Woman says she lost her voice screaming after she was stuck overnight on ski resort gondola

By CNN Newsource

Published January 28, 2024 9:57 AM

By Zoe Sottile, CNN

(CNN) — A woman who was stuck overnight Thursday in a gondola at a Lake Tahoe, California, ski resort told CNN affiliate KCRA she “screamed desperately until I lost my voice.”

Monica Laso, who had planned a ski trip with her friends, didn’t imagine that she would spend a night hanging in the sky on a gondola, she told KCRA in an interview translated from Spanish.

After being too tired to continue down the hill, Laso said she approached a worker who guided her to the gondola. The gondola stopped at around 5:00 p.m., two minutes after she got in, leaving her stranded, she said.

“I didn’t have a phone, a light or anything,” Laso told KCRA.

Laso’s friends reported her missing when they could not contact her, they told the CNN affiliate. It wasn’t until the Heavenly Mountain Resort gondola started working again Friday morning that crews realized she had been in it overnight.

The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office requested assistance from South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue when she was found, fire and rescue spokesperson Marshal Kim George told CNN. “She was assessed and refused transport – we always recommend transport with every patient.

“The response was to the base of the gondola. This was really the extent of our involvement,” George added.

“The safety and wellbeing of our guests is our top priority at Heavenly Mountain Resort. We are investigating this situation with the utmost seriousness,” Tom Fortune, vice president and chief operating officer of Heavenly Mountain Resort, told CNN in a statement.

CNN has reached out to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office for more information.