Post your Rope-tow Stories Thread
- Thread starter Pole-Less
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rozboon
Active member
In backwards little New Zealand a few of the smaller hills have the rather more ridiculous evil bastard version of a rope tow. These things go up some gnarly terrain, and the ropes go really fast. Not a hope in hell of hanging on with your hands... instead you put on something that's a hybrid of a climbing harness and a bit of bondage gear and it has this industrial strength "nut-cracker" metal contraption attached to the front. You ski up to the rope at pace (so your arms don't come off when the tension comes on), half grab it with one hand then whip the nutcracker over (or under if you're a bit better at this game) the rope, then hang on for dear life.
Each "tower" has a large pulley on it that doubles as a ham-slicer at the local butchers during the off-season. If your hand goes through one with the rope... you just pray your fingers don't come off.
Sometimes just to fuck with you the rope will go slightly downhill for a bit, then vigorously uphill - but because 50% of people riding this vicious contraption knock the rope off the pulleys when their fingers get minced, sometimes the pulley holding the rope down in the valley isn't doing anything, so the rope is like 15ft up in the air and the only solution is to get 3-4 skiers literally overlapping their skis riding up so you have enough weight to get the rope back on the pulley rather than everyone just getting launched.
Or the opposite, if the rope comes off the pulley at the top of a rise and nobody puts it on for a while it saws a foot-deep slot into the snow and when you arrive at it you promptly get pulled dick-first into the slot as well, unless you break the Olympic record for weightlifting and manage to keep the rope up.
Sparknotes: New Zealand rope tows will fucking maim you
Each "tower" has a large pulley on it that doubles as a ham-slicer at the local butchers during the off-season. If your hand goes through one with the rope... you just pray your fingers don't come off.
Sometimes just to fuck with you the rope will go slightly downhill for a bit, then vigorously uphill - but because 50% of people riding this vicious contraption knock the rope off the pulleys when their fingers get minced, sometimes the pulley holding the rope down in the valley isn't doing anything, so the rope is like 15ft up in the air and the only solution is to get 3-4 skiers literally overlapping their skis riding up so you have enough weight to get the rope back on the pulley rather than everyone just getting launched.
Or the opposite, if the rope comes off the pulley at the top of a rise and nobody puts it on for a while it saws a foot-deep slot into the snow and when you arrive at it you promptly get pulled dick-first into the slot as well, unless you break the Olympic record for weightlifting and manage to keep the rope up.
Sparknotes: New Zealand rope tows will fucking maim you
Cahal
Member
One time in Austria me and my buddy were trying to ride the rope tow from the same spot at the same time and i ended up slipping off and sliding down backwards. I took out like 7 Austrian dudes. They were pissed. This easily doubles as the biggest jerry moment of my life. I feel shame
saskskier
Active member
When I was like 5-6, one of my friends had a little ski hill in his back yard with a rope tow. I I think my mitten got caught or something and my fingers went between the rope and pulley at the top. I didn't break anything, but my 5-6 year old brain remembers it hurting a lot.