Crystal 11/29 - Cluster, Crowded, Surprisingly Good

Arrived at the mountain before 8am. Up to Guest Services to get my parking pass. Not open. By the time they did open, the line was an hour long. OK, I'll pick it up after skiing. Off to the new bitchin' lodge. What? Primary seating area and food service doesn't open until 10:30 due to an employee shortage. Small coffee shop on the first floor has 6 seats. So, everyone queue'd up outside. The good news is, they had their built-in deck heaters going. It was pleasant due to the mild temps and no wind. Lines on Chinook were massive complicated by lots of starts and stops of the chair even before anyone got to the top. Once skiing, I was nicely surprised by the snow quality, coverage, and grooming. Plus, the mountain was open wall-to-wall with the exception of Northway. And, beautiful bluebird skies. All of the shaded aspects were great with lots of powder stashes. Sunny aspects had a slight crust. I did hit a few rocks, but only because I ventured where I shouldn't have this early in the season. Rex never had much of a line, but FQ was massive by 10:30, plus lots of stops due to issues with people off-loading at the top. GV approached 10 minutes around the same time. There were a lot of people up there and when I left just before 1:30, every lot was full including F-lot.

After skiing, I swung through the new lodge now that it was fully open. Crystal really blew it. The seating capacity is less than half what the old lodge had and no brown bag area. It was so full, I could hardly walk through it and they were directing people over to Rafters so they could sit down and eat their food. It's just not going to work for families coming up on the week-ends. However, it was nice and shiny new. Roads were completely clear and traffic was moving good both directions.