A man was revived Saturday after suffering a heart attack on the Telluride Ski Resort gondola, and a woman was rescued after being bucked off a horse on a mountain trail.
The 65-year-old man from Tennessee man fell unconscious while in a gondola cabin leaving Mountain Village about 8:30 p.m., the San Miguel Sheriff’s Office said. He had stopped breathing.
The man’s son called 911 and was instructed by the Western Colorado Regional Dispatch Center to begin chest compressions. The gondola was shut down as the man was removed. Chest compressions continued while gondola staff retrieved and deployed a public access automated external defibrillator.
A Mountain Village Police Department officer arrived and assisted with chest compressions. Telluride Fire Department medics and volunteers arrived the San Sophia Gondola Station to take over care.
“Through multiple lifesaving interventions, medics were able to restore his pulse,” according to a San Miguel’s Sheriff’s Office report.
Rescuers arranged for a CareFlight of the Rockies helicopter to land mid-mountain near the nature center, and the patient was flown to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction for further care.
On Sunday, a 57-year-old local woman fell from her horse on the Wilson Mesa Trail west of Ophir. She sustained traumatic injuries, but they were not considered life-threatening, the San Miguel Sheriff’s Office said.
San Miguel County Search and Rescue, sheriff’s deputies and Telluride Fire Protection District personnel reached the patient within 75 minutes of the initial dispatch call. A CareFlight helicopter landed nearby and took the woman to Montrose Memorial Hospital.
