A Gore Mountain staff member assists a skier with putting on a harness to be lowered down from the Northwoods Gondola during an evacuation on Wednesday. (Provided photo — Dan Laurie)

NORTH CREEK — The Northwoods Gondola at the Gore Mountain ski area was back up and running Thursday morning, just one day after a mechanical issue that left nearly 70 people stranded for hours up to 70 feet in the air.

The gondola experienced a mechanical failure around 9 a.m. on Wednesday, as one of its tower wheel assemblies, known as a sheave, had shifted out of alignment. This was detected by a tower sensor, which automatically shut off power to the lift.

While the sheave had shifted, the haul rope itself — which carries the gondola cabins — never slipped out between the towers, and there were no injuries, though the evacuation took about five hours to complete. Unlike chairlifts, gondolas are fully-enclosed ski lifts, with windows, that offer riders considerably more protection from the elements.

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A first-hand account

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Dan Laurie was riding up the Northwoods Gondola with his wife, Kathleen, for their first run of the day.

But shortly into the ride, the gondola came to a sudden stop. They were two of the 67 people stuck in the air. Laurie was the last person to be evacuated that day, having spent around five hours inside it.

There were six people tucked into his gondola, including a father and son, who were skiing at Gore for the first time. Laurie told them that it’s a fantastic mountain and they should come back.

But for Laurie, sitting in a place that long and cramped made him more stiff and sore than a full day of skiing.

“It was challenging,” he said. “It was tough sitting in there all day. And the thing that bothered me the most was the lack of communication from anybody.”

Laurie said that while he understood there was a lot of chaos, he wished that someone would have ridden up on a snowmobile or skied down the lift line to let people know what was going on. He was only able to confirm that an evacuation was taking place after calling the ski lodge on his cellphone and asking.

Still, though, Laurie had a pretty good sense of what was going to happen. That’s because his gondola cabin was only two positions below the tower that was experiencing the alignment issue. When the gondola first stopped, he didn’t know there was a problem and figured someone had an issue either getting on or off the gondola — a common reason for lift stops.

But as 10, then 15 minutes went by, he realized that probably wasn’t the case. Then, a ski patroller skied down to the tower in front of his cabin and began looking up for what Laurie estimated was another five to 10 minutes before continuing to ski down.

Shortly thereafter, staff on snowmobiles drove up to the tower.

“Have you ever been to a party where you’re the first one there?” he said. “And then people just start slowly showing up, then pretty soon you’ve got a whole crowd. That’s kind of what happened.”

He noticed that two lift maintenance staff with harnesses began climbing up the tower for an initial assessment.

“They kind of stared at it for a little while, thinking and scratching their heads,” he said. “And then about 10 or 15 minutes later, another snowmobile comes up the hill with a couple sets of come-alongs on it. They hooked it on and they’re ratcheting the cable. It looked like they were trying to get it back over, onto the wheels, and it slipped and we just kind of bumped like a foot.”

He said the gondola turned back on two or three times, but very shortly, only traveling a few feet, before the haul rope appeared to come off a couple of the wheels, but not the entire sheave assembly. While the jolt made for a scary moment or two for some in the cabin, Laurie said he kept his eye on it and saw it was within the safety grabs the whole time.

“I said it’s fine, it’s fine, no worries,” he said. “I don’t think the cable was actually ever going to fully come off.”

He said crews ended up taking off either two or three of the wheels on the tower assembly once they had enough pressure on the haul rope with another come-along. Once the wheels were off, literally, Laurie said that’s when he realized they most likely were not going to turn the power back on — or even complete the repair — before first getting everyone off.

“I saw it when it slipped off the roller,” he said. “I said, ‘Oh boy, we’re going to be here for a while.'”

To pass the time, he said his gondola cabin shared stories, told jokes and watched the rescuers begin climbing up to begin the evacuation. He commended the rescuers, saying they all did a good job, clearly and calmly explained the drop-down procedure as they harnessed each person.

On Thursday, Laurie returned to Gore. Even though the gondola was open, he opted to take the parallel chairlift. After all, he said, there was no need to push his luck.

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Back to normal

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Once everyone was safely on the ground by 2 p.m. Wednesday, crews began repairing the sheave. The incident was isolated to just that one tower’s wheel assembly, and no other repair work was needed, according to state Olympic Regional Development Authority Communications Director Darcy Norfolk Rowe. Gore, along with its sister Alpine ski mountains Whiteface and Belleayre, is operated by ORDA.

She added that Gore remained in contact with the state Department of Labor throughout the incident. The DOL is responsible for all ski lift safety inspections, and once it became clear that the repair work likely wouldn’t take more than a day, Norfolk Rowe said that being able to expeditiously schedule a DOL safety inspection was crucial to ensuring the lift was running the next day.

The Northwood Gondola — given its carrying capacity, central location and greater protection from the elements — is often Gore’s most used lift. It runs from the mountain’s main base area to the top of Bear Mountain, a smaller peak between Gore’s base and its true summit, which is serviced by other lifts.

The Northwoods Gondola was originally installed in 1999 by lift manufacturer Poma, though some of its components have since been upgraded. For instance, it received new gondola cabins ahead of the 2024-25 ski season.

For more on the rescue, visit https://tinyurl.com/3afczx33.