A frightening accident at Kicking Horse Resort near Golden, B.C. this morning occurred when a gondola on the resort’s Golden Eagle Express fell to the ground while several people were inside.
In a statement on its website, the owners of the ski resort, Resorts of the Canadian Rockies, said the incident happened at 9:20 a.m. and the resort’s patrol team and first responders were quickly dispatched to the scene.
Numerous photos posted on social media show a gondola car lying on its side near the base of the lift and a crowd of people gathered around it.
Skier Geoff Colenut said he had just arrived for a day of skiing when the accident happened.
Colenut says he spoke to a couple of people who were in the gondola when it fell. Luckily they only had minor injuries and were in good spirits.
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Another skier, Ryan Nichols, who was in another gondola stopped further up the mountain, said rescue crews were also called out to help people out of other gondolas that were left suspended high above the ski slope — with some people needing to be rescued by helicopter.
Nichols, who had already been waiting almost four hours to be rescued when he spoke to Global News, said, “We can watch them climbing on top of gondolas below us and lowering people with the rope from the gondola. We are a good ways off the ground, like probably 100-plus feet (30 metres) — we’re hoping we get a heli-evac.”
Rescue crews have been called in to help rescue skiers and snowboarders from the Golden Eagle Express gondola after one of the lift’s cars fell to the ground Monday morning.
R.C.R. confirmed trained maintenance and mountain safety teams were working to unload the other passengers.
The resort said the resort will be closed for the remainder of the day and an inspection is underway to determine the cause of the accident.
The Kicking Horse website says each cabin on the gondola can carry up to eight people over a 3,400-metre ride that takes 12 minutes.
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