Some skiers and snowboarders at Brookvale Winter Activity Park had a fright Thursday night when the lift broke down for a short time and stranded some people on their way up the hill.
About 60 people were stuck at about 9 p.m. for about 20 minutes because of an electrical failure inside the lift.
"It happens now and then. I mean, every ski hill runs into the same situation," said Shane Arbing, manager of provincial parks on P.E.I.
It was not the same lift that opened earlier this week.
"They're a very complex piece of equipment, with a lot of electrical systems inside. And if there's a short, the safety system will shut it down. That's what it does. Now, we're fortunate here — it's not the biggest mountain in the world, so we can have communication with people on the chair, which is a big help."
The park does have a backup plan for this kind of power failure, a diesel-powered generator.
Park staff used the generator to get the lift slowly moving again Thursday night, using enough power to get the skiers and snowboarders off.
Then the lift was closed for the rest of the night.
Staff and volunteers at the hill are prepared to manually evacuate the lift, if needed, but that's always the last resort.
"It's based on how long a repair might take, what kind of weather," Arbing said. "There's any number of factors you have to consider. I really can't give you a definite time, but we're always concerned about the length of time people would be on the chair in any kind of adverse conditions."
Brookvale has never had to evacuate the lift, but every year volunteer ski patrollers and park staff practice the evacuation.
They use a rope and harness to get each person safely off the lift one by one and children are evacuated first.
"A rope is thrown over the carrying line that holds the chairs in place and a harness is delivered where people are instructed to put it on and they're very gently and very safely lowered to the snow and at that point they're given a cup of hot chocolate and sent on their way home," said Greg McCormick, the park's head ski patroller:
The lift was up and running again Friday and Arbing said he hopes the problem has been fixed.
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