Chilean woman spends night in Tahoe’s Heavenly Gondola

A Chilean woman survived a cold night after being stranded in the Heavenly Gondola without any way to call for help.

Monica Laso was one of five friends from different countries traveled to South Lake Tahoe to ski and enjoy Heavenly Ski Resort.

On Thursday, they all went up the hill and only four came back down leaving one unaccounted and the rest of them scrambling for answers.

“She was a little bit slow, and she was exhausted at one point and couldn’t continue,” Momo Shternhel, a friend of the exhausted Laso told the Tahoe Daily Tribune. “Her boyfriend contacted ski patrol and they took her down on a red bed to the gondola, but they lost her boyfriend, so he kept going down to the California base lodge.”

Reportedly, the woman waited for a few minutes for her boyfriend and when she didn’t see him she got on the gondola. As she began her descent, the gondola froze keeping her suspended in thin air.

She could see workers but failed to get their attention despite pounding on the windows.

Time passed, the sunlight faded and a full moon became her only companion.

There is a survival kit in the gondola, but Laso didn’t find it.

Meanwhile, her friends “went back and forth. We were going crazy, no one knew anything between the police and security, kept telling them she was at the gondola between 3:50-4:10 p.m.,” Laso’s friend said while officials searched camera feeds the four friends continued to search for their lost companion.

“She wasn’t rescued,” Shternhel said.

Ultimately the five are thankful they are safe.

“We were super happy she could survive the night and thankful it happened on a soft night.”