CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine — A 35-year-old chairlift set for improvements failed Tuesday in high winds at a Maine resort, sending skiers — at least three of them children — plummeting into ungroomed snow that came with the Northeast’s recent blizzard and softened their landings.
At least eight people, the children among them, were taken to a hospital after Sugarloaf’s double chairlift derailed during a busy vacation week at the resort 120 miles north of Portland. Dozens of skiers remained on the crippled lift for an hour or more until patrols could get them down.
The resort did not operate the failed lift and two others early in the day because of winds but deemed them safe to use before the accident at 10:30 a.m., said Ethan Austin, a spokesman for Sugarloaf. The resort said the cable that supports the chairs jumped off track, though the exact cause of the failure is being investigated. Winds were gusting at 40 mph at the time.
A witness said he saw someone working on the lift before the derailment.
The resort said the lift, which went into service in 1975 and recently passed an inspection, was due to be replaced — possibly as early as next summer — partly because of vulnerability to wind. About five chairs fell 25 to 30 feet onto a ski trail below, officials said.
Goggles, snow cushioned blows
Rebecca London, one of the skiers who tumbled to the snow, told The Associated Press that her face hit a retaining bar but that her goggles spared her from serious injury. She credited new snow underneath the lift with a soft landing; the resort said it got 20 to 22 inches in Monday’s storm.
“Thankfully, they didn’t groom it last night, so they left it like it was,” she said. “So the snow was all soft.”
Most of the skiers who fell appeared to be stunned but OK, she said, and the ski patrol was on the scene within minutes to treat the injured. London, 20, of Carrabassett Valley, said she wasn’t hurt badly enough to go to a hospital.
Jay Marshall, a ski coach who hunkered down in a cold wind while on a lift next to the broken one, said his lift was moving but that the broken one was not.
There was a “loud snapping noise” after the lift restarted, he said, then some screams.
“The next thing I know, it was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo,” said Marshall, of Carrabassett Valley.
He said it was too difficult to watch, so he looked away.
“It was terrifying,” he said.
There were about 150 people on the lift at the time, according to Sugarloaf, owned by Boyne Falls, Mich.-based Boyne Resorts. Sugarloaf workers used a pulleylike system to lower skiers to safety.
Jill Gray, a spokeswoman for Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, about 45 miles away, said eight adults and children were taken there, but she did not give details on the injuries. One of the injured was later taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland, she said.
Rules for dealing with high winds
Guidelines for “wind holds” include wind speed and other factors, but sometimes it’s as simple as noting whether chairs are swinging in the wind, Sugarloaf’s Austin said.
The failed lift is 4,013 feet long, gains 1,454 feet of elevation and nearly reaches the summit of 4,327-foot Sugarloaf, the state’s second- tallest mountain. It went into service in 1975 and was modified in 1983, according to Sugarloaf officials.
Betsy Twombly of Falmouth said the resort notified her and others with season passes that the lift would be the first to be replaced under a 10-year improvement plan. Austin told reporters it was on a list of those to be upgraded but declined to say when that was due to happen.
Twombly witnessed the aftermath and praised the quick work of Sugarloaf workers, who she said worked calmly and efficiently to get people down from the lift and off the mountain.
“I expected to see hysteria, but there was none,” she said.
The lift was properly licensed and inspected for 2010, said Doug Dunbar of the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation.
