SALT LAKE CITY — Whenever a ski lift you’re on comes to an unexpected stop with your feet still dangling in the air, it brings a momentary uneasy feeling that you might be there for a while.
Often, though, the lift stops because a skier or snowboarder has fallen at the top or bottom and lift operators are helping them get out of the way safely. Other times, lifts slow or stop to allow young children, adaptive skiers and riders, and others needing a little more time to get on and off.
It usually takes just a minute or two for the lift to start spinning again.
But that wasn’t the case for more than 170 skiers and snowboarders Sunday at Winter Park Resort in Colorado, where a gondola automatically stopped when it detected a crack in a structural piece of the lift. It took about five hours using ropes to lower people from the cabins, resort spokesperson Jen Miller said, per the Associated Press.
Stranded on ski lift overnight
At least the Colorado skiers didn’t have to endure what Monica Laso did last January.
While on a skiing trip with friends at Heavenly Mountain Resort, Laso became too tired to go down the hill near the end of the day. She approached a worker who guided her to the gondola. She got in at around 4:58 p.m., and just two minutes later, it stopped, leaving her alone and stranded, according to KCRA 3 in Sacramento.
Laso didn’t have a phone to call for help and her screams to workers below went unheard. Her friends reported her missing to local authorities when they couldn’t contact her. It wasn’t until the gondola started running the next day and went back down the mountain that crews realized she had been there overnight, totaling 15 hours.
Being stranded for hours on a lift isn’t common but it does happen.
In 2021, a mechanical failure on the Carpenter Express lift at Deer Valley in Utah left 167 skiers stranded for several hours. Mountain operations staff implemented lift evacuation procedures about 30 minutes after the 2:38 p.m. breakdown and successfully evacuated all of the skiers by 5:20 p.m.
Are ski lifts safe?
Chairlifts are continuously maintained and upgraded at resorts. They must meet national safety standards and are subject to random, unannounced inspections. Despite advancements in lift technology, much of North America’s ski infrastructure is rapidly aging, according to Ski magazine.
In 2023, after a chair fell off of the lift cable at an Australian ski resort, injuring three riders, and the third of its kind at the resort (twice with riders, once empty), and a skier died after falling 25 feet from a chairlift at Breckenridge in Colorado, Ski looked into chairlift safety.
“For the most part, I would say people have little to worry about when riding a lift of any kind. Like any other form of transportation, such as automobiles, airlines, etc., lift safety has improved through the years,” Sean Doll, a professor of Mountain Resort Management Concentration at Vermont State University, told Ski magazine last year. “The industry is currently in the throes of replacing and updating a significant number of lifts in North America with the most up-to-date advancements in lift technology and safety features.”
The National Ski Areas Association included this in an annual report: “A passenger is five times more likely to suffer a fatality riding an elevator than a ski lift and more than eight times more likely to suffer a fatality riding in a car than on a ski lift,” per Ski magazine.
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