Dozens of people were exposed to bear spray in the claustrophobic confines of one of the enclosed aerial trams at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort on Monday.
“Around 3:30 p.m. yesterday, a tram car departed the base terminal for the top of Rendezvous Mountain,” Jon Bishop, risk director for the resort, told Cowboy State Daily. “Shortly after its departure, a bear spray canister was inadvertently activated.”
Bishop said the tram immediately returned to the base of the mountain, and everyone on board was evacuated. The passengers were assessed by the resort’s Ski Patrol and treated on site, and no one required further medical attention.
“It was a fairly minor exposure, but some folks had breathed in that irritant,” he said. “Everybody was OK and released.”
The tram car was immediately decontaminated, and Bishop said it resumed operations shortly thereafter.
“We did a whole decon, ran a trip with that car empty, and then resumed normal operations,” he said.
For the people on the tram at the time, it’s an experience they won’t likely forget.
Going Up And Quickly Down
Roxanne Roberts told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that she was enjoying a “girls’ trip” with three of her friends when they decided to take a ride to the top of Rendezvous Mountain on the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort tram.
They, along with around 30 other people, were on the tram when the bear spray discharged.
“As soon as we started going up, maybe 200 feet, everybody on the back side started coughing,” she said. “Then all of a sudden, everyone was coughing and puking. Everybody was in a panic. It was very scary.”
Roberts was taking video of the tram leaving the platform when the bear spray deployed, which is quiet for a few seconds, then people start coughing before the video cuts off.
Roberts and her friends started choking as the spray filled the enclosed space. They stood on the seats of the tram, desperately trying to get some fresh air from a small opening at the top of the windows.
As soon as the tram operator became aware of what had happened, the tram quickly returned to the station, and everyone was evacuated.
Roberts said her lungs were “on fire,” but otherwise she and her friends were unharmed.
“They just brought us water and milk, and I had a horrible headache afterwards, but we didn’t need any treatment beyond that,” she said. “We just sat and chilled for a while and got some fresh air.”
Serious Spray
Bear spray is an aerosol designed to quickly spread a 1% to 2% capsaicin solution over a 30-foot area. When deployed outside, the spray dissipates into the air but can still impact anyone within range.
In an enclosed space, the impacts of bear spray can be exacerbated, especially if the canister is ruptured. Thankfully, that isn’t what happened in the aerial tram.
“It didn’t explode, it just leaked,” Roberts said. “There were some hikers onboard, and one of them had a canister in his side pocket. He set his backpack down, and a little bit squirted out. That’s when it got crazy.”
Ruptured bear spray canisters have enough explosive force to shatter glass.
Roberts didn’t hear anything to indicate the canister ruptured, but it would’ve been hard to hear over the noise inside the tram.
“With 30-plus people in there, it was very loud to begin with,” she said. “All we could hear was the chatter of people talking until everybody started coughing.”
Bishop confirmed that the canister hadn’t ruptured. When the hiker set the backpack down on the seats, it triggered the canister and released a small amount of the caustic aerosol.
“It deployed directly onto the floor, and the canister hadn’t gone off for very long,” he said. “But obviously, it was an aerosol issue and some of the spray was picked up into the air.”
Been There Before?
Roberts watched as the tram was hosed out and thoroughly cleaned.
She said she was impressed with how quickly and adeptly the JHMR staff dealt with the situation, so she wasn’t surprised when she heard that the crew had learned from experience.
“The tram driver said something similar had happened before, sometime last year or something,” she said.
Bishop couldn’t recall a specific bear spray incident at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, but was aware of “a number of inadvertent bear spray activations” in the Jackson community where people were exposed to it.
“I can’t recall any incidents on the tram,” he said.
Deep Cleaning
Cleaning bear spray from vehicles and upholstery is an intense endeavor that many professional detailers aren’t equipped to handle.
“In a normal, full detail on the interior, everything gets cleaned anyway, but bear spray is different,” Cody Riser, the owner of Cody Detail, told Cowboy State Daily in May 2024. “If it gets into the vents, as a detailer, I'm not going to take apart a dashboard and go all the way into the heater vents to clean that out.”
Terry Jesse, owner of TJ’s Clean and Shine in Cody, cleaned the interior of a truck after a bear spray canister on the dashboard ruptured, blasted through the windshield and covered everything inside. He said vehicles that are doused in bear spray are never the same, even after a thorough cleaning.
“You have to be honest with the owners that there’s no way to get it all out,” he said. “They’re going to feel it sometimes. Their skin’s going to itch, especially when it warms up in summer. I could feel it myself, just from sitting down. The spray went into the fabric and foam of the seat. There's no way to get that out of there.”
The Jackson Hole Mountain Resort aerial trams don’t have the same soft surfaces for bear spray to penetrate, and there wasn’t that much of it released.
“It’s all hard inside, which makes it much easier to decontaminate,” Bishop said. “We made sure there was no irritant left over in the car before we resumed operations.”
Fresh Mountain Air
Even though the tram car was cleaned and cleared for operation later that day, Roberts elected not to step onboard that particular tram again. Roberts and her friends did make it to the top of Rendezvous Mountain without incident (in another car) later that day.
“They ended up bringing people back from the top of the mountain on that tram once it was washed and aired off,” she said. “They had been waiting for quite a while because of the incident, so they came back down on that same tram.”
Roberts wasn’t jaded by the experience, which she called “a total accident.” Nevertheless, the exposure was an experience she won’t soon forget.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that before,” she said.
She also discovered “the best cure” for her bear spray exposure. She and her friends felt much better after a few minutes of fresh air at the top of Rendezvous Mountain.
“I feel like the fresh air at the top of the mountain helped more than anything,” she said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
