Roughly 100 skiers and snowboarders had to rappel from a chair lift that broke down at a ski hill near Banff Sunday. On its Facebook page, Sunshine Village said the Goat’s Eye ski lift was evacuated due to a failure of the main gearbox.
Everyone stuck was lowered to safety using ropes after waiting about an hour and a half. Assistant General Manager Johnathan Clarkson says it’s an unlikely situation for Nitehawk Year-round Adventure Park, but they’re prepared should it happen.
“As a ski patroller, we do train in manual lift evac and also all of our staff at Nitehawk are trained in lift evacuation, so we do have a team put together that if that ever was to happen that we couldn’t run our alternate power unit.”
That unit is a diesel engine that could operate the lift if the power ever went out and there were people on it. Clarkson adds it would be extremely rare for it to be needed.