A person rappels from the gondola at Winter Park after a malfunction on Dec. 21, 2024.
Jack Bronchetti and his father got on The Gondola at Winter Park Resort around 11 a.m. Saturday, ready for holiday weekend snowboard laps.
They got off the gondola five hours, and zero laps, later.
Bronchetti, a sophomore at University of Colorado Boulder, and his dad were two of 174 skiers and snowboarders who were evacuated from the Winter Park Resort gondola after a mechanical issue halted the system Saturday morning.
As of Monday afternoon, the gondola was open to the public again after a repair and final inspection, the resort said in a blog post.
According to an article from CBS News, Winter Park confirmed that the rocker arm connecting two sections of tower one cracked and bent.
Winter Park did not reply to The Denver Gazette's requests for comment or further information.
The break caused the lift to halt, as it is designed to if it malfunctions, according to a blog post from the resort. Over the next five hours, ski patrollers evacuated guests from the gondola, climbing the towers and using rappel systems to bring guests down to safety.
Nobody was injured during the evacuation process, the resort said.
Bronchetti and his father, Jayson Bronchetti, were only about 100 feet up when the gondola stopped, he said. The two of them shared a gondola cabin with a family of five.
After about two hours, ski patrollers arrived, calling up to the gondola cabins to let people know they would start evacuating at the top and work their way down.
The first hour or two stuck on the gondola were stressful, Bronchetti, who is a bit claustrophobic, said.
"I'm glad my dad was there to keep me calm and lead by example," he said.
Trying to battle the stress of the situation, Bronchetti and his gondola mates cracked jokes and tried to make light of the situation, he said.
In the end, he and his dad had become pretty close with the family they shared the space with.
"It was pretty cool how our gondola came together as a group even though we were all strangers," he said. "Going through that experience, it was funny how we bonded in that short amount of time."
Bronchetti, who has an IKON pass and called Winter Park one of his favorite resorts, said he'd been stuck on a lift before, but only for about 15 minutes.
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Even the ski patroller who assisted their evacuation had never experienced anything like Saturday's rescue outside of training for such an event, Bronchetti said.
"He'd been patrolling part time for 15 years and said he's had to do rescues before, but nothing like this," Bronchetti said about the patroller who helped them.
The patroller assisted all seven people in Bronchetti's cabin in mounting a seat and securing themselves with rope before being lowered from the gondola to the ground below.
"I enjoyed it, I thought it was pretty fun," he said, noting how he waved to the people below while they took photos. "We all kind of rallied behind each other, cheering each other on as we went down."
Even the patrollers "looked like they were having fun while also being safe," Bronchetti said, and he was impressed by the rescue efforts.
As soon as they got to the ground, ski patrollers took their information and gave them $10 vouchers for the resort. Winter Park later decided to give those evacuated free passes to the resort for the remainder of the season, he said.
"I think they handled it as well as they could have. It was kind of a freak accident," he said. "I felt safe the entire time, and everybody got down safely, which is all you can really ask for."
The Colorado Tramway Safety Board oversees and licenses all chairlifts and gondolas in the state, according to Winter Park's blog. The board and the gondola manufacturer, Leitner Poma, arrived at the resort on Saturday afternoon to figure out what happened.
By Sunday afternoon, an initial inspection was complete and the repair efforts were in progress. By 4 p.m., the new part was installed and the gondola started running for testing.
The repair and testing were completed by Monday morning, after the gondola "ran for a significant amount of time into the night."
Final testing and inspection finished Monday afternoon and the gondola reopened to the public.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board is investigating the incident. A report will be publicly released by the board likely after the new year, according to the resort's blog. Details about the cause of failure will be included in that report.
Winter Park's gondola was built in 2018 to replace a 1990 high-speed quad. It is capable of hauling 3,600 skiers out of the base area per hour, tying it for the highest capacity gondola in the U.S. at the time of its opening, according to a Winter Park blog post.
Two days after Winter Park's incident, at least five people were hospitalized at a ski resort in South Lake Tahoe, California after a chairlift malfunction, according to a CBS news report.
Heavenly Ski Resort issued a statement Monday after 3 p.m. confirming an incident, but did not say how the people were injured, according to the CBS report.
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