Colorado Ski Lift, More than 170 skiers and snowboarders were rescued by staff at a Colorado ski resort after a lift malfunctioned while they were climbing a mountain.
On Saturday, December 21, shortly after 12 p.m. local time, 174 users of the ski lift at the Winter Park Resort in Winter Park got stuck, according to The Guardian and The Colorado Sun.
About the Tragedy
The machine identified a breach in a structural component of the Ski Lift and halted immediately, according to resort spokesman Jen Miller, who talked to The Colorado Sun. The crack, she described, was an “operational malfunction.”
Using a rope with a seat, ski patrollers swiftly began rescuing each passenger by climbing into their personal gondola from the top of the cabin and lowering them to the ground. Miller told the Associated Press that the equipment belonging to the passengers was also removed from each cabin and lowered to the ground.
She told The Colorado Sun, “Ski patrol has trained extensively for this,” adding that this is the first evacuation of the ski lift, which opened in December 2018. “It’s a very rare thing to have to evacuate a lift at all.”
Reason behind Colorado Ski Lift collapse
The Ski Lift in Colorado was at a stop as the local ski patrol entered each cabin and used the ropes to lower passengers dozens of feet to the earth, according to social media videos posted by onlookers and skiers trapped inside the cabins.
The event started when a resort worker yelled out from the ground to a cabin full of skiers and snowboarders to see whether anyone was hurt, according to one TikTok video.
According to the publications, Winter Park Resort has since closed that specific lift, and on Sunday, workmen started fixing the fractured section.
The crack was “part of the malfunction,” Miller told The Colorado Sun, adding that the cause is still being looked into. “We are working with the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board, the manufacturer, all of the authorities,” she stated.
“The gondola did what it was designed to do and once the malfunction happened, it stopped,” she stated.
A request for comment from PEOPLE was not immediately answered by Winter Park Resort.
Miller pointed out that there are still 21 ski lifts in use at Winter Park, an Alterra Mountain Company resort spanning more than 3,000 acres, and the park did not have an estimated completion date for the building.
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