Replying to Patrolers catch boy falling from lift.

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SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. -- Snowmass ski patrollers used a ski-tower pad to break an 8-year-old boy's 25-foot fall from a chair lift, a resort official said.

The New Zealand boy began falling from the Village Express chairlift Friday morning and was grabbed by his parents as the lift kept moving up the hill, the Aspen Times reported.

An operator of the nearby Skycab gondola saw the incident unfolding and called the lift operations office, Aspen Skiing Co. spokesman Jeff Hanle told the newspaper. He told them to stop the Village Express lift and alert the ski patrol

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The New Zealand family's chair stopped about 20 feet shy of a lift tower with the boy dangling as his parents hung onto him, the Times reported.

Five ski patrollers removed a cushioned safety pad wrapped around the tower's base and stretched it under the dangling boy.

“They held it out there like a fire blanket,” Hanle told the Times.

On the patrollers' word, the parents let go of the boy who fell 25 feet onto the pad, Hanle told the newspaper.

As a precaution, the boy was taken by ambulance to Aspen Valley Hospital where he was checked out and released to his family.

“They're happy everything turned out OK and they're back out on the hill skiing,” Hanle told the Times.