Stevens Pass 7th Heaven evac

liftblog.com/2020/02/02/stevens-pass-eva...wing-tower-incident/

Short version: downward sheaves of tower 1 seem to be missing, 26 people roped off, no injuries.

Being a weekend, I wasn't there. From the comfort of my armchair, it looks like a section relatively cleanly detached so maybe they can get it back up sooner than next year. Did someone forget their torque wrench?

I can't think of a worse place on the hill to be lowered off than the powerlines there.

We were about 6th in line from loading when there was a load bang and a few parts flying. The whole wheel assembly on the downhill chair side of the tower simply accordianed, bound up the cable and it all came to a very fast and abrupt stop. The people on the chairs didn't seem to bounce as much as they just stopped real quickly. It was fortunate that the cable was wrapped up in the wheels, since it might have really whiplashed the whole cable if it had initially been separated from the wheels. The big question is how difficult or possible is a repair in the middle of winter? Seems like something that would require a lot of investigation, engineering and a lot of work to repair?