Over 170 skiers and snowboarders had to be rescued from a Colorado ski lift after a piece of the structure cracked, officials said.
The 174 riders on the gondola lift at Winter Park Resort, about 70 miles west of Denver, had to be carefully lowered to the ground by ski patrollers on Saturday, resort spokesperson Jen Miller said in a statement obtained by CNN.
Video shared to social media by Joe M shows him descending from the carousel on a rope before he was given a $10 voucher for his trouble:
“Here’s me! Appreciate the $10 voucher they gave us at the end of the unexpected rappelling; you’d think after four hours they’d give you enough to cover a beer,” he wrote on X.
Another angle captured by Edward Blanche shows another skier carefully being lowered to the ground by the patrollers and rope:
The lift had automatically stopped in mid-air when the machine detected a crack in a structural piece shortly after 12:00 p.m. local time, Miller said.
The entire evacuation process took approximately five hours, she added.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported.
The device’s manufacturer, state regulators, and resort officials are in the process of investigating what caused the structural failure, and the park still has several other lifts open.
