After a lightning storm on Monday, the lift stopped working
As of late Tuesday morning, all Banff Gondola riders had been helped off the mountain. On Monday night, a power outage affected the lift, leaving riders stuck in the gondola cabins and at the top of Sulphur Mountain’s interpretive center.
Mark Hendricks, a spokesman for the company that runs the business in the mountain town, says that between 400 and 500 people were on top of the mountain when the power went out.
Hendricks said Tuesday that the first thing they had to do was get the people who were stuck on the gondola cabins off the cabins safely.
Hendricks said that everyone who was stuck in the gondola cabins was helped out first. However, the company was unable to run the lift to bring down the people who were still at the top of Sulphur Mountain at the Above Banff Interpretive Centre.
He said that by 11 a.m. Tuesday morning, all of the guests who were still on the summit had been taken away by helicopters from Parks Canada.
Some people who went to the Banff Gondola yesterday evening chose to walk down the 5.5-kilometer trail, while others slept on the floor of the center. Some people decided to walk down on Tuesday morning.
Hendricks says that food, drinks, and blankets were given to both people who stayed the night and people who walked down.
At 4:28 a.m. on August 8, a video posted to X, which used to be called Twitter, seems to show people sleeping on the floor of the interpretive center, which is where the gondola stops.
Parks Canada said in an earlier statement on Tuesday that it was working with Pursuit to get people down from the summit.
Emma Badgery, a communications officer from the Banff field unit, said in an email, “The safety of those affected is our top priority.”
Hendricks said that those who were hurt will get money back from Pursuit.
He says that they are now looking into the “gondola failure” and that the lift will run as soon as it is safe to do so.
“This was something that had never happened before at the gondola. We haven’t had this big of a shut down with this many people at the top of the mountain in the last 20 years,” he said.
“I’m proud of how our teams handled safety procedures and how we helped those guests while they stayed with us overnight,” he said.