Coronet Peak ski field in Queenstown. Photo / Supplied
Twenty-five skiers and boarders were rescued from Queenstown's Coronet Peak skifield on Monday after the Greengates chairlift stalled.
A bolt snapped holding the wheel that drives chairs around the chairlift station about 3.45pm.
''It was one of those freak incidents,'' skifield manager Nigel Kerr says.
''We gave maintenance 20 minutes to have a go at [fixing] it, but they said 's**t, we could be there for an unknown amount of time'.''
Ski patrol then began evacuating the chairlift, assisted by other staff.
''We had 25 in the air and probably 30 running around on the ground doing all the bits we had to do,'' Kerr says. ''It was a real test of systems, and the fact it went well is a bit of a thank you to the skill of the ski patrol team and the training and how they work as a team.''
He says the stranded customers were all roped down before dark.
''They were all in good spirits — these people are going to dine out on this for a while.''
The lift finally got going again about 10 minutes before the last person was lowered down. Kerr says they're looking into what went wrong with the chairlift, which was only installed in 2006.
''It's a very rare problem, but I don't know if we want that to happen again ever.''
Stranded local skier Miles Holden says he was ''super-impressed'' at how Coronet's staff handled the situation.
He'd been about to go home, ''and it was the old, 'I'll just do one more [run]' sort of scenario."
He was a third of the way up and about 10 metres off the ground when the chairlift ''sort of stopped and started a couple of times''.
Initially, he feared the rescue effort might take ages, ''but once they got under way, they were good, they definitely knew what they were doing''.
Holden says he waited more than two and a half hours to be rescued.
''Given it was a nice day, it wasn't too unpleasant.
''Had it been windy, it would have been a different story, and I can imagine being up there with kids would have been a bit stressful.''
The next morning, Kerr emailed to say he'd put $99 on his pass for food and beverage.
''That's a nice touch — I didn't think it was really that necessary.''
