Skiers at the Park City Mountain Resort Canyons Village area couldn’t get down the mountain Sunday afternoon when the resort stopped the Red Pine Gondola due to high winds.
The dry early-season conditions meant there wasn’t snow to ski on to descend to the base area. Around 4 p.m., a spokesperson said the resort was transferring people off the mountain. Shortly after 5, everyone had made it back down, thanks to the resort restarting the gondola after winds died down.
Colleen Logan says it was already windy when she rode up the gondola around noon, just before it closed. She skied through the afternoon, but was directed around 3:30 to ski to a road in the Tombstone lift area via the Chicane run to take a shuttle to the base area.
“We were in a normal resort shuttle vehicle, but we saw pickup trucks, service vehicles for the resort – they were just doing their best to get as many vehicles up there as possible. There were quite a few waiting vehicles – as the ski patrol who was telling us what was going to happen said, pretty much any vehicle they could get their hands on.”
She says about 300 people needed to come down, and staff were helpful in keeping everyone “very calm and orderly.”