Message In a Bottle Found Under Colorado Ski Lift

Once upon a time, my older brother forgot to zip the pocket of his ski jacket and his first generation iPhone fell out of the pocket, never to be found again.

Fast forward not just to the summer after he lost his phone, but a full summer, winter, and another summer and a lady hiking at the ski area found his phone, picked it up, took it home and charged it.

Although it had seen better days, the phone turned on and the lady got in contact with my brother and mailed him the phone, which at that point, he had definitely replaced. Not everyone is as lucky as him when it comes to dropping things off the lift and a lot of the time, the stuff you drop just sits there. 

But this past weekend, a crew of employees from Breckenridge Resort, Colorado went for a little treasure hunt for all those forgotten goods. 

With the snow melted off Breckenridge's slopes, more than 150 employees went looking for trash under the ski area's lifts.

When all was said and done, employees collected roughly a whopping 780 pounds of trash from the mountain's slopes. Amongst the found objects were the usual suspects of things people drop off the lift: ski poles, phones, vapes, AirPods (when did skiing become such a digital experience?), driver's licenses, ski passes, etc. Of the perhaps expected, but deeply inconvenient items people lost, were a whole pair of snowboard boots, several rental skis, and one tiny little rental ski boot.

The more unexpected items included a grill spatula, a message encapsulated in an empty whiskey bottle (which has yet to be opened), and an iPod Nano. You can see a full video of some of the more interesting found items below.

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Watch: Items Found Under Breckenridge's Ski Lifts