A world champion slackliner finds himself in the middle of a situation where he is the only one with the unique skills needed to save a person’s life.
Δ Full episode video with photos/videos
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Δ Mickey Wilson, world champion slackliner |
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Δ On January 4, 2017, Mickey scaled a chairlift tower and scooted across the cables like a slackline to save someone hanging from the chairlift. |
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| Δ Mickey married his girlfriend on a net connected by slacklines over a canyon in Moab, Utah |
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Transcript
JOLIE
I grew up skiing the slopes of Northern Utah, which was awesome -- Day skiing, night skiing -- it was all freezing cold, but it was incredibly fun.
And, of course, with skiing the mountain came the inevitable ride up the ski lift, time and time again -- which was sometimes good for friendly conversations or sight-seeing, and even occasionally contributed to some unexpected hilarity.
I remember one time -- I had this friend with this big poofy red afro, and he got his ski pants strap caught on the chairlift at the unloading zone, and so when he tried to ski away and get off the chair, he pulled the chair with him until the strap snapped and then his pants fell down. And he looked like such a doof, just standing there with his pants at his ankles, I was laughing so hard. I mean, I had no idea at the time that I’d end up marrying that guy ten years later.
But all those rides on the chair lift also had cold, long moments, too, where the lift would slow down and even stop -- sometimes for these long stretches of time, where it felt like we had traveled to the mountain only to watch the world trapped at one single point. One time, the lift stopped for hours, and I remember being so annoyed at the wasted time, and of course, never giving a second thought that there might be a legitimate reason why the lift was stopped. Like, maybe it stopped because someone needed help. A recent example you may have seen on video was when a pipe burst under a chairlift at a North Carolina resort, unleashing a geyser of water shooting up at lift riders in 7 degree weather, forcibly knocking some of them off the lift and onto the ground below -- if you haven’t seen it, look up “chairlift geyser” -- it is seriously crazy.
And today’s story is about one of those moments -- not about being hit with a geyser, but one of those moments where content skiers found their ride up a lift suddenly interrupted with a long, probably annoying stop. What they didn’t know was that ahead of them, far up the mountain, there was a good reason for bringing their ride to a halt, and that an unexpected hero had sprung into action to make sure the day didn’t end in tragedy.
I’m Jolie Hales, and this is Podsitivity.
People around the globe love spending time in the great outdoors. Pretty much anytime someone introduces themselves at work, or at some activity or online or something, it seems like they always talk about how they love to do something outside in nature, whether it’s hiking, or rock climbing, surfing, mountain biking, snow skiing, kayaking -- I mean, there’s a long list of outdoor sports that people -- like, myself included -- really enjoy.
But there’s one of these sports I don’t hear many people talk about very often. Probably not because it isn’t fun, but more so because it must be really hard to learn. The sport I’m referring to?
Is slacklining.
The first time I saw a slackline, I was out for a run on the boardwalk of Huntington Beach, California. And there was this small group of people who had rigged up what looked like this long seatbelt a couple feet off the ground between two palm trees, and then they were taking turns trying to walk across it -- mostly without a lot of success, but demonstrating a lot of admirable determination, I would say.
Maybe you’re like me and you’ve seen a slackline at a local park or beach, or maybe you remember the scene from that ever-so-amazing show, The Office, where Andy challenges his colleagues to give the slackline a try, resulting in a montage of hilarious tumbles from Dwight Schrute.
But in case you’ve never even heard of a slackline, slacklining is --
MICKEY
It's a lot like tight rope walking except without the big long pole. You're not using a big long pole to balance. You're just walking with just your body and using your arms which you generally hold above your head to control your balance.
JOLIE
And instead of walking on a rope, you walk on what’s called a flat piece of "webbing."
MICKEY
Webbing is a material that is used in rigging and climbing applications. It's like rope but flat.
JOLIE
Kinda like the straps on your backpack that can be tightened or loosened, only a slackline is usually an inch or two wide.
MICKEY
When I first heard what slack line was, when somebody told me that it's a piece of webbing tensioned between two trees, I was like, what's webbing? Are we talking about Spider-man here? What's going on?
JOLIE
That’s Mickey Wilson, a life-long resident of Colorado, who grew up doing all the outdoor sports.
MICKEY
A lot of skiing. A lot of white water kayaking, skydiving...
JOLIE
Biking, cliff jumping -- you name the outdoor adventure -- He tried it out and he excelled.
MICKEY
I grew up an only child in the country, very far away from lots of people. So it was just me, my dad and my mom. And my dad used to be a professional skier, actually. He was a freestyle aerialist. He did backflips, and double backflips on skis back in the 70s, and then he became a ski patrolman at Copper Mountain.
JOLIE
Mickey grew up playing the classic sports, too.
MICKEY
I was super into baseball. Baseball was my main sport in high school.
JOLIE
But it was the adventure sports that stuck beyond his youth.
MICKEY
If you go into my garage, you'll see mountain bikes, road bikes, climbing gear, slackline gear, kayaking gear, ski gear, skateboards... might be forgetting something, you know. I think it's important to be as as versatile as one can be.
JOLIE
And when you see Mickey, he even looks like the kind of guy who spends his time in the great outdoors, usually sporting long brown hair, sun-touched skin, and maybe a little facial scruff after a few days away from the bathroom razor, topped off with a cheerful, “everything’s good” demeanor.
And while outdoor sports have been a part of his life since he was a toddler, it wasn’t until Mickey was a freshman in college that he was introduced to the sport that would quite literally change his life.
MICKEY
When I first tried slacklining back in 2007, it was really difficult because it's a narrow freaking rope that you're trying to balance on, and I was very bad at it. And I was used to being a naturally talented athlete who picked up things quickly. So I was super discouraged by it and I actually hated slacklining for the first years. My friends would invite me to go slacklining and I would just go, "Nah. I don't want to go do that. It's stupid. I'd rather do something else like hacky sack or frisbee or you know, some other park sport.
JOLIE
But then, abut two years or so after he had been unimpressedly introduced to slacklining, the first time, he saw someone do a backflip from the slackline and then land back on the slackline, and suddenly Mickey saw the sport in an entirely different light. That was friggin’ cool. Maybe there was more to this elevated seatbelt than he had first thought.
MICKEY
I got his email address and his contact info and got the list of all the equipment I needed.
JOLIE
It turned out you could buy a pretty good slackline setup for less than a hundred bucks. So Mickey rigged it up, and started practicing. And truth be told, it wasn’t easy.
MICKEY
It's a tough sport and a lot of people really get discouraged doing it, I feel like. And that's, you know, that's good and bad. In my opinion, something I like to say is that a lot of times in life, the things that are most most worth doing are the things that are difficult, you know, I mean, easy things generally don't give you, ya know, the greatest satisfaction.
JOLIE
And as he put hours, days, weeks of practice into the sport, he started to get a knack for it.
MICKEY
And then I did pick it up quickly because I had my own slackline, and I was doing it every day. I was carrying it with me in my backpack to classes. And that's when I, you know, I finally broke through the ceiling of that steep learning curve. And that's when it becomes really fun.
JOLIE
He didn’t give up, and is grateful for--
MICKEY
Lots of lots of lots of good positive, you know, reinforcement from my mom and my dad.
JOLIE
Part of mastering the slackline understandably involves mastering your sense of balance.
MICKEY
In my opinion, and in my experience, and I have a lot of it in the field of balance, balance is not, ya know, something that you're giving it birth. It's something that you attain through practice and you're trying different things. Whether you're a skier and you learn balance through lots of skiing or playing sports or all these different -- whatever, you know, however you learn it, it's an acquired skill.
JOLIE
And by combining his natural athletic ability with loads of practice, Mickey found that sense of balance.
MICKEY
Eventually, you start to learn to balance. You get good at it, you start to walk and you just kind of get addicted to it, and then kind of the sky is the limit from there. There are guys and girls out there that have been training for years and they can do some of the craziest maneuvers on these slacklines. Double flips, gymnet, you know, stuff that it's totally like Olympic quality. Honestly, slacklining should be in the Olympics because a slackline, especially a trick line is literally just like a balance beam, but made of trampoline-like material, and both balance beam and trampoline are in the Olympics. So that's what I have to say about that.
JOLIE
And had slacklining been an Olympic sport, Mickey undoubtedly would have been a podium contender. Because eventually, Mickey turned into an awesome slackliner.
And simultaneously, he was in college, being an awesome student and getting awesome grades.
MICKEY
My first semester of senior year, I took 23 and a half credits, which is almost like a double load. I was taking graduate classes my senior year.
JOLIE
And his slackline went on the checklist of what to put in his college backpack every day.
MICKEY
Like calculator, lunch, computer, slackline.
JOLIE
And when he had time between classes, he’d rig up the slackline and practice, somehow also finding time to study and keep his grades up.
I should have asked how often he found time to sleep, if at all.
MICKEY
I finished my masters in one year and I was pretty burnt out, to say the least. I had done a physics degree, a minor in public affairs, and then and then a masters in microelectronic materials in year five, and the end of year five, I was just burnt out.
JOLIE
I can’t even imagine taking 23 and a half college credits in a single semester. I mean, I don’t even think that was allowed at the universities that I attended.
MICKEY
I had like really, you know, strong desire to be the best at whatever I did, or to do my best -- not necessarily to be the best, but to do my best.
JOLIE
So when graduation came, Mickey was ready for a break.
MICKEY
I was like just ready to go be a ski bum. But then, but then slacklining fell in my lap towards the end of college, you know, and I got really good at it and it was such a new, I mean, such a new sport.
JOLIE
And Mickey wasn’t just walking across the slackline -- sometimes at incredibly tall heights, by the way, but he was bouncing and flipping and doing all these kinds of impressive tricks, called “tricklining” -- more reminiscent of what you might see in a trampoline trick competition, but instead of launching and landing from a wide bouncy circle, he was doing it from a bouncy little line of “webbing.”
MICKEY
It's such a small sport. It's kind of like being a world champion frisbee player or hacky sack player or underwater basket weaver.
JOLIE
And around the same time that Mickey picked up the sport, slacklining competitions had just begun springing up around the globe.
MICKEY
I just sort of rode the wave and got really into it. And yeah, finished in 2012 with my masters and started started driving around in a van with a bunch of other slackliners doing shows and competitions around the country. And then, started getting plane tickets to Europe and South America and the Middle East for for slackline shows, and competitions, and did a bunch of traveling -- went to Dubai like seven times. That was cool.
JOLIE
And before he knew it, he was a world champion.
MICKEY
I won Red Bull Bay Lines in 2015, Red Bull Airlines in 2016, Red Bull Slack Ship in Poland into 2016, and then I won the Altius Airline Championship in Mexico -- Not Mexico City... Kempeche in 2017 or something.
JOLIE
Competitions took a hiatus during a couple years of COVID lockdowns, but when they picked up again, Mickey was back on the line, picking up third place at the Red Bull competition this last October.
MICKEY
I'm pretty stoked on it. I wanted to win and I maybe coulda won if I hadn't messed up my last run. But, to be fair, like I'm 33, I have a job now, I have a wife, and I have a year and a half old son and like it's a lot harder to just like, find time to train. Plus, when you're older, you can't train all the time. Your body needs like old guy recovery time.
JOLIE
Gotta love when 33 makes you an old man.
But even though he didn’t take home the grand prize overall at the 2021 Red Bull competition, he did win the best trick award, which he won by doing a double front flip into a back flip.
Ya know. As one does.
And remember, this is basically all on a flat piece of rope, 5 centimeters wide.
And at Red Bull competitions, these tricks are done without a safety tether, 30 to 80 feet in the air above a giant airbag.
MICKEY
Those ones are really fun but also really scary. It's still really scary to fall uncontrollably, even just 30 feet.
JOLIE
Because typically, slackliners are used to taking extensive safety precautions. The webbing itself is capable of carrying thousands more pounds of weight than is ever asked of it, the web locks that secure the webbing in place are engineered to withstand countless cycles and strain, and whenever you slackline high above the ground, called “highlining,” you wear a climbing harness that ties directly to the slackline, so you never plummet to your death below.
MICKEY
I've fallen off a high line, thousands of times and I'm still here -- still kicking. That's what I tell people all the time. With highlining, you can fall off a highline as many times as you want and it's like taking a mini four foot bungee jump and it's really fun, actually.
JOLIE
They even have a term for the bungee-style fall off a highline -- “whipping.”
MICKEY
I did a highline over Yosemite falls in Yosemite Park, and I think we were like about 2,000, 3,000 feet above the ground -- very high, because it's Yosemite, you know. I know guys that have set up slackline, high lines between hot air balloons, thousands of feet high. You can set them up in Moab. Moab's a huge popular place for highlining, and most of those highlines are around 500 feet above the ground. It's a really cool feeling to be just standing on a one inch wide piece of webbing and feel completely safe... and also really focused and engaged in this really intense balancing act that you're doing up high.
JOLIE
By the time the year 2017 began, Mickey was a very well-experienced slacklining champion.
MICKEY
I was still living the pro slack life. I didn't have a job. Although I did have a job. I was a ski instructor at Arapahoe Basin -- a very serious big boy job where I had to be there 10, or was it 15 days a season to teach ski school so I could get my free pass.
JOLIE
And on January 4th, 2017, Mickey headed to the resort to teach ski school, thinking it would be like any other ski day. Or better yet, Mickey hoped there wouldn’t be enough ski school students to instruct, so that he could instead spend the day free to ski the beautiful powder that had just dumped all over the mountain. A giant blizzard had just hit the resort, and the result was every hard core skier’s dream -- Acres and acres of beautiful fresh powder.
And as luck would have it, having to drive in the blizzard must have kept the students away, and Mickey was given the thumbs up to hit the mountain at his leisure -- something he was totally happy to do.
While he was walking around the lodge area, someone recognized Mickey. It was an old friend -- Billy -- there with a couple other guys.
MICKEY
He was an old ski friend who I'd skied with over the years and he recognized me and he invited me to go ski with them.
JOLIE
And Mickey was happy to oblige.
MICKEY
And he introduced me to the people he was skiing with. It was our friend, Hans, a guy I also knew from college, and then their friend, Richard, who I did not know, but I just met him that day. And so it was the the four of us and we go to ski when the ski lifts open and it's an amazing day. I mean, there's a foot of fresh powder, and it was still dumping, like, really snowing hard.
JOLIE
Mickey, Billy, Hans, and Richard were all very advanced skiers, and the mountain was their playground. They were jumping off cliffs, doing flips, having a great time carving through the fresh powder.
And at one point, it was time for another run, so the group headed to the Lenawee chairlift -- a fixed-grip triple rider classic chairlift, that -- at 5 and a half miles per hour -- takes about 8 minutes to carry a skier from the bottom to top of the lift, to an elevation of about 12,500 feet above sea level, which, for those who aren’t familiar, is really, really high. High enough to get altitude sickness over time if your body isn’t used to it, and definitely high enough to where temperatures dip significantly below what they are at the foot of the mountain.
Since each lift chair could only hold three people, Richard first took a chair solo so the three other old buddies could ride up together in the chair directly behind him.
And, an interesting note about this chairlift -- As of this recording, the Lenawee chairlift is actually scheduled to be torn down and replaced by a high-speed six pack lift this summer, which is only a couple months away. A reason for the change is that the Lenawee chairlift, constructed in 2001, is a classic what’s called a “fixed grip” chairlift, meaning the chairs are all fixed to the lift cable -- they don’t detach for loading or unloading. And because of this fixed grip, these kinds of chairlifts pretty much keep a consistent rate of speed -- A speed that feels very slow when you’re riding up the mountain, but can feel terrifyingly fast when you’re loading or unloading and the chair spins around the bull wheel, because it doesn’t slow down unless the lift operator, ya know, sees the terror on your face as you approach the lift station, and manually slows the entire lift down, just for you.
I remember learning to ski as a child and being absolutely terrified of getting on and off chair lifts like this. I can’t count the number of times the chair shot me off like a rocket as it whipped around an unloading station, throwing me to the ground and causing me to scramble with all my childhood might to crawl out of the way of the next unloaders.
For at least my first year on the slopes, the scariest part of skiing wasn’t the steep terrain. It wasn’t hitting trees or losing control and skiing off a cliff. It was those fixed grip chairlifts.
But I’m happy to say that lift technology has improved since then, and many of these classic chair lifts are being replaced by high speed chairlifts, otherwise known as “detachable” chairlifts -- Lifts that not only have larger seats that can accommodate more people, but the chairs themselves actually detach from the cable at loading and unloading, then reattach for the ride up (or down) -- allowing people to board and unboard slowly and safely, as well as get up the mountain much faster than classic lifts.
You didn’t know you were going to walk away from this episode with a full chairlift education now, did you? Trust me, this information will become more relevant in a bit.
Anyway, so in January of 2017, Mickey and his group boarded the 3-person fixed grip Lenawee classic chairlift, with Richard boarding solo ahead of them.
The group rode the lift up the mountain, with Mickey chatting with Billy and Hans like friends do, and around 8 minutes later, they reached the top lift tower and unloaded like pros, paying no attention to their chair as it whipped around the bull wheel to start the journey back down the mountain.
But as the three of them slid down the small slope away from the lift, they looked around for Richard. Strangely, they couldn’t see him anywhere.
The snow was still falling, but wasn’t heavy enough to cloud visibility in the wide-open staging area just beyond the lift. And yet, there was no sign of Richard. It was almost as though he had just… vanished.
MICKEY
Which was very odd because he was on the chair right in front of us. I mean, you know, it's a it's a big place. It's not like he could have hidden anywhere, and so for a couple moments we're just like super confused going, whoa, where did he go? What, what happened? And then we heard screaming behind us.
JOLIE
The three of them turned around, looking back up the small slope toward the lift. They saw the lift stop cold, and heard more screams from below -- on the other side of the loading station, out of view, so they popped off their skis and ran back to the top of the lift, peering down below. They saw a small group of bystanders, looking toward the chairlift above.
And there, dangling from a chair above the snowy terrain, was a lifeless Rich, hanging by his neck.
MICKEY
His backpack strap had wrapped around his neck and somehow gotten entangled with the chair lift itself. And he was basically being strangled by his backpack, just dangling in the winds. And it was really, really scary to see, actually, it was, I mean, kind of one of those images that burns -- that gets burned into your brain.
JOLIE
Apparently, what must have happened was that when Rich had ridden up the lift, the chest strap of his backpack was fastened securely, but his hip strap had been left unbuckled and loose on the chair seat, and somehow that hip strap had slipped into a crevice of the chair and gotten locked into place, without Rich having any idea. So when it came time to unload and Rich tried to, ya know, nonchalantly stand and ski away, his chest strap must have caught his neck and forcibly jerked him back around the bull wheel along with the chair, dragging him back over the descent until he hung, unconscious, with the chair resting a couple dozen feet in the air.
MICKEY
I didn't even fully understand what I was seeing until Hans went, "Guys! He's choking up there! We have to go save him!" And that's when we kind of snapped into emergency mode and we ran down the hill to underneath where he was hanging, and he had gone around the chair lift and back down the hill. Probably gone about maybe a hundred feet before the chair lifted had stopped.
JOLIE
They jumped and they tried to reach him, but to no avail -- he was just high enough to be completely out of reach from the ground.
MICKEY
That was really, really, really troubling because it was like we were, you know, almost able to get to him. But the same time we could do nothing.
JOLIE
The very concerned chair lift operator ran down the hill and joined them, and the four of them tried to make a human pyramid to be able to reach Richard. But unfortunately, it didn’t work.
MICKEY
You ever tried make a human pyramid and like a foot of the powder in a snowstorm at twelve and a half thousand feet? It's challenging.
JOLIE
About two minutes went by, and Mickey and the others started getting really scared. It’s one thing to try to rescue someone hanging from a chairlift, but it’s quite another when that someone is being strangled with every moment, not to mention at an altitude where the air was already incredibly thin. Every second mattered, and it was only a matter of time before Rich was beyond savable.
MICKEY
Ski patrol hasn't showed up yet, and we asked the chairlift operator if he could just run the chair in reverse. And he said no, because apparently most chairlifts can't actually run that way.
JOLIE
Which was news to me, and definitely adds to the complications of this scenario.
MICKEY
Our friend was dying in front of our eyes and we, we literally couldn't do anything. I mean, because he was kind of in this, you know, isolated area in between two chairlift towers, and just hanging in the middle of space. Like, nobody could get to him.
JOLIE
And that’s when, standing there, with Rich’s body hanging lifelessly above him, Mickey looked at the chairlift cables and suddenly had an epiphany.
MICKEY
Instead of seeing it a chairlift and a chairlift cable, I kind of just saw a tree and a slackline. I just looked at it and I went, okay, I can do this. I knew right away that I had the perfect skills to pull off this move.
JOLIE
Knowing time was short, he sprang into action. Without a word, Mickey ran up the hill to the lift tower above them.
MICKEY
I ripped my gloves off because I knew I was going to need all the dexterity I had. And that was a bold move, I'll say, because it was like zero degrees up there, minus wind chill. And I start climbing up the chairlift tower on on the ladder that's on the chairlift tower.
JOLIE
Ski patrol started to arrive on the scene from below. As Mickey climbed, he heard a voice yell at him from behind to stop, but he didn’t listen. He couldn’t listen. No one on this mountain had the unique set of skills that he had, and if he didn’t do something, what else could they do in time?
MICKEY
I was in complete, you know, action mode at this point, I guess you could call it flow state. I didn't even really think about what they said. I didn't do much of a decision matrix in my mind. I just, I heard it. I acknowledged that I heard it in my head, but I didn't respond or anything. I just kept climbing and the metal was freezing.
JOLIE
Every metal rung on the tower was so cold to his gloveless hands that it was painful. But he kept climbing.
MICKEY
I got to the top of the tower and I kind of just looked at the cable and I went, here we go. We're doing it.
JOLIE
He pulled himself up the rest of the tower until he was on top of the lift cable, saddling it like a horse. Ski boots would make walking the line impossible, or at the very least, much too slow, but he could still use the trained sense of balance he had and expertise on a high line to do what the rest of us would not be able to. With the cable angled downward with the mountain, he slid down it as fast as he could like it was the world’s skinniest slide.
Just like he had done so many times before on a slackline, sometimes hundreds, even thousands of feet above the ground.
The ski patrol below must have been dumbfounded.
And with impeccable, yet critical speed, Mickey reached Rich’s chair.
MICKEY
I grab onto the cable with my hands, and I sorta do a monkey swing and swing down onto the chair. And then for a brief moment, my jacket catches on a part of the chairlift, and for like a split second, I almost messed up the whole move and we literally might have had two people hanging from the chairlift.
JOLIE
But he managed to get his jacket off, let go of the cable above, and drop down onto the chair.
Pretty much like Spider-man.
And that’s when he saw what the problem was -- with the hip strap of Rich’s backpack lodged in the chair, and Rich hanging below, being strangled by the chest strap.
MICKEY
I thought about trying to just pick him up, but he was hanging like with with the length of the backpack and and and the belt, he was probably like 10 feet below the below the chair maybe? So I couldn't reach him. And so, what I did was, I obviously was like, all right. I'm just gonna cut the strap, so I reach in my jacket for my knife.
JOLIE
But when he put his hand in pocket, the knife that he always carried with him wasn’t there. In the grogginess of packing early that morning, he had put the knife in his lunch bag, which was sitting in a lodge at the base of the resort.
MICKEY
So, I tried one thing that I could think of which was kicking the backpack to try and shock load that strap and make it break. But, it was a big piece of webbing, so it wouldn't break.
JOLIE
Mickey looked around, and saw more ski patrol arriving with a ladder that they would try to set up in the deep powder snow, but no one knew if there would even be enough time.
If only Mickey had brought that knife.
But just then, as if right on cue, he heard a ski patrolman yell from below, “Hey! Knife!”
Mickey prepared himself, and the patrolman tossed the knife up at Mickey. Remember - they were surrounded by fresh powdered snow that was still falling all around them. If the throw was the slightest bit off and if Mickey couldn’t catch it, there was a good chance that the knife would land somewhere in the snow where it would take way too long to find again, and they would need to scrounge up another knife, which would also take time. And as you can imagine, time was something that they just didn’t have.
Mickey watched in concentration as the knife flew up into the air, almost in slow motion.
MICKEY
It was a perfect toss. Tom Brady couldn't have thrown it any better. It landed right in my hand. And even though my hand was basically freezing and numb at this point, I still was able to catch it. And I opened it up, took the blade out, and sliced the strap that was caught in the chair. And it sliced like butter.
JOLIE
Immediately, Mickey saw Rich’s body fall to the ground and land in the snow like a rag doll.
MICKEY
Which was a really surreal thing to see, because he was just lifeless, and he'd been hanging by his neck at this point for about four and a half minutes, and it was just really wild to watch him plummet into the powder. And when he hit the snow it was almost like a cartoon or something you see, like, you know, they fall in and they leave a hole in the ground, like the shape of their body. He hit the snow and just poof, like, snow went everywhere, and that's when ski patrol got to work.
JOLIE
Mickey watched from above as ski patrol quickly assessed Rich’s condition. He wasn’t breathing, so they started CPR. Permanent brain damage can begin around 4 minutes without breathing, and it had already been more than that since this all began.
MICKEY
All of a sudden I was completely out of the equation again, because now everything was happening below me, and I, there was nothing I could do. So I just sat there and watched and prayed.
JOLIE
Rich’s friends stood by in bewildered suspense as the ski patrol team worked on Rich, until finally, he started breathing. Onlookers breathed a sigh of relief as Rich was loaded into a toboggan, and ski patrol took him down the mountain, loaded him into an ambulance, and he was driven to a hospital in Denver.
MICKEY
It was a wild, definitely one of the most intense four minutes of my life, without a doubt.
JOLIE
And so Mickey was left sitting there, on Rich’s chair, trying to come to terms with what had just happened.
MICKEY
I had a brief moment of inspiration and thought of jumping off the chairlift into the powder because it was such deep powder. I probably would have been fine. I thought about that, having that be my exit from the whole thing. But then I was like, you know, it would be a real bonehead move to like, like cut a guy down, save his life, and then jump off of a chairlift and like, break your leg on a rock or something hidden in the snow.
JOLIE
So he just stayed put, sitting on the chair.
MICKEY
Kept my hands in my pocket, obviously, because it was so cold. My hands were so cold.
JOLIE
The chairlift started moving again, and for about eight minutes, Mickey had the time to process the recent scene in his head.
All the while, the passers-by on the upward side of the lift had no idea that the guy riding down solo had just re-enacted a scene from Spider-man on top of the lift cable to help save someone’s life.
MICKEY
I barely knew the guy, but at the same time, it didn't matter. It's just like, yo, this guy's gonna die right in front of us unless we do something, and I knew that I could do something because of my slackline skills and that. So I had to do it. And it was, it worked out, it worked out beautifully.
JOLIE
He got to the bottom of the lift and retold the story for an official statement. Since Billy and Hans had gone to the hospital with Rich, Mickey found himself solo again. So he got his skis back, clicked them on, and did what he had originally planned to do that day -- he got out and skied the beautiful powder. And when the ski day was over, he left.
That night, he got a call from Billy and Hans.
MICKEY
They were in the hospital and he was awake. And he had like a tube in his throat or whatever, but he was fine, he was smiling, and it was a pretty, pretty awesome moment. You know, pretty great call with with friends.
JOLIE
And after the call, as Mickey was mulling over everything that had happened, he couldn’t believe what a wild, unconventional story it was. Instead of having just a carefree ski day in beautiful conditions as he had anticipated, he had literally used his unique slacklining skills to scale a chairlift tower, slide down a cable, swing onto a chair and cut down someone down who was hanging by his neck, who turned out to make a full recovery.
MICKEY
And then, I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I just was like, you know, this was a wild freaking story. I'm gonna write it up really quick and send it to the tip line at the Denver post, just because. I don't know, I thought it was a cool story.
JOLIE
So he quickly submitted it to the publication’s tip line, and didn’t think much of it after that. The next morning, he went back out to the basin to ski some more, and before he knew it, he got a phone call from a reporter at the Denver Post, who had seen Mickey’s story come in on the tip line, and he said to Mickey --
MICKEY
Is this for real, dude? Did this actually happen? Did you -- because I don't believe it. I was like, yeah, dude. I mean, I dunno, climbed up a chairlift, cut a guy down with a knife.
JOLIE
So the reporter wrote the story up and published it immediately. And before Mickey knew what was happening, the Associated Press picked it up, and soon he found himself talking to George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, as well as making appearances on the Today Show, Inside Edition, and seeing his story across hundreds of news outlets across the globe. A bystander at the ski resort had actually pulled out a phone and filmed the moment that Mickey had cut the backpack strap and Rich fell to the ground, and the clip was played all over TV and the internet.
A few weeks after all that, Mickey and Rich were both invited on the Ellen Show, where Mickey got to talk about his passion for slacklining, as well as retell the story to a captive audience and host.
MICKEY
Ellen gave us two free trips to Hawaii with a with a complete like, you know, week's stay a five star beach resort. Because, you know, it's Ellen and that's what she does.
JOLIE
And beyond the sudden publicity Mickey and this story were getting, the incident actually helped shape his life in a way he hadn’t planned. You see, before that day when his day of skiing took an unexpected turn, Mickey had been feeling a little aimless, like he didn’t know if he was moving in the direction that would make him happiest in life.
MICKEY
I was actually feeling really lost, to be totally honest, at this point in my life. I'd been professionally slacklining for many years, and I wasn't, you know, I just didn't feel like I was really, you know, doing that amazing with it. Both, you know, I mean emotionally, psychologically, financially. I was sort of just like, kind of in a rut with the whole thing. Still enjoying it, I guess, but also just not sure if it was the right thing to be doing. And that was just this like sort of huge affirmation of everything, because without all that ridiculous slacklining, you know, I would not, I mean, that's what put me in that place that day and with the skills to actually pull off the rescue. So I always like to tell people that it just goes to show that if you're not sure, you know, why you're doing something, you can never go wrong by just, you know, following your heart.
JOLIE
So in that sense, saving someone else kinda saved a part of himself, and he’s thankful for that.
MICKEY
Lots of crazy things happen and sometimes as, you know, as humans, we have to just go with the flow and do the best we can in the given moment. So I'm super grateful that I was able to to put my best foot forward that day and in that in those moments.
JOLIE
I asked Mickey if he ever thought of the sheer so-called “coincidence” that a man who was helplessly hanging from a chairlift, on the brink of death, just happened to have a professional slackliner right there who was able to get to him.
MICKEY
Dude, so much. I mean, well, here's another one to wrap your head around. I mean, I ran into them in the morning when they were planning their day out. And in me joining their crew, I changed their plans for the day. They were trying to go out these back country gates to go ski some backcountry stuff next to the ski area, and I convinced them to stay in the ski area.
JOLIE
He told them that the avalanche danger under the current weather conditions wasn’t worth the risk, and so they ended up staying within resort boundaries, which is why they ended up on Lenawee chair lift, which is a funny little mental conundrum, I'd say.
And beyond that, all the craziness went down because one simple hip strap of a backpack was unbuckled.
MICKEY
This guy was an expert skier, and he almost died in a silly mistake. You know, you can die on a silly mistake on the freeway. You can die all these weird ways, you know. So, it makes you think a lot about how how important is to take life in your own hands and shape it, you know, how you want it. And work as hard as you can to be the driver of your life and not the passenger. But that's the thing, though. I mean, no matter how -- you can try and drive as much as you want and you could still have something else come in from out of left field and change everything. So yeah, that that changed a lot of my perception of life. I kind of just was like, oh, it's time to get my life together.
JOLIE
Through this experience, Mickey found a new resolve.
MICKEY
I decided to ask my girlfriend at the time to marry me, and we got married. And yeah. Now, we have a kid and stuff, and so that's amazing.
JOLIE
And, I should note here -- he didn’t just get married in the traditional sense. He married another slackliner, on a slackline. Did you catch that? Their wedding was hundreds of feet in the air over a canyon in Moab, on a piece of netting connected and secured by multiple slacklines all around it.
MICKEY
Our minister also walked out, because he was a slackliner, as well.
JOLIE
Of course he was.
MICKEY
I had also rigged up a rope swing, like a 60 meter long rope swing. So after we got married, like kissed her, picked her up, and I jumped through a portal in the middle of the net to a rope swing and we swung through the canyon. It was pretty sick.
JOLIE
And no audio description can really do this justice. I’ll post some pictures and links on PodsitivityPodcast.com so you can actually see it. It is one of the most amazing weddings I’ve ever seen.
And today, he has a family and a stronger sense of purpose.
MICKEY
I went and got a job at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. And now I'm working there as a research technician, doing a bunch of really cool research projects, all related to solar energy.
JOLIE
Being a research technician may offer a totally different environment than being on a slackline over a canyon in the great outdoors, but the two really compliment each other.
MICKEY
Even if it's a tough day at work, I still know that I'm working on building a more sustainable future for everybody, you know, not just for me, but for my son and everyone on the planet. So I'm very passionate about renewable energy and that goes hand in hand with, I guess you could say, my desire to treat every thing -- beings, you know, the planet -- with respect and just living the righteous life, I guess.
JOLIE
He still does slacklining, and even competes, but considers his time pursuing it as a full-time career to be a closed chapter.
MICKEY
Now slacklining is literally just for fun, which is great. Honestly, I love that more, honestly.
JOLIE
And as for Rich? The man Mickey cut down from the chair lift that January day?
MICKEY
He and I became really good friends after that. Like, dude, he got so lucky. He had a dislodge trachea and bruising on the throat, and stuff. But other than that, he was totally fine. No brain damage, as far as we can tell. He and I were skiing powder together like two weeks later.
JOLIE
When I asked Mickey what made him help in the way he did, instead of just standing by and waiting for ski patrol to take charge, he mentioned that he tries to be the kind of person who -- if he sees someone stranded on the road, he stops to help, instead of just driving by and assuming someone else will jump in.
MICKEY
I knew that I had the perfect skill set to to be of extreme assistance, you know, to be extremely effective at helping in a very much life or death situation. So, you know, who has to even think about something like that. I mean, yeah. Could I have gotten hurt doing it? Yes. But was there a good chance of me getting hurt? Hell no. I'm a freaking pro slackliner, world champion. You know, let's go.
JOLIE
Well said. Someone like me would have had to wait for ski patrol, even if I wanted to help. So I’m glad Mickey was the person in the right place at the right time, instead of me.
MICKEY
A really important part of this of this life experience, I think, is helping others, because I mean, that really is one of the best feelings, you know? When you go out of your way to help somebody, I mean, they're happy, you're happy. It's just overall, it's good stuff when you help somebody.
JOLIE
To learn more about Mickey Wilson and all of his awesomeness, you can find him at TrickyMickeyWilson.com. He’s also active on Facebook, Instagram, and has a YouTube channel with a lot of fantastic videos of his competitions, his tricks, and the rescue video -- so you can search his name to be able to find more. And, of course, special thanks to Mickey for being willing to share his story -- yet again. I think he's a fantastic person and an awesome role model. And I was really happy he would talk to me, since I’m not as big of a deal as, ya know, Ellen. I mean, almost, of course, but not quite.
And I also wanted to give a special shout-out to this publication called, InspireMore, because they kindly featured us in their popular newsletter, called “Smile.” And they didn’t even ask to be mentioned here, but our missions totally overlap, so I think you'll really appreciate them, actually. InspireMore.com features exclusively inspiring news, and it's updated daily, and they're really just a great place to go if you want a quick pick-me-up or reminder of the daily good in the world. So, check them out, subscribe to their newsletter - again, that's inspiremore.com.
And if you’d like to support our efforts to shine a spotlight on uplifting stories like these, you can leave us a review at Apple Podcasts or Podchaser -- I read every single one of those reviews and am so grateful for the kindness so many of you have already shown - thank you, thank you. And then, of course, if you happen to have a lot of money and you're looking for a place to put it, you can also support us on Patreon -- each dollar goes toward making future episodes and it really helps a lot. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, any podcast platform, and as always, PodsitivityPodcast.com, where you can see video versions with photos for each of these episodes, as well.
Thank you for going on this journey with us, and always remember, you’re worth more than you know.