BRECKENRIDGE - Of all the times Linda Nelson and her two boys Andy and Bryan have ridden the Breckenridge gondola they've always wondered the same thing.
"What it would be like to be stuck in one," Nelson said.
Friday, they got the chance to find out by volunteering with 50 other people to see what it's like when the gondola stops and you're stuck, swinging a 100 feet in air.
Real evacuations are rare, but in January, 90 people had to be taken off a chair lift at Alpine Valley in Ohio.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board shows that there have been 18 rope evacuations in Colorado from July 2005 to June 2011. Some of those may have been a single chair in a terminal due to mechanical problems while the rest of the lift was unloaded under normal power.
Given the 50-year-old Breckenridge Ski Area has several lifts decades old, and even a new gondola that could someday stop working, Gondola Evacuation Coordinator Duke Barlow says it's a good idea to be prepared.
"We haven't had to evacuate this gondola yet but we have to be prepared for it, if it happens we need to be ready," Barlow said.
With their volunteers now stranded special teams from the Breckenridge Ski Patrol moved in and, in a scene right out of a James Bond movie, climbed lift towers and used safety equipment. That included a mechanical rolling device with a brake on it and large carabineers that go on the rope that also back them up. Then they shimmied out onto cables and slid to the cabins where they then swung into the gondolas.
Then they harness up their stuck skiers and lower them to safety.
"It's good for us to get a fresh set of eyes it's nice for the people because they see what it entails," Barlow said.
It requires brave souls, not just for the rescuing, but to be rescued.
"It's a unique experience," Bryan Nelson said.
He and his brother not only volunteered to be a stuck skiers, but that also meant the 15 and 17-year-olds spent hours in a confined space with their mom.
The way the best advice rescue teams have for people if they are ever stuck on a chair lift or gondola is to simply sit tight and wait for rescue. In most cases, rescue efforts, even on fully-loaded chair lifts, take only an hour or two.
(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)