A woman was left stranded in a cold ski lift gondola at a Lake Tahoe, California resort for 15 hours overnight, having to massage her arms and feet to get warm, according to KCRA 3.
In an interview with the network, Monica Laso explained that she was too exhausted to continue down the slope on Thursday while skiing at Heavenly Ski Resort with her friends. Therefore, around 4:58 p.m., she went up to a worker who showed her the way to the gondola and helped her board. The gondola, however, abruptly stopped two minutes later, leaving her isolated and terrified without a phone or light.
Every time she spotted an employee below, all she could do was cry for assistance, but no one could hear her. “I screamed desperately until I lost my voice,” Laso told KCRA 3.
Laso’s friends filed a missing person’s complaint with the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday after they were unable to get in touch with her.
The South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue received a call about a woman suffering from cold exposure at Heavenly Mountain Resort at around 8:30 a.m. on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times.
After restarting the lift during the day, resort workers found Laso had spent the whole night in the gondola, a spokeswoman Sallie Ross told the LA Times. That night, the lowest temperature in the area was 23 degrees.
The chief operating officer of Heavenly Mountain Resort, Tom Fortune, said in a statement that the resort was “investigating this situation with the utmost seriousness”. He added that “at Heavenly Mountain Resort, our guests’ safety and wellbeing are our first priorities.”
Ross told the LA Times that the department had “certainly never responded to anything like this” prior to the event, referring to it as an anomaly.
