I don’t want to scare you but…
The last time I took my girls snowboarding, they went ahead on an old(ish) chair from Morzine back up to Avoriaz and it stopped. It was stationary for ages and we were getting quite cold in the cold windy snow that was falling and there was a rocky outcrop just ahead of the girls chair so the first hour or so was spent with me shouting at the more courageous of the pair not to attempt to jump.
Then it became obvious the lift wasn’t about to move again anytime soon as a rescue crew were slowly working their way down from the top chair by chair. Ages past, telling them to keep moving, playing patacake anything to prepare them for what was to follow.
Now a chair rescue isn’t that technical, a guy shuffles down the wire, enters your chair from above, passes a rope round your middle then lowers you to the ground. There’s a team below, belaying the rope beneath you, so, you’re watching your kids being lowered forty or fifty feet down this chasm into none pisted broken woodland (you’ve seen what it’s like beneath some lifts, this was awful.
It was a nightmare and it hadn’t ended once we were on the mountainside, we were then left to make our own way out and I think we got a lunch voucher as compensation for our lost day from the lift company.
So, be warned, never take lifts for or mountain pursuits for granted and always be prepared for the worse.