Imagine this. After an exhilarating day hiking on Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park, you’re headed home for the evening. You grab the Banff Gondola down the mountain, but the power goes out, leaving you stranded swinging high above the ground.
Your first thought is Frozen, a 2010 film about a trio of friends stuck on a gondola and having to make life-or-death choices. Elsa and Olaf can’t help you out of this one.
Well, that’s exactly what happened Monday evening around 8:30pm, but less dramatic than a Hollywood movie. A sudden lightning storm hit Banff and Canmore, causing a widespread power outage.
Because of the storm, the Banff Gondola on Sulphur Mountain shut down, stranding hundreds of people at the visitor center at the top.
Many people were on their way down in the gondola when the power went out. They had to stay in their gondola cabins until around 10 PM.
People stuck in the gondola cabins were eventually moved to the parking area below using backup power. After that, the Pursuit team focused on making sure everyone at the top had things like food, drinks, and warm blankets.
“When the power went out last night, our first priority was to ensure the safety of those in the gondola cabins,” Tanya Otis, director of media communications for Pursuit, told the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
Pursuit operates five of the largest attractions in the Rockies: Banff Gondola, Banff Lake Cruise, Glacier Adventure, Maligne Lake Cruise, and the Glacier Skywalk.
But the thought of a warm bed motivated some folks to hike down a 5.5-kilometre trail from the mountain to the parking lot. The trail is rated as challenging by Alltrails and is a 2-hour trek from the top during the day, but try doing the same hike in a large group by headlamp over wet and slippery rocks at night! That’s precisely what some people, who were tired of waiting on the top of the mountain did.
For the less adventurous, helicopters from Parks Canada and Alpine Helicopters pitched in to fly the remaining people down. By Tuesday morning, 50 people were still waiting at the visitor center.
“Parks Canada is aware of the situation and is currently working with Pursuit to get visitors back down from the summit safely,” explained Emma Badgery, public relations and communications officer with Banff National Park.
But not everyone was satisfied with the response, including Helena Gil, one of the visitors stranded atop Sulphur Mountain.
“The lack of preparedness for situations like this is astonishing. Not even the gift shop is giving away blankets and sweaters, only the restaurants started to provide food after two hours here and with nobody telling us what is going on,” Gil wrote on Twitter.
Similarly, Jaclyn and Brennen McConnell spent their wedding day sleeping on the floor of the visitor centre. But the couple, who started planning their elopement in the Rockies a year ago, took the power outage in stride.
“We slept on the floor. My husband slept in his suit on the floor. I slept in my wedding dress on the floor…It was almost like sleeping in an airport,” McConnell told The Canadian Press.
The couple would have hiked to the parking lot, but dress shoes and a wedding dress aren’t exactly made for hiking in.
Additionally, a child was in need of medication but the visitor centre’s first aid kit was not fully stocked. Thankfully, one of McConnell’s friends was a pediatric doctor and was able to assist the family.
So, why did this all happen? Peter Brodsky from Fortis Alberta explained it was a problem with the transmission system, causing a transmission outage. A transmission outage occurs when electrical equipment is forced out of service due to a problem. In this case, the problem was a massive lightning storm.
Scott Schreiner from another company, AltaLink, gave more details. At 8:20 PM, the storm caused two major power lines to stop working.
“Those transmission lines feed the Bow Valley area, so for 16 minutes, Canmore, Banff, Sunshine Village, and Lake Louise were without power,” explained Schreiner.
At 8:36 PM, one line was fixed, and the power was back. The other line was still being checked the next morning to ensure it was safe to use. In total, the outage affected around 16,000 customers.
Thunderstorms are nothing new for Alberta. But as the threat of climate change continues to grow, so does the likelihood of extreme weather events.
In addition to severe thunderstorms, this includes wildfires, heat waves, hail, and tornadoes.
Tanya Otis pointed out that while they’ve had gondolas stop because of bad weather before, this time was different.
The gondola was stopped for an unusually long time. According to the Banff Gondola Facebook page, the gondola reopened to guests as of 4 p.m. Tuesday.
