Sunshine Village Ski and Snowboard Resort is investigating a gearbox failure in its Goats Eye chairlift after the newly installed piece of equipment failed over the weekend resulting in 100 riders being rescued from the lift.
Meanwhile, the lift remains closed while technicians from Colorado with Leitner Poma travel to the ski resort with repair parts for the main gearbox, which transfers power from the electric motor to the shaft that drives the lift.
Chief operating officer Dave Riley said the gearbox failure occurred slightly after 1 p.m. on Sunday (Dec. 27) and staff took 20 minutes to determine the extent of the failure and another two hours to get over 110 people on the lift down from the suspended chairs.
Riley said 25 Sunshine staff members – ski patrol, trail crew, and supervisors and manager – responded to help rope sling guests from the chairs along the lift’s route. He said while this type of evacuation is infrequent, it is something crews train for.
“Although a problem like this is very infrequent at a ski resort, we train for lift evacuations each year,” Riley said. “I want to give special thanks to the Sunshine Village staff who worked quickly, safely and efficiently. They did a great job. We sincerely apologize to our guests that were inconvenienced that day. We pride ourselves on our modern and well maintained lift equipment, so we are not happy this happened.”
Technical experts were expected to arrive on Tuesday (Dec. 29) and the lift should open in a few days. Riley said the gearbox was rebuilt in September at a cost of $130,000 and it was a new oil pump that specifically stopped working, causing the gearbox to overheat and fail.
“There was never any risk to the public because the lift has redundant brakes but we could not move the lift forward, so we had to do a rope evacuation,” he added. “This clearly is frustrating, as we had taken the initiative to do the preventative maintenance. We have already disassembled the gearbox and it is clear to us what happened to the equipment.”
The Goat’s Eye Express chair lift is was installed in 1995 and manufactured by Poma. It is a high-speed quad that reaches terrain on Goat’s Eye Mountain, an extensive and popular area of terrain for the ski hill. It is 1,557 metres in length and has a carrying capacity of 2,400 people an hour.
Some of the guests trapped on the chair lift waiting for crews to arrive and rappel them down using ropes took videos and cellphone pictures of the experience and posted them on Facebook.
One rider – Mark Pawley – commented on the speed and hard work of the rescue crews, who had to work quickly as those stuck were sitting in sub zero temperatures.
“It was amazing to see how organized and fast your rescue personnel were,” Pawley wrote on Sunshine’s Facebook page. “They worked with a real sense of urgency. It was no joke. Some people were uncontrollably shivering, others were having sense of humour failures, most of us could feel our extremities starting to freeze; all of which lead to irrational thinking and consequently accidents. Sunshine Village I’m proud of you and your personnel, and never regret being a season pass holder. You guys rock.”
Those who were taken off the lift were transported to the day lodge to warm up, and Sunshine Village indicated there were no injuries reported or hospitalization required for severe hypothermia.
