A gondola malfunction at the Winter Park Resort left 174 skiers and snowboarders stranded for hours.
The gondola lift at Winter Park Resort, about 70 miles west of Denver, automatically stopped when it detected the crack in a structural piece of the lift just after noon on Saturday, resort spokesperson Jen Miller told ABC News.
Ski patrolers entered the cabin of each gondola from above and lowered people's equipment to the ground before using a rope equipped with a seat to lower each of the 174 passengers to the ground, Miller told ABC.
The evacuations were completed by the resort's internal ski patrol staff who are trained for emergency ski lift and gondola rescues each year.
