Dad endures 'parent's worst nightmare' after watching son fall from chair lift at ski resort

Nathan McLeod can't shake the nightmare image of his four-year-old son slipping through his hands and falling.

The father watched helplessly on Sunday as Sawyer fell about five-metres from the Montana Snowbowl chairlift at the Lolo National Forest in western Montana. They shared a chair up the ski hill when it allegedly hit a tower, tossing the child from his seat.

"This is a parent's worst nightmare," McLeod, a Missoula resident, told local news outlet, the Missoulian. 

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"I'm just watching him fall and he's looking at me. There's nothing I can do and he's screaming. I just have this mental image of his whole body slipping out of my arms and it's terrible."

McLeod was riding on the outside seat of the chairlift so his youngest son could be helped up by the lift attendant.

His older son, six-year-old Cassidy was in the chair ahead, next to a snowboarder.

McLeod first became uneasy on the lift when Cassidy's chair began violently swinging just after loading.

He feared Cassidy's chair would hit the next tower. They were hovering about 12 metres off the ground at this point.

"As that's going through my head, all of a sudden, our chair smashes into the tower, the first one, as it starts going up," McLeod said.

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It's at this point the father reached for Sawyer, who slipped from his arms.

McLeod bellowed for help and the lift comes to a halt. Seconds later, the chairlift underneath him split apart, flipping parts of the chair backwards.

All McLeod could do was cling to the centre bar, with his son crying out below.

As he contemplated jumping down, the lift attendant approached Sawyer, offering him a hug before walking him back towards the lift terminal.

McLeod called after the attendant, desperate to know where she was taking his son. He still had no idea if Sawyer was hurt in the fall.

The attendant called back that she was planning to load Sawyer on the next chairlift. Then she looked up to see McLeod and the mangled chair.

McLeod lowered himself to a safe point to jump down and raced over to embrace Sawyer.

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The attendant told the father and son to be careful as she was about to start up the lift. McLeod intervened, raising safety concerns.

He said some people appeared to agree with him, yet many returned to the lift line.

With Cassidy still sitting on the lift McLeod rode up the chairlift to meet him.

In a statement to The Missoulian, Montana Snowbowl owner Andy Morris said the chairlift was inspected by one of its engineers.

"It's a Riblet lift, and our engineer said Riblet chairs are light and they get to swaying pretty badly when they mis-load or something causes them to get going," the statement said.