Sometimes skiing or snowboarding until the last lifts close is not such a good idea.
It sure wasn’t Thursday (Jan. 25) for Monica Laso. The Chilean woman survived a cold night after being stranded in the Heavenly Gondola without any way to call for help.
Laso was one of five friends from different countries who traveled to South Lake Tahoe to ski Heavenly. Near the end of the day, an exhausted Laso fell behind her friends and approached a Heavenly worker after she was too tired to continue down the hill.
The Heavenly worker reportedly guided Laso to a gondola on the California side late in the afternoon. Laso was waiting for her boyfriend, who was already heading down the hill. She entered the gondola a couple minutes prior to its daily shutdown time of 5 pm.
That left Laso inside a gondola cabin for the next 15 hours hanging in the sky. And no, this was not a heated cabin. Thursday’s night’s temperature in the South Lake Tahoe area was 23 degrees,
Laso told KCRA TV in Sacramento that she didn’t have a cell phone, a light or anything that could be helpful. She pounded on the gondola glass and screamed every time she saw a worker down below, but no one could hear her.
“I screamed desperately until I lost my voice,” she said.
Laso kept herself warm after she was stuck in the gondola by frequently rubbing her arms and feet.
Stuck in the gondola, Laso was in panic mode and so were her friends at the bottom of Heavenly. The group became worried and eventually reported her missing to the El Dorado County Sheriff.
“We were going crazy, no one knew anything between the police and security,” Laso’s friend Momo Shternhel told the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
Fortunately, this story had a happy ending. It wasn’t until the gondola started running again Friday morning around 8:30 am, going back down the mountain, that crews realized Laso had been on the gondola overnight.
“The safety and well-being of our guests is our top priority at Heavenly Mountain Resort,” said Tom Fortune, vice president of Heavenly and the Tahoe Region, said in a statement. “We are investigating this situation with the utmost seriousness.”
Kim George, a spokesperson for South Lake Tahoe Fire and Rescue, said they assessed and treated Laso before releasing her. Laso declined to be taken to a hospital for evaluation.
George said this is the first time they have responded to something like this in more than 20 years.
