Crystal chair Cluster @#*# 12/10/10

Joe, nice to share the first chair of the day with you and get the story about your shoulder.  The afternoon was quite the cluster after 6 went down.  It had all the makings of a great Crystal day up to that point.

Didn't bring the skins (last time ever) so a few of us ended up booting up the throne and heading out south which was sweet.  Weirdly though some guy let the 5 of us take turns breaking trail up to the Throne saddle; clamly waiting for each of us to pull back into the freshly set steps in from of him.  He then zipped past us as we were clicking into our skis and gasping for air.  I wasn't too surprised at that move, us being in-area and all, but the girls I was with were super-unimpressed.

Well,
At least you have a shiney new fantastically exciting gondola to look at there at Crustal while you wait for the lift to be fixed, and you don't have to deal with the likes of chair-2 at Alpental! I hear it can ROLLBACK!
BillyTheMountain

Joe and company,

I agree that lifts should be more reliable that they seem to be at Crystal, and if not the area should offer some comps for the mishaps. HOWEVER, I had the good graces of being one of the 30 or so folks that headed out into southback today, ripped the King, booted back up it, ripped it again, and again, and again.

My companions and I were stoked and felt it's not often you can say you slayed half the tracks down the face of the King when the lifts are "running". Needless to say, but I can't help myself from gloating here, it was damn nice to have A-Basin and the King all to ourselves today! BTW, only myself, my buddy Mitch, and a tele-skier named Ben were willing to put in the effort...well worth it!

Hope they fix the head gaskets, cooling systems, electrical circuits, and other bugs soon. Cheers and powder wishes...we'll need the best we have to weather this Pineapple...

Agreed. Is Crystal getting what it paid for in lift maintenance and gondie construction (note the cracked gondola).

We got untracked up top bright and early early too, but decided to do a Top to Bottom, and this season that is playing roulette on Chinook. It usually breaks down around 11-11:30 daily, but yesterday and today it was down by 10am. That need to to be fixed!

Side note: a good share of frequent flier skiers went down Right Angle trees, did not cross any ropes of closed signs. But waiting at the bottom was the patrol. They busted them for skiing a closed area, even though they said they did not cross any ropes or signs. I do believe the skiers because there was about 15 of them who do not want to lose their season passes. The young patrol said that it was impossible to not see the closures because he marked them. Uhm...not sure he know the mountain well enough to make that claim. One of the patrol at the top of the mountain said the Right Angle was open before they went down. Sound like it is a little fishy to me. The patrol needs to get on the same page and if it is closed rope it off. Crossing a rope is the definitive way to know you are by a closed area.

I am new to TAY. I was in the pack of 15 that got spoken to. I have the whole thing on POV from where we came down From Right-Angle. No signs or Ropes of any Closures. Really irritated that we had to give our information out to verify that we have not been spoken to before. They should have been more prepared. Thanks!

I am new to TAY. I was in the pack of 15 that got spoken to. I have the whole thing on POV from where we came down From Right-Angle. No signs or Ropes of any Closures. Really irritated that we had to give our information out to verify that we have not been spoken to before. They should have been more prepared.  Thanks!

I did send a letter to the ski patrol about the incident. And requested further info so I would not get the same treatment that you guys got. They contacted me and said that warnings were given, but nothing beyond that. If you have that on POV even a warning is not merited IMO.

FYI Return letter from patrol about my inquiry to the clarification of closure of Rt Angle trees.
Hi Joe,

I wouldn't worry too much about this situation if I were you. There weren't any passes pulled that day; just took names and gave "warnings".

We want our guests to be savvy about our closures and not try to weasel around the rules with "oh, the disks were spun around backwards so I couldn't see what they said" or "part of the ropeline was in a snowdrift so I thought it was OK to cross over it". In otherwords, it's probably safer to interpret "grey areas" as a closure. That said, early season when it's snowing and we're putting up one side of a closure line while we're taking down the other side, there's legitimate room for confusion and it's unlikely we'll pull passes from cooperative guests who are trying to comply with the intent of our closures and hazard markings.

I don't know if you read Kim's blog post, but we're kind of like the highway department: Sometimes there's just a stop sign, sometimes there's a blinking light, sometimes there's both, but they all mean STOP. Sometimes we have just a ropeline, sometimes we have just CLOSED disks, sometimes we have both, but they all mean CLOSED.

All the design is done for a kiosk we hope will get placed at gate 7 next summer. It'll indicate if gates 8, 9, 10 are open, and upper and lower Right Angle, Left Angle, & Employee Housing. Hopefully that'll keep well-intentioned folks like you from ending up in a place we mean to have closed!


I also, sent a separate letter to Guest Services about the chairs, but did not hear back on that one.
I'm not one to gripe about Crystal, but I was getting fed up with the chairs constant failure to operate consistently.