A snowboarder is recovering after she was trapped in a ski gondola overnight at a Lake Tahoe resort amid freezing temperatures, KCRA-TV reports.
The incident happened Thursday evening, when Monica Laso joined some friends for an outing at the Heavenly Ski Resort, located on the southeastern side of the lake.
Around 5 p.m., she was at the top of a mountain but did not feel up for another run, so she said an employee directed her to the gondola, according to CBS San Francisco.
But within two minutes of the ride, the gondola stopped suddenly while Laso was still up in the air. She said she yelled as loud as she could and pounded on the windows to no avail, according to the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
“I didn’t have a phone, a light or anything,” Laso, who is from Chile, told KCRA-TV in Spanish. “I screamed desperately until I lost my voice.”
Laso spent the moonlit night in the gondola – about 15 hours – and stayed warm by rubbing her feet and hands together. Temperatures in the area dropped to a low of 23 degrees Fahrenheit.
Friends reported Laso missing to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday evening, but she was not found until Friday morning when resort crews started the gondola again and she was finally able to get off.
“I felt very frustrated,” Laso told KCRA-TV.
South Lake Tahoe Fire and Rescue assessed and treated Laso, who was alert but did not want to be hospitalized. Medics subsequently released her, department spokesperson Kim George told KCRA-TV.
George said she could not recall a similar incident in her 23 years with the department.
Vail Resorts, the operator of the ski resort, told CBS San Francisco that it is looking into what happened. “The safety and wellbeing of our guests is our top priority at Heavenly Mountain Resort. We are investigating this situation with the utmost seriousness,” the company said in a statement.
[Feature Photo: Pixabay]
