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May 26, 2023

All His Training Pays Off: Slackliner Wins Carnegie Medal for Ski Lift Rescue Over Cables

Up on the Colorado ski slopes in 2017, a man was suspended from a chairlift by the strap of his backpack coiled around his neck. Nearby, professional slackliner and ski instructor Mickey Wilson knew

Up on the Colorado ski slopes in 2017, a man was suspended from a chairlift by the strap of his backpack coiled around his neck. Nearby, professional slackliner and ski instructor Mickey Wilson knew that there was no one better trained to affect a rescue than he.

For those outside of the know, slacklining is a fun activity similar to tightrope walking in which people practice balance, nerve, and coordination by walking and doing tricks on a single line of nylon strapping that has a lot of bounce.

Normally done between trees with soft grass or sand underneath, professional slackliners will fasten their strap over bodies of water or canyons, with dozens, even hundreds of feet of empty space below them.

It wasn’t a nylon slackline, but the cables on which the chairlifts were mounted may as well have been a sidewalk for Wilson, who despite having a broken hand at the time, won the Carnegie Hero Medal for climbing up one of the lift towers, shimmying 30 feet along the cable, and the adjacent chairlift where Richard Rattenbury was stuck.

Once there, he couldn’t find any way to unlatch the backpack that had already choked Rattenbury out of consciousness. Below them, Hans Meuller and another comrade had tried standing on each other’s shoulders to reach their pal, but couldn’t manage it.

“It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen—the most helpless I’ve ever felt—being two feet away from one of my best friends—my best man—[and] watch him lose consciousness,” Meuller told CBS News Colorado.

“I can climb up that tower,” said Wilson confidantly, recounting how he calculated his approach to saving the man. “The first thing that went through my hand was ‘thank God I’m a slackliner and a good slackliner.'”

OTHER SKI RESCUES: Dramatic Moment Skier Rescued a Snowboarder Who Was Buried Head First in Snow and Running Out of Air (Watch)

Hard part done, the backpack was so far extended under the chairlift that Wilson couldn’t even reach it. That’s when a ski patrol tossed him a knife which he caught first time (wearing ski gloves? who knows) and cut the man free, who was rushed to the hospital and made a full recovery.

The Carnegie Medal is awarded to civilians who put their lives in danger in attempt to save another. Wilson was recently announced as the winner among other heroes, despite his rescue taking place 6 years ago.

The moral of the story? Get your children into slacklining

WATCH the story below from CBS News CO… *Note to Those Outside the U.S: View video at CBS.com…

CELEBRATE This Man’s Heroism With Any Slackliners You Know…

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