Chair falls from Heavenly lift; 65 people evacuated

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE - A chair fell from Heavenly Mountain Resort's North Bowl chairlift today, resulting in 65 people being stranded for two hours before being evacuated from the lift.

Just before 11 a.m. on January 3, 2016, the unoccupied chair fell off the cable and the lift was immediately shut down.

Lara Miller of South Lake Tahoe was among those stranded on the chairlift. She said the resort's ski patrol checked on the stranded skiers during the two hour ordeal.

South Tahoe Now made a call to Heavenly's public relations team at 11:15 a.m. to check on the incident. At that time they said, "the mountain operations crew is looking into the lift issue."

There have been no reported injuries.

Miller was near Tower #7 on the North Bowl lift, and South Lake Tahoe local Matthew Collins was at Tower #23. They were communicating with themselves, and others, on Facebook as they were waiting for the lift to move.

This is a fixed grip triple chair on the Nevada side of the South Shore resort near the Boulder Lodge. Their maintenance team will be evaluating what caused the chair to fall and will keep the lift out of service until it can be determined to be safe.