Chair 1, aka Big Mountain Express, was evacuated yesterday afternoon at Whitefish Mountain Resort, Montana.
The chair reportedly stopped running around 12:30pm.
It took around 3 hours for ski patrol to safely evacuate everybody on board.
Molly Thibert was stuck on Chair 1 with her husband and their young son.
She shared her experience with her Facebook followers in the videos and caption embedded below.
The second video shows Thibert’s young son being lowered to the ground.
” We are totally fine. I never felt scared or unsafe. Gage and his friend were on a chair several chairs ahead of us and were only stuck for 2 hours. They weren’t phased at all, Gage almost won $100 from the people they were on the chair with, they loved getting down, and loved all the hot food they got to buy while waiting for us to get down😂
Don, Case, and I were stuck for 3 hours. Case was a friggin champ. When we asked him how he was he’d tell us honestly about his toes being cold or hands hurting, but he didn’t complain or whine at all. And even the ski patrol guys were blown away at how well he did getting down. We are super tired.
I think sitting still for that long in that cold and wet- we were burning a zillion calories just trying to stay warm and being tense from being so cold for so long all of our muscles (mine and dons) are super fatigued and a little shaky – just like we had a killer workout.
And Zoey had gymnastics and then went to a friends so she missed all of the excitement. But really- the guys who helped us down were amazing.
Lots of you have said getting stuck like that is your worst nightmare- well- you will be happy to hear that I’ve lived through it and it’s not bad at all- just inconvenient and cold. And now fully embracing a night of pizza, hot chocolate, and laying on the couch under the coziest blanket.”
Waiting for 3 hours in the cold and snow isn’t exactly ideal, but shout out to the patrollers who safely evacuated everybody affected.
Whitefish Mountain Resort has not released an official statement on what caused Chair 1 to stop running, but rime ice is suspected to have caused the issue.
The resort has not announced if Chair 1 will run today (12/29/22) at the time of writing this article.
We will keep you posted if/when information is made available.
