Gondola falls off lift at Colorado ski resort

While ski lifts are generally safe, a few accidents in recent years may have some people on edge, including one incident that involved a lift speeding backwards at a high speed and another malfunction that resulted in the death of a Colorado skier. Today, we bring news of another incident in Summit County – before you continue reading, know that no one was hurt and this occurred on a new lift set to open to the public this weekend.

According to a tweet by Matt Renoux of Denver’s 9NEWs, a gondola cabin separated from the lift line and fell at Copper Mountain during safety tests. In the tweet, Matt mentions that this was the result of a piece of material that got caught in the system during construction. No one was injured, as the lift was not open to the public at the time.

In an official statement from Copper Mountain, they’ve announced that the manufacturer of the lift, Leitner-Poma, has inspected the American Eagle lift and has determined that it is now safe to use. No critical components were damaged in the fall and the fall should not result in delays regarding the lift’s public operation. Their statement also mentions that the lift is currently under construction. The lift is set to open this weekend.

See Matt’s full tweet, complete with photos, below:

According to Copper Mountain’s website, their new American Eagle chairlift holds both six-person chairs, as well as gondola cabins, replacing the former American Eagle lift, which was a quad-chair. According to one report on SnowBrains, the new lift will increase uphill capacity by more than 40 percent.

Copper Mountain has gotten 60 inches of snow this month, which has allowed them to open 475 of their 2490 acres, according to their website at time of publishing.