SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, California — A snowboarder was trapped in a ski lift gondola for 15 hours amid freezing temperatures at a Lake Tahoe resort, according to officials and media reports.
Monica Laso boarded the gondola at Heavenly Ski Resort around 5 p.m. Thursday to ride down the mountain because she was too tired to snowboard. But it stopped just minutes later while she was still in the air, she told KCRA, which first reported the news.
Laso called for help, but no one on the ground heard her, the TV station reported. She didn’t have her cell phone, so she couldn’t call for help.
“I screamed desperately until I lost my voice,” Laso told KCRA in an interview in Spanish.
She spent the night rubbing her hands and feet against the cold. According to the National Weather Service, the overnight low temperature was 23 degrees.
Laso’s friends reported her missing to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday, but she was not found until Friday morning when the gondola started up again and the crew realized she had been there overnight, the TV station reported.
The ski area, located on the southeastern side of the lake near the California-Nevada border, is investigating “with the utmost seriousness” how Laso became stuck.
“The safety and well-being of our guests is our top priority at Heavenly Mountain Resort,” Tom Fortune, the resort’s vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.
Kim George, a battalion chief and spokesperson for South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue, told The Associated Press that sheriff’s deputies called for their paramedics around 8:30 a.m. Friday after Laso was discovered.
She was responsive and alert and refused to be taken to the hospital, George said.
In her 23 years in the fire service, “we’ve never responded to anything like this,” George said. “I am very curious about the story.”
