Pikes Peak Region Trail Finder

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ASPEN — An 8-year-old was saved from probable serious injury when ski patrollers at Snowmass Ski Area used a lift tower pad to break his 25-foot fall from a chairlift.

The boy started falling out of the chairlift Friday after loading. His parents hung on to him as an operator stopped the lift.

Five patrollers scrambled to a nearby lift tower, unhooked the safety pad wrapped around the tower base and positioned the pad under the boy.  The parents let go, and the boy fell onto the pad.

The boy, from New Zealand, was taken to a hospital as a precaution but was released shortly afterward to his parents.