Dec. 15th Crystal...I'm Pissed

I am unclear on this statement: "The bottom line is that Crystal wants to save the goods for the weekend so they can make more money" ?? I thought crystal had only one ticket price 7 days a week? Weekend skiers are weekend skiers. That simply is in place by most folks 9-5. Be fortunate that you don't have to ride/ski the weekends.

I second BC_skier. We have tremendous tools in place to drive our skiing decision thanks to the good ole intraweb, may it be others TR's, telemetry data or simply following NOAA's weekly data. I do my homework all week long following NWAC, NOAA, etc. to make my weekend plans. Unfortunately we now live in an era where ya can't believe the spin that ski hills put out as communication.

I also am not defending CrystalCorp. I have chosen not to ski there and line pockets for the past 5 years. the good ole Crystal days are gone. As you mentioned go to baker. I am yet to see Baker and its operators overstate their conditions.

BAKER is PURE!

I was there too, waiting near front of the Rex line for 40 minutes. It looked like the problem was ice in the lift railings/chairs. Yeah, the winds kicked up at times too, but we're pnw riders here, we can take a bit of weather and love it. Anyway, I ended up having a good time, at the same time I was pissed too. But, we did get to make some turns on a day when our other local resorts were closed. Yeah, sometimes my opinions come in dichotomy flavor.

I completely feel your pain here and understand why you feel the way you do. But I have come to realize that even if you shell out 50 bucks for a lift ticket, the ski area management does not feel that they owe you anything, even when things are completely fucked up (Stevens Pass yesterday would be a fine example) They only care about you until they have your money. And don't believe that Mount Baker is any better than the other greedy ski areas. I have heard many complaints from locals there about how "Gwen was hyping it up on the snowphone today"

You should just learn to expect that they (ski area mgt.) will screw you over whenever they want to.

Like I said, I went and had a good time. I think most who check this site are pretty savy with the available resources to check up to date mountain conditions and forecasts. The unpredictability of mountain weather is not the issue here. I'm sometimes frustrated w/ Crystal's mechanical breakdowns, lip service, and lack of knowledge of their own operations. I'd like to see all the resorts do well, by keeping happy customers. I find myself enjoying the backcountry more, and taking more trips to other resorts.
BC skier- I wish more people would consider " upper mountain closed last three days, 2' of new, and decreasing winds" a "no-go day".

Unfortunately most ski areas seem to be oriented toward generating skier days by offering services appealing to those who want to do things other than skiing rather than creating loyal and devoted return customers by offering superior customer service to the hardcorps who are a minority of their customer base. I think Stevens is pretty bad in this regard in terms of ticket prices, and I will only go there under duress anymore as a result. I must give kudos to the other local areas for honoring passes after the non-season two years ago though. That built a great deal of goodwill in my book.

It's to bad that's the business model to which they subscribe, but we're a captive audience in many ways and they damn well know it!

BC skier- I wish more people would consider " upper mountain closed last three days, 2' of new, and decreasing winds"  a "no-go day".

The morning telemetry at Crystal on 12/15 showed wind gusts to 85 mph overnight. Even if the winds are decreasing, you're unlikely to have great skiing after a night like that.

I skied Crystal on Saturday. It was plenty fun, but not ideal. There was an ice crust a few inches down and a lot of wind effect. My only real complaint was that they didn't mention on their website that the chairs would be running at half speed. The line on REX was huge. On the other hand, Stevens posted clearly on their website that they were running on auxiliary power.