A woman whose friends reported her missing at a ski resort was in fact stuck inside a gondola in mid-air overnight, where no one could hear her cries for help.
Monica Laso was snowboarding with friends at Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe California on Thursday when she fell behind the group, she told local news station KCRA.
She told a resort employee she was tired, and the worker guided her into a gondola cabin to take her down the hill around 5 p.m. But she said the machine stopped about two minutes later, when she was still midair.
Laso said she didn’t have her phone, and she attempted to shout for help, but workers below couldn’t hear her.
“I screamed desperately until I lost my voice,” she told the station in Spanish.
In the meantime, her friends at the bottom became worried and ultimately reported her missing to the county sheriff.
“We were going crazy, no one knew anything between the police and security,” Momo Shternhel told the Tahoe Daily Tribune.
They didn’t realize what had happened until the next morning, when the gondola started moving again and deposited Laso at the bottom.
“She wasn’t rescued,” Shternhel told the Tribune.
In all, Laso was stuck for 15 hours. South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue was called to the scene at about 8:30 a.m. Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The temperature lows that night had been around freezing.
Laso declined to be taken to a hospital for evaluation.
“The resort is investigating this situation with the utmost seriousness,” resort vice president Tom Fortune said in a statement to the Chronicle.
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