Misaligned Cable Blamed for Sugarloaf Chairlift Accident (Published 2010)

A chairlift accident that injured eight people Tuesday at a Maine resort occurred while workers were trying to free some 150 skiers who had become stuck on the lift after a cable went off its track, the resort said Wednesday.

High winds may also have contributed to the accident, during which five chairs on the lift at Sugarloaf Mountain in Carrabassett Valley fell 30 feet onto the mountain.

None of the injuries were life-threatening.

The resort was open for business Wednesday, although the 4,013-foot-long lift remained out of service as the State of Maine Elevator and Tramway Board investigated the accident.

Ethan Austin, a Sugarloaf spokesman, said Wednesday that because of heavy winds Tuesday morning, the resort decided to take several chairlifts out of service for safety reasons.

Among those temporarily deactivated was the Spillway East chairlift, the one that later failed.

Once the wind died down later Tuesday morning, the resort opened the Spillway East lift after conducting an inspection of the equipment and getting the approval of a chairlift mechanic, the resort said.

The “evaluation included towers, top and bottom terminals, and the completion of Sugarloaf’s standard safety checks,” Mr. Austin said in a statement.

But at 10:23 a.m., 28 minutes after the lift had been opened for the day, Sugarloaf’s Lift Operations Department received a maintenance request from an employee on ski patrol duty, the resort said.

Two chairlift mechanics who responded to the call found that the lift’s cable was out of alignment, but were unable to fix it. After failing to repair it a second time, Sugarloaf decided to close the lift, Mr. Austin said.

To free skiers on the lift, they had to restart it. When they did so, the lift cable came off its track, the resort said.

Mr. Austin said the resort stopped the lift immediately and began evacuating skiers from it at 10:45 am.

By 12:14 p.m., the resort said, it had finished evacuating about 150 people who had been stuck on the lift. Sugarloaf workers had been aided by the Carrabassett Valley Fire Department.