The wine and brownies are gone: 50 women trapped on ski bus for 23 hours after major Colorado snowstorm (2024)

Updated at 12:11 p.m.: The bus started moving about noon Thursday, roughly 20 hours after it left Vail. The women reported they were looking forward to coffee.

A massive snowstorm that buried Colorado and shut down Interstate 70 stranded travelers overnight, including a ski bus filled with 50 women who were out of water and food after being stuck 16 hours and counting.

“We’re in good spirits,” Mary Wagner, one of the skiers on the bus, told The Colorado Sun on Thursday morning. “But we’re done now.”

For years, the women, many retired or moms with kids in school, have taken the ski bus on Wednesdays. This week, they spent the day at Vail, then got back on the bus at 3:30 p.m. for the ride home. Within 10 minutes, as the snow started to fall, they were stopped on Vail Pass because of a stalled car. When they were able to move again, the uphill climb overheated the transmission on the bus, so they waited for a tow truck that got them to a pullout 3 miles up the road.

The charter bus recovered, so they crawled along, past more accidents and through the Eisenhower Tunnel. They had to switch drivers in Idaho Springs because, by this point, about 11:30 p.m., the original had reached her time limit of hours in the driver’s seat.

Then at midnight, when they were just east of Idaho Springs, I-70 stopped moving.

Thursday morning, the bus — operated by Arrow Stage Lines and called the “Thera-Ski Bus,” as in “skiing is therapy” — had not moved from its spot near mile marker 242 since midnight.

“We’re at 16 hours and we have no indication of movement or leaving,” said Wagner, a Cherry Hills Village resident who has been riding the ski bus for years. “The toilet is full and we’re almost out of water.”

Women on the bus sent a sort of SOS at 5:53 a.m. Thursday, an email to everyone signed up for information about the weekly adventure. “Thera-ski bus need help!” it said. “We are all in decent health and no medical emergencies but we really want to get home.” The email asked people to send messages to Gov. Jared Polis and call the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The bus was one of “a couple hundred vehicles” stuck on I-70 on Thursday, including semitrucks that were not using chains on their tires despite Colorado’s chain law. “It makes it almost impossible for our crews to plow the highways,” said Stacia Sellers, a spokesperson for the agency.

Prepared with snacks for the last ride of the season

It was the last Wednesday bus ride of the season, so the women wore silly T-shirts that looked like bikinis over their ski clothes. Like usual, there were homemade treats, beer and wine for the drive home. Wagner had packed a sandwich for lunch but then ended up buying food on the mountain, so she ate it along with an apple and a cheese stick for dinner.

One woman on the bus tweaked her knee on the slopes and was in pain, but the situation wasn’t dire, Wagner said. A few of the women had a double seat to themselves to curl up for the night, but most had to sleep upright. The bus heater kept them warm, at least. And they weren’t worried about running out of gas — yet.

The toilet, however, reached its max, so anyone who had to go would have to go outside.

Wednesday night, there were brownies and cookies, and a few women sipped wine. Wagner drank the beer she packed for the trip home, which usually lasts no later than 6:30 p.m.

“We pass treats and food and stories and jokes. It’s a lovely group of women. But we’re not usually on the bus this long,” she said, chuckling.

By 8:30 a.m. Thursday, the granola bars and bananas that were tucked in their backpacks were mostly gone. The women were melting snow to drink and there was general frustration about why the road hadn’t been cleared.

“We have yet to see a snowplow,” Wagner said. “We’ve seen lots of tow trucks. We feel abandoned.”

Still, there was laughing in the background of Wagner’s phone call.

That is until Wagner speculated that they might sit there for another four or five hours. “Everyone is trying to make the best of it,” she said.

Reporter Olivia Prentzel contributed to this report.