Family stranded on ski lift

A new year skiing holiday turned into a nightmare for a German woman and her two sons when they were trapped on a ski lift in southern Austria after the operators unwittingly closed it down for the night.

The 39-year-old woman and her sons, aged nine and 10, took the lift from Kals, near Lienz, shortly before 4pm on Tuesday. But minutes into their journey up the slope, the lift shut down, leaving them stranded in freezing conditions, according to a spokesman for the Tirolean police.

After half an hour of exposure to freezing conditions, the woman, from Hilden in western Germany, took off her skis and boots and leapt six metres to the ground to get help.

She stumbled around on the piste in the dark for hours in temperatures of minus 10C, before collapsing from exhaustion and hypothermia.

The driver of a snow plough discovered her three hours later and alerted mountain rescue workers and a helicopter ambulance.

The lift was switched back on and the children were rescued minutes later at the station top. They were met by their father who had also raised the alarm. The woman was flown to hospital in Lienz and later to Klagenfurt, where she was being treated in the intensive care unit for spinal damage and severe frostbite. Doctors operated on her lumbar vertebrae.

Her sons were treated for exposure, but were said to be in a healthy condition.

A spokesman for the lift operators blamed "human error" for the incident. "Normally the mountain station is informed of the number of the last occupied chair," he said. "This time those duties were neglected."