Not-So-Merry Christmas As Hundreds Of Skiers Left Stranded After Chairlifts Fail

Reportedly, 347 skiers were left dangling on Christmas Eve after an electrical failure on a chairlift in the French Alps. It is a bad time for skiers in general, as 170 skiers and snowboarders had to be rescued in Colorado after the ski lift cracked.

Not to be outdone, five skiers had to be rescued after they were buried in an avalanche north of Whistler, BC, in Canada. While all these skiers did make it out alive, there is sad news from Switzerland after Sophie Hediger, of the country’s snowboard cross team at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, died in an avalanche at the Arosa Resort.

240 skiers left dangling after an electrical failure on a French Alps chairlift

 

As reported by CBS News, hundreds of skiers in the French Alps were left stranded on Christmas Eve after chairlifts at two different resorts broke down. Dramatic video shows skiers at the SuperDevoluy resort dangling below a helicopter near a chairlift. Reportedly, one of the chairlifts at the Dévoluy resort broke down at around 1 pm local time on Christmas Eve due to an electrical problem.

Around 240 skiers were eventually evacuated from the chairlift at around 5 pm local time at the resort in the French Alps. Fortunately, Le Monde reported that no one was hurt in the incident.

100 skiers stranded on a chairlift in Savoie, French Alps

At the same time, 100 skiers at a Savoie ski resort in the French Alps were also trapped as a chairlift broke down. According to TF1, this happened at the La Norma ski resort in an unrelated incident.

More than 174 snowboarders and skiers rescued after Colorado ski lift cracks

This Christmas season is a bad one for skiers after 174 people at the Winter Park Resort in Colorado were rescued after a crack in the ski lift. Ski patrollers used rope to lower the skiers to the ground

According to the Guardian, a crack in a ski lift at a Colorado ski resort led to the evacuation of more than 170 skiers and snowboarders last Saturday. Skiers in the gondolas were lowered by ropes to the ground in rescue efforts that took hours.

Meanwhile, officials are still investigating the cause of the incident at Winter Park Resort, around 70 miles west of Denver. The gondola lift stopped automatically after a crack occurred in a structural piece of the lift, shortly after noon on Saturday.

Jen Miller, a spokesperson for the Winter Park Resort, said:

Ski patrol has trained extensively for this. It’s a very rare thing to have to evacuate a lift at all.

Luckily, no injuries were reported following the incident which came at the start of the busy holiday ski season.

Miller added that ski patrollers entered the cabin of each gondola from above, lowering skiers’ equipment to the ground before lowering each of the 174 passengers to the ground using a rope equipped with a seat.

Olympic snowboarder dies in avalanche

Meanwhile, tragic news comes from Switzerland as Sophie Hediger, 26, one of the country’s snowboard cross teams at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, died in an avalanche at the Arosa Resort.