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WHISTLER, British Columbia — A rare type of ice buildup has been blamed for the partial collapse of a gondola tower at Canada’s Whistler ski resort.
Thirteen people were slightly injured and dozens were trapped for hours in unheated gondola cabins when a tower on the Excalibur gondola buckled Tuesday afternoon, bouncing two of the cars off the ground.
The resort, which will host the alpine events of the 2010 Winter Olympics, released a statement Wednesday indicating the tower failure occurred when water somehow seeped into a splice on a section of a tower.
An extreme deep freeze turned that water to ice, rupturing the splice in what the resort says is an extremely uncommon phenomenon known as “ice-jacking.”
