Power outage forces successful chairlift evacuation at Silver Mountain
A view from Chair 4 on Silver Mountain. A power outage on Sunday resulted in the successful evacuation of 60 skiers.
Courtesy photo
KELLOGG –– Skiers enjoying the long weekend at Silver Mountain Ski Resort got a little more thrill than what they signed up for on Sunday when a power outage and mechanical failure resulted in the evacuation of one of the mountain’s chair lifts.
According to a post on the resort’s Facebook page, just before 3 p.m., Chair 4 lost power while carrying several guests. Staff on the mountain quickly decided to utilize the gas-powered backup evacuation motor to handle evacuating the lift, but that motor was only able to operate for approximately 10 minutes before it suffered a mechanical failure.
Silver Mountain called in their highly-trained ski patrol to perform a rope evacuation for the remaining passengers. Rope evacuation on a ski lift is a process where ski patrollers throw a sturdy rope over the lift cable and move from chair to chair to evacuate passengers using harnesses.
According to Silver Mountain Management, no one was injured during the incident or the evacuations.
Power has been restored to the lift, but Silver Mountain elected to keep the lift closed on Monday to allow for the repair of the evacuation motor.
Chair 4 provides access to roughly half of Silver Mountain’s terrain. However, skiers can access some of the terrain via Chair 2
Silver Mountain’s management declined to comment further on the issue, but they did issue a thanks to their ski patrol for their swift and successful response.