Ski Santa Fe's Tesuque Peak chair lift set to reopen Tuesday after repairs

Jan. 22—The lift that malfunctioned Saturday when one chair slipped backward into another with passengers in the seats is scheduled to reopen Tuesday after undergoing repairs and inspections, a Ski Santa Fe resort manager said.

A chair that held three riders wasn't reassembled properly after routine maintenance, causing it to lose its grip on the Tesuque Peak triple lift and slide back into a chair with three other passengers.

The entire lift was stopped while the six people were lowered by ropes 30 feet to the ground, said Ben Abruzzo, Ski Santa Fe's general manager.

"Everyone was checked out, and at this point it appears there were no injuries," Abruzzo said.

The lift was restarted to carry the remaining patrons to the station, then shut off so crews could do the necessary work, he said.

The mishap was traced back to when 20% of the chairs were disassembled last summer as part of regular maintenance, Abruzzo said. A worker didn't reassemble one chair correctly, resulting in the chair losing tension on the lift's suspension device and sliding backward, he said.

Oddly, the mistake wasn't caught during a test that checks the tension, Abruzzo said.

As a precaution, crews disassembled, examined and then reassembled the same 20% of chairs that were previously worked on to ensure no other glitches were missed, Abruzzo said.

They also conducted visual inspections on all 163 chairs on the lift, he said, adding combing through everything is what's taking so long.

"Anything that looked odd we're also taking apart and inspecting," Abruzzo said. "That's quite a few chairs."