The Gondola at Winter Park reopened just after 1 p.m. on Monday, fully repaired a little more than 24 hours after a broken steel beam on a tower forced the evacuation of 182 people.
“It was an amazing turn of events from a recovery process,” said Daren Cole, the president of Leitner Poma of America in Grand Junction, whose team fabricated a replacement component for the tower and had it packed and on the road in less than four hours.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board reached out to other resort operators with similar tower components and asked them to inspect the towers. Ski area operators across the country Monday stepped up regular inspections of similar steel components and none reported any issues to Leitner Poma.
Leitner-Poma of America has manufactured more than a quarter of all the state’s 282 operating passenger tramways, including the Glenwood Gondola built in 2018 to ferry passengers to the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park and a 2014 gondola at Royal Gorge Bridge and Park. Leitner Poma also designed the American Eagle Chondola — with both chairlifts and cabins — at Copper Mountain in 2018, Gondola One at Vail in 2012, the BreckConnect Gondola at Breckenridge in 2006 and the Elk Camp Gondola at Snowmass in 2006.
“No further issues have been found resulting from these immediate inspections,” Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies spokesperson Lee Rasizer said in an emailed statement. “However, these areas are being instructed to perform frequent follow-up inspections until further notice.”
A crack in a leveler beam on the first tower forced Winter Park to close The Gondola and evacuate 182 skiers on Sunday, Dec. 22. (Reddit)
The tramway board is busy. The agency has investigated three falls from chairlifts in Summit County in the last two weeks.
On Dec. 11 a snowboarder fell 47 feet from the high-speed six-pack Ruby Express chairlift at Keystone. An initial investigation by the tramway board and ski patrollers indicated the man was leaning forward, without the safety bar lowered, to adjust his bindings. The 32-year-old man was airlifted to a Denver hospital.
On Dec. 13, a 31-year-old snowboarder fell from the Beaver Run SuperChair on Peak 9 at Breckenridge and three days later a 21-year-old snowboarder fell from the same lift. Both men were transported to the Breckenridge Medical Center.
The tramway board issued statements that the three falls did not involve a lift malfunction and the chairlifts are continuing to spin.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board formed in 1965 to register and inspect chairlifts and tramways. The board’s role changed after a deadly accident at Vail in 1976.
On March 26, 1976, two gondola cars at Vail ski area — each carrying six passengers — fell 125 feet to the ground. Three people died instantly and a young man died days later. Other skiers were seriously injured. It was the worst ski area accident in U.S. history.
Colorado lawmakers passed legislation in that year directing the seven-member board to hire engineers to approve and inspect Colorado’s lifts and aerial trams. Today, a six-member technical committee reviews the design, construction, maintenance and operation of all licensed and currently operating aerial and surface passenger tramways and conveyors in the state.
In December 1985, the bullwheel on the then 2-year-old Teller Lift at Keystone failed, launching more than 60 skiers off the triple chair, injuring nearly 50 people, two of whom later died of their injuries. The only other death caused by a malfunctioning chairlift in Colorado was in December 2016, when Kelly Huber and her two daughters were thrown from the Quick Draw Express chairlift at Granby Ranch. Huber died and her daughters were injured. An investigation by the tramway board revealed the modifications to the chairlift resulted in rapid speed changes that slammed the chairlift into a tower.
A 2018 sunset review of the Colorado Passenger Tramway Board showed the board conducted 761 to 783 inspections of passenger tramways each year between 2012 and 2017, resulting in 1,772 to 2,034 “identified deficiencies.” In those five years, the board issued 20 disciplinary actions against operators, most involving a “letter of admonition.”
Peter Landsman, who has compiled a database of every chairlift in North America for his LiftBlog.com website, said he scoured historical records for similar failures. At Big White ski area in Canada’s British Columbia in 2016, a Dopplemayr chairlift tower that also was holding down a haul rope cracked and needed to be replaced, he said.
Leitner-Poma of America in Grand Junction built a replacement beam for The Gondola at Winter Park and hauled it to the ski area in a matter of hours. (Reddit)
“This is pretty rare,” said Landsman, recalling an amusement park in North Carolina that closed a roller coaster after discovering a cracked support pillar in July 2023.
Landsman said The Gondola is a “very young” lift, but it operates year round and sometimes even at night for events at the mountaintop Lodge at Sunspot.
“I would call this a real fluke. Not something that happens often,” he said. “It’s a very impressive turnaround. To get such a large part manufactured, shipped, inspected, installed and tested in less than 48 hours is a testament to both Leitner-Poma and the Winter Park lift mechanics.”