Colorado ski resort gondola malfunction, 174 rescued: ‘Once in a lifetime experience’

More than 170 people have been rescued from hanging gondolas at a Colorado ski resort after they were shut down for hours due to a malfunction.

A crack in a steel support structure caused one of the elevators at Winter Park Resort outside Denver to shut down automatically Saturday afternoon as a safety precaution, according to media reports. It then took rescuers five hours to get 174 people down, a resort spokesperson told KDVR.

“We were going up to do our first run, my wife and I, and we stopped. We stopped for about 15 minutes and started thinking, maybe it’s not unusual,” said skier Aleksey Dmitriyev at the station. “I called, and the line said if it’s less than 20 minutes don’t worry, call us again… Then we waited for a long time and we started to see the ski patrol coming down and talking to people from the floor to the house, like saying how many of you are in the cabin, all that.”

“Everyone was calm, the ski patrol was calm and professional and reassured us,” he added. “It was fun because he knew what he was doing, but we were a little worried.”

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“We skied a few runs after that, we used a different lift, of course, and it was still an OK day but a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Dmitriyev also told KDVR.

Dmitriyev filmed a video showing the rescuer lowering himself into his trapped gondola cabin.

“We’re going to send a chair up, we’re going to get into the chair and let everyone down a little bit,” said the man.

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It took five hours to rescue all passengers aboard a gondola that stalled Saturday at Winter Park Resort in Colorado. (Aleksey Dmitriyev)

The video then shows several people – including a child – being brought down to safety.

Winter Park Resort said the lift remained closed Sunday for repairs and inspections and that the gondola manufacturer was on site, according to KDVR.

Skiers are seen at Winter Park Resort in Winter Park, Colorado, in March 2017. (Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

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As of late Sunday, the new part had been installed and testing is underway in preparation for reopening the elevator, the station added.