Nathan McLeod endured “a parent’s worst nightmare” when his 4-year-old son fell off a malfunctioning ski lift at Montana Snowbowl Resort on Sunday. They were on the same chairlift when the father said he hit one of the towers and his son Sawyer was thrown.
“This is a parent’s worst nightmare,” McLeod told The Missoulian on Friday. “I watch him fall and he looks at me. I can’t do anything and he screams. I just have this mental image of his whole body slipping out of my arms and it’s horrible.”
McLeod said his other son, Cassidy, 6, was riding up front on a snowboarder while he and Sawyer rode the next lift. McLeod was alarmed when he saw Cassidy’s chair making “huge and violent swings” as it approached the second tower.
“I’m worried it’s going to hit the tower next door,” McLeod told The Missoulian. “And it’s about 40 feet off the ground at that point. As it goes through my mind, suddenly our chair crashes into the tower, upside down, as it starts to climb.
“And just like that,” she continued, “I take my son and slip out of my arms.”
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Sawyer survived the fall, which McLeod says was between 12 and 15 feet. The boy would have faced a steeper fall of 40 feet if their chair had reached the second tower. Once the elevator stopped, things only seemed to get worse for McLeod.
“I’m like, ‘Somebody help us,’ and the elevator stops seconds later,” she told The Missoulian. “But at the same time, when Sawyer falls, the elevator seat breaks and flips over … so I’m holding on to the center rail as the seat swings.”
“My son is screaming and I don’t know what to do,” she continued. “I’m like, ‘Jump now?’
McLeod said he saw an elevator worker run up to Sawyer and hug him. He allegedly gave the boy’s father a “no call” while walking Sawyer to the lift terminal – when McLeod decided to take off his skis and jump off the chair.
He said he ran to his son when the attendant told him to “be careful” as they were about to restart the lift. McLeod became enraged when the attendants started “loading the next people in line” and someone allegedly said, “Yeah, that’s Snowbowl, haha.”
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Andy Morris, whose family owns the resort, told The Missoulian that the elevator was inspected and “there was an unbalanced load that caused the elevator to shake.” He said that Riblets stand up because they “creep quite badly when loaded wrongly”.
Since the resort is part of the Lolo National Forest, the land management agency has closed it pending an investigation. This is not Snowbowl’s first accident, as dozens of passengers were evacuated after a malfunction in 2020.
“What other chairs are bad and freshly painted, who knows?” McLeod said. “My concern is that we were extremely lucky. Had the conditions been different, Sawyer could have been killed. If nothing changes, will someone die?
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