January 3, 2011, Crystal Mountain Gondola Cruise

An exceptional day of glorious sunshine, 100-mile views, moderate temps, very light wind, and no more crowds.

[size=small]180-degree panorama looking west from the upper gondola terminal. (click for triple-size version, 2400 pixels wide)[/size]

For me, at a ski area it's either powder or groomers, not a big fan of bumps -- no thanks! I prefer to carve my turns where I want to, not where previous skiers have sloppily dictated, and to save my knees for future decades. So mostly groomers for me today, a lovely day to cruise 65,000 vert of smooth packed powder. And that's with a bit of time off to take photos and enjoy the sun, could have hit 75K if max vert were the goal for the day.



Took my first-ever Crystal gondola ride to start off the morning at 9am sharp, and didn't expect to ride it much, figuring I would just yo-yo Rex as usual on such days. But the allure of nonstop top-to-bottom runs of 2456 vertical feet soon overtook me, and eventually I was lapping the gondola instead, cruising down Iceberg to Lower Bull Run (aka Upper-Middle-Lower Ferk's). Ended up with 13 rides on the magnificent new machine, plus 21 more on the aging warhorse Rex (which actually ran quite reliably and almost nonstop all day). The gondola however had a number of stoppages throughout the day, there's some issue that a Doppelmayr engineer is working on, involving a fault as the cabin exits the lower terminal -- the lifties were fixing it by tugging on something above the gondola cabin with a long metal pole, couldn't see what it was from inside the cabin. Anyway, it was nice to go a whole day without a single ride on Chinook/Midway, the first time in my 17 seasons skiing Crystal that I could avoid that lift.



Gondola first impressions: it's beautiful, smooth, and quiet. Despite my prior skepticism about its usefulness for skiers (as opposed to tourists), I was surprised to find that I really liked it, enjoyed the ride, and could actually ski from it all day if desired. At other ski areas where I've ridden gondolas (Whistler, Blackcomb, Squaw, and Heavenly come to mind), the gondolas feel much more like an access lift to be used once or twice per day, not a primary lift to ski from all day. So that's all I was expecting at Crystal, but it turned out that the new gondola offers a lot more.



As expected, its capacity is minimal (1/5 that of a high-speed quad), and it doesn't take more than a moment for a 5-minute line to form because the gondola cabins are spaced 1-minute apart. This will not be a very useful option on busy weekends, it will probably have a half-hour line even when Chinook will be under 5 minutes wait. It's also slow compared to most gondolas or high-speed lifts, although that's not noticeable when riding inside it (except by the clock). But the new gondola's max line speed of 800 ft per minute is 20% less than the standard 1000 ft per minute of most such lifts. The reason: lower cost (of course) and also shorter lift stations at top and bottom (there is limited space at both locations). A higher line speed requires a longer lift terminal to allow more distance for the cabins to accelerate onto the moving haul rope. For lapping lots of vert quickly, the "slow" gondola still provides a maximum of 4 runs per hour with no line, roughly 10,000 vert per hour, which is more than you can get on any other lift in Washington State except Rainier Express, where it's easy to exceed 7 runs (over 11,000 vert) per hour.



All in all, the new gondola is a great addition, and makes a big improvement to the Crystal experience on a midweek day. A fair number of tourists on foot were also enjoying the ride and the views, and the KING-5 helicopter circled overhead around noon, so Crystal's marketing hype machine should be quite pleased.

It is a nice ride. It will be nice when they add the additional cars rumored to be in the pipeline which should shorten the lines considerably. Not sure what the timeline is for that.

Also kind of neat to see that familiar terrain from a whole new perspective.

Also kind of neat to see that familiar terrain from a whole new perspective.

:'(

Can't lie, I am stoked to use the Gondola.

We can relive our memories of 'Hotdog'.....or not;)

Great pics, thanks for the nice report. I'll need to wait for cmskier and ddk to weigh in with their feelings before stating my opinion. As a totally unrelated aside : Are we entering the realm of Vertical George and tracking wrist bands ? Is there going to be a chart in the lodge for each contestant ? Instant realtime leader board? How about the cool reflex poles, vests and pins ? I know our passes can track monitored lifts (gates) How about sensors at Campbell Basin Lodge ? Bathroom break tracking ? Hours in the Bull Wheel ? Party on Wayne. Ski Area RFIDs

Thoughts on vertical tracking: I enjoy skiing the best snow I can find, with the best company, and with at least tolerable weather. Smiles, not vert. However, I have an Avocet watch that spits out the daily vert and runs, so, I keep track as a secondary stat to the adrenaline and whoohooo stats. Personally, I enjoyed Jan 3 more for the 33K of bumps we skied than any amount of blasting smooth groomers. I was surprised by a post by Kim Kircher that they don't know how many skiers they get in a day. You'd think any pass reader system worth its salt would know exactly who skied when and how many people went through the gates and how often. Given that, I doubt personal vert and run statistics are in the mix any time soon.

Thoughts on Gondola: It's a nice ride to the top, out of the weather (although monday was beautiful) and great views. Very quick and relaxing. The lift line looks like another story. It won't take many people to make the line wait plus trip up much longer than riding the 2 chairs. I roughly counted 6 seconds per chair for Rex unloading. That equals 40 people per minute, 5 times the current Gondola capacity. I was also very disappointed at the Gondola stopping for buckets being miss-sensed at the base. Hopefully, they can adjust that out of the system. The fact that they had a special tool prepared to fix the issue leads one to believe it might be around for a while. Hoping I didn't waste 89$ to add the Gondola, it looks like a weekday ride at best. You can see from the top of Exterminator if the line rounds the conner of the building but some lift line time indicators around the mountain would be really nice. Much more of a help than the not-quite-working-yet lift open signs. As of now, looks like the Gondola is more of a tourist (17$ per ride) item to make money than a lift for serious skiers. We'll see.....

Kkz