Now that’s embarrassing.

My mom sent this to me the other day. We have made three ski trips to Vail, so we’re familiar with the resort and this lift. When you set aside the danger this guy was in, and consider the fact that he was safely rescued, there is nothing left to do but laugh. This is hilarious. I am so embarrassed for him.

From The Smoking Gun:

Skier Suffers Exposure
Man left dangling upside down, pantsless after Vail lift mishap

JANUARY 6–In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado’s ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Thursday morning.

The January 1 mishap apparently occurred after the male skier, 48, and a child boarded a high-speed lift in Vail’s Blue Sky Basin. It appears that the chairlift’s fold-down seat was somehow not in the lowered position, which caused the man to partially fall through the resulting gap. His right ski got jammed in the ascending chairlift, and that kept him upended since his boot never dislodged from its binding.

The Skyline Express lift was stopped shortly after the pair’s botched boarding resulted in the man dangling from the lift. The exposed skier was stuck for about 15 minutes before Vail personnel backed the lift up and successfully dislodged the unidentified man from the four-seat chair. In a statement released this afternoon, Vail Resorts, which operates the ski area, reported that the skier was not injured after being “suspended for approximately seven minutes.” The press release did not explain how the mishap occurred, only that “the man was caught on the chair.”

OK, so there’s the story. Are you ready for the pictures? (YES, there are PICTURES!–snapped by fellow skiers.) This poor guy is probably cursing the invention of the digital camera and camera phones. And, well, the internet.
Can you first imagine this happening to you? Not only are you hanging upside down up high on a ski lift, being held up only by your ski and your pants, for SEVEN (possibly up to 15??) minutes… but you’re also giving everyone quite the show! And if that weren’t bad enough, you log onto the internet the next day and see these photos, and you know it’s YOUR ass everyone in the free world is now looking at. Poor guy, he’s probably traumatized.

Interestingly enough, it looks to me like it’s possible he was not wearing any actual undies (for better or worse, the photos are much larger on The Smoking Gun). It looks like thermal “underwear” or even just the lining of his ski pants. I’m guessing he’ll rethink that decision the next time he hits the slopes.

And in case you’re skeptical, this story is absolutely real. In addition to the initial story of this poor guy’s mishap, there is now a follow-up story circulating. One of the people who snapped some of these photos was a professional photographer for a company called Sharpshooters. The company hires photographers to take pics of people at ski resorts all over the country. This particular photographer (Marty Odom) was not on duty, and was simply enjoying a day off with his family. He snapped the pics with his own camera on his own time and yet Sharpshooters has told him he is “suspended indefinitely” because they feel that the photos are inappropriate. Amazing, huh?