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50 women on ski trip stranded by snowstorm, trapped in bus overnight: “We looked after each other”
A weekly ski trip for about 50 women from the Denver area turned into an overnight ordeal when their bus got stuck in a snowstorm behind jackknifed semi tractor-trailers on their way back from Vail.
One of the women, Brenda Djorup, called it a test of perseverance and patience. But she said they got to know one another better, helped a couple of women with medical issues and made it home safely Thursday after 22 hours on the bus.
“It was a testament to women who have dealt with other crises in our lives and knew how to handle a situation that was unexpected and uncomfortable and keeping things in its right perspective,” said Djorup, a retired teacher.
“We did run out of food and water and were limited on our use of the bathroom,” she said. “And people dug in their backpacks for tissues when we ran out of toilet paper. And we looked after each other.”
Brenda Djorup / AP
The women were on the final of the 10 weekly ski trips with the Thera-ski Bus, a volunteer-run women’s only ski group that has been operating for about 40 years.
The women, including some in their 70s, were chased off the hill at Vail because of a lightning storm on Wednesday afternoon, but that didn’t end up being close to the worst part of their trip.
As they were enjoying their after-skiing snacks, including banana bread and cookies, they were stopped due to jack-knifed semis for a few hours. When they started moving again, they had to be towed over a mountain pass because the transmission overheated and then they had to wait for it to cool down. They ended up being stopped again behind other disabled tractor-trailers as night fell.
“We’re resigned,” Bette Davis said. “We’re now sleeping on the bus. There’s nothing happening. We’re just idling there forever.”
One of the ladies had been injured when another skier ran into her from behind on the way off the hill, and there was concern whether another of the passengers would get home in time for her daily insulin shot.
Brenda Djorup / AP
“We helped each other,” Djorup said. “We got snow to put on the knees of the girl who was injured. We we shared what we had in our backpacks as far as food with the girl who is diabetic.”
They did run out of water at one point, but the bus company was able to take a maintenance truck in to a convenience store that the bus couldn’t access and get them water and chips, Davis said.
The women used their cellphones, when they had service, to contact family and try to find out when the road might reopen for them and everyone else stuck on the highway.
Mary Wagner said the group channeled their frustration over a lack of information by sending emails to Gov. Jared Polis’ office and reaching out to the media to bring attention to the fact that the highway, which brings so many visitors and their dollars to ski resorts, was brought to a standstill, Wagner said.
“It gave us a purpose instead of just sitting there and complaining,” said Wagner, who said did not sleep much on the bus and mostly giggled with a friend much of the night. Nevertheless, she was back out skiing on Friday on a previously planned trip.
Bette Davis / AP
Wagner said she would like authorities to fine truck drivers without chains more severely and be more efficient about clearing stuck vehicles.
Colorado requires that truck drivers traveling through the mountains on Interstate 70, the state’s main east-west highway, carry chains with them from September through May and be ready to put them on their tires for better traction during storms.
An unknown number were not using chains during this week’s storm and were blamed for blocking traffic after getting stuck. Other vehicles stuck behind them had to wait for specialty tow trucks to come in and haul the big rigs out of the way to allow traffic to flow.
Twelve truck drivers were cited for not using chains during the storm, the Colorado State Patrol said Friday. However, it acknowledged that sometimes trucks will be towed away to get traffic moving before a trooper can arrive to issue a ticket.
Despite being stuck on the highway in the snow, Davis said they didn’t get cold because the bus was able to keep running and they had all their ski clothing, including some who had mittens and boots with warmers in them.
Davis, 76, has been a member of the Thera-ski Bus group for about 25 years.
“When I first came on the bus, I was one of the younger members, and I always was in awe of the old ladies that were still skiing,” she said. “Now I’m one of them. We will be able to tell this story for the next 30 years, but we’re hoping to keep this bus going forever.”
An Israeli airstrike hit a mosque in central Gaza and Palestinian officials said at least 19 people were killed early Sunday. Israeli planes also lit up the skyline across the southern suburbs of Beirut, striking what the military said were Hezbollah targets.
The strike in Gaza hit a mosque where displaced people were sheltering near the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Another four people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people near the town.
The Israeli military said both strikes targeted militants, without providing evidence.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue. Hospital records showed that the dead from the strike on the mosque were all men, while another man was wounded.
In Beirut, the strikes reportedly targeted a building near a road leading to Lebanon’s only international airport and another formerly used by the Hezbollah-run broadcaster Al-Manar.
Hussein Malla / AP
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the one-year mark, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest conflict, most of them since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
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With just a month to go before Election Day, Sabrina German sees herself as an essential worker for democracy. The director of voter registration in Chatham County, Ga., German has found herself in the spotlight as she works to comply with sweeping changes to state election rules in this critical battleground state.
“The first three words in the preamble, it says, ‘We, the people,’ meaning that we, as public servants, we are working for the people to make sure that they have a fair choice and a voice for the candidates that they’re choosing,” German said.
The overhaul in Georgia has many fronts, from the Republican majority on the state election board, to the Georgia legislature, which has made it possible for individuals to file a flurry of challenges to the voter rolls.
German said she had a thousand challenges to voter registrations in just one county.
Attorney Colin McRae, who chairs the non-partisan County Registration Board (on which he has served for two decades), said, “It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the agenda behind some of the challenges,” he said. “In a recent set of names that were submitted to us, it included hundreds of college students. And it didn’t take a lot of research to figure out that all of the college students whose registrations were being challenged, all attended Savannah State University, [a] historically Black university.”
While these issues might seem local, they have a national political charge; and former President Trump has weighed in on the campaign trail, praising Republicans on Georgia’s election board. “They’re on fire,” he said. “They’re doing a great job. Three members. Three people are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory. They’re fighting.”
“Sunday Morning” reached out to the members of Georgia’s election board praised by Trump. They have long defended their work, and one member told us the controversy over their efforts is “manufactured to suit some other agenda.”
What’s happening in Georgia is just one example of how challenges to the vote are roiling the nation. And the question remains: Are recent changes to state election laws addressing real problems? Or, is it just politics?
David Becker, a CBS News contributor who directs the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C., said, “I’ve been looking and researching the quality of our voter lists for about 25 years now, and there’s no question that, right now, our voter lists are as accurate as they’ve ever been.”
So, what is fueling suspicion of voter rolls? “We see a lot of their claims about the elections driven just by outcomes,” said Becker. “They’re not about the actual process.
“The voter lists are public. They could have challenged these things in 2023 or 2021 or 2019. They’re waiting until right before the election, which tells you that they’re not actually interested in cleaning up the lists. What they’re really trying to do is to set the stage for claims that an election was stolen after, presumably, their candidate loses.”
The 2020 election still casts a long shadow. State officials like Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, are bracing themselves for another contsted election.
On January 2, 2021, Raffensperger got an infamous call from then-President Trump asking if he’d “find” votes so Trump could win. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have, because we won the state,” Trump said in a recorded conversation.
Raffensperger resisted pressure to not certify the 2020 election in Georgia. Asked if he would resist pressure again, he said, “I’ll do my job. I’ll follow the law, and I’ll follow the Constitution.”
Raffensperger will once again oversee and certify Georgia’s elections. Asked whether he believes any of the changes put forth by the election board are necessary, Raffensperger replied, “No. Not one.”
Raffensperger says voting is safe and secure in Georgia. Asked why the election board members keeps making changes to the rules, he said, “I think that many of them are living in the past, and they can’t accept what happened in 2020.”
Bloomsbury
Carol Anderson, an author and voting rights activist who teaches at Emory University, said, “One of the things about voter suppression is that it always looks innocuous, it always looks reasonable, except it’s not. What’s happening in Georgia with voting rights is that, you have a massive change of demography happening. So, you have a growing African-American population. You have a sizable Latino population. You have a sizable and engaged Asian-American population.
“And so, it is a power clash between a vision of a new Georgia and … the vision of the old Georgia, our old ways,” she said.
Chatham County’s Sabrina German said, because of the pressures on election workers, she thinks about leaving every day. German may be weary, but she and Colin McRae say their experience in 2020 has prepared them for whatever comes next.
McRae said he took it personally when Donald Trump asked the secretary of state to “find” 11,000 votes to put him over Joe Biden. “Of course, we took it personally; any criticism of the system is a criticism of the individuals who make up that system,” said McRae. “Again, the truth will come out. The truth will win out.”
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Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Carol Ross.
