipment caught on the chair or gondola, get long hair or long scarves caught in the lift mechanism, fall or—worse yet—jump to the ground when a lift stops.

The advice from the experts, if a lift stops, is “do not panic.” If you're having trouble loading or unloading, call to the lift operator to stop or slow down the lift. In most cases, she or he is trained to watch for trouble and will already have a finger on the stop button. If you are halfway up the mountain and the lift stops for a prolonged period, contain your impatience. Jumping from the lift can put you in the hospital and you'll miss the rest of the ski season instead of just a few runs. If something is really wrong besides cold hands and feet—frostbite or heart attack, for example —watch below for the ski patrol or a passing skier or pass the word down the lift to send for help.

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Beginners and sometimes even more advanced skiers often panic when they come to the off‐ramp of an unfamiliar chairlift. The descent sometimes looks like the vertical face of the Eiger. Most of the time, that's an illusion, and you'll slide off gently to be braked by the crowd that insists on coagulating at the bottom of the off‐ramp. Occasionally, thanks to a misguided manager who thinks skiers should learn the hard way as he did, it's not an illusion and the off‐ramp is as steep and icy as you think it is. Relax anyway. The worst that is going to happen is that you will fall, and if you are tense, you're most likely to hurt yourself. If you fall, the operator will stop the lift until you are out of the way of the people alighting from the next chair. Make a mental note not to use that lift again and to complain to the area manager.

Q.—What are the best lifts to ride?

A.—The most popular lifts in the United States are chairlifts. According to the trade magazine Ski Area Management, there are 1,314 chairlifts, 1,106 surface lifts and 39 gondolas or trams for a total of 2,459 ski lifts (not counting rope tows) in the United States. The best lifts to ride are the lifts that take you to the terrain that you want to ski. However, if a gondola and a chairlift parallel each other to the same spot on the mountain, the gondola may be the obvious choice, but not necessarily the better. Gondolas are warmer and sometimes faster but riding them usually means you must take off your skis and wait in long lines. The chair probably has no line and will get you there almost as quickly, so you will have longer to ski.

The same principle applies to surface lift vs. chairlift. Chairlifts are faster but they are also colder and their lines are longer (if there isn't a gondola nearby). Frequently a combination of surface lifts and/or upper. mountain chairlifts can take skiers to the top faster than the chair that goes from base to summit.