Ski Patrol Phone Number

A friend mentioned some ski safety tips to me, and one was something I hadn't though of before:

Carry and cell phone and have the ski patrol's number on speed dial on your phone.

She mentioned that the ski patrol number for Crystal is 360-663-3060, anyone know what the phone numbers are for ski patrol at other areas?

I usually ski at Alpental, but I couldn't find the ski patrol phone number anywhere, anyone know what that number is?

Just curious, what's the point of having that number on speed dial? Would you call them instead of 911 in case of an emergency?

Yes.

I don't want to get some 911 dispatcher in Tacoma or Bellevue when I call in an inccident that ski patrol is ulitimately going to have to respond to.

This situation that my friend explained to me involved someone skiing at Crystal who was involved in a serious accident on the slopes. I don't know the details other than the fact that the person involved in the accident had Crystal's emergency only ski patrol phone number on speed dial, and that saved a lot of time in getting the first responders (ski patrol) to the accident scene.

If you were to dial 911 in this scenario, who knows how many times you would need to be transferred before you were put on the line with someone who would be able to help you or would understand where you are on the mountain. And would the 911 dispatchers even know how to contact ski patrol on the given mountain in this scenario?

PNWBrit's absolutely spot on.
There was a recent incident at Crystal where a party got lost and called 911.
It took hours for 911 ops to finally figure out that they should call Crystal Patrol number or something like that.
If they had had Crystal Patrol number it wold have saved them and patrol much difficulty.

See Crystal Blog for details.
I have patrol number on speed dial and have used it numerous times to call patrol when I came across an injured skier on a run.

Yup yup. See this excellent post in another thread, linking to the same blog that Scotty mentions:

www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...34.msg66047#msg66047