Crystal discontinues walk-up weekend/holiday tix

Bouncing this over from the TAY FB page:

www.crystalmountainresort.com/the-mounta...-blog/an-open-letter

That's quite a change.

This is painful. I haven't gotten a season pass up there for many years because I flit around and don't ski that may lift days. I'm typically a last-minute decision maker about ski days.

I wonder what affect this will have on backcountry skiing around Crystal Mountain.

How long until Baker or other areas have to implement something like this?

Found out this morning that Founders Club tickets are not affected by the new policy. Because members of the club activate their tickets before the ski season (at a discount) they are apparently considered pre-sold. A thank-you to my long-departed Dad for investing in Crystal Mountain back in the 1950s.

The need for this new policy is still painful.

I guess you could look at it as the good news and the bad news
the good news is it could have been worse, the bad news is what's next.
I guess this is why due to the population density of western Washington
the west side sucks.

I believe the first time Baker ever had to turn around traffic due to overcrowding was Presidents Day 2018.   It's already happened I believe twice this year.    Baker has pursued a different approach than most ski areas in that passes are expensive and day tickets are cheap ($65).   It's had the desired effect with day ticket holders significantly outnumbering pass holders on the weekends.  Casual chairlift conversation suggests that many of the people come from the Central Sound.   This trend has definitely picked up over the years.

I imagine the closure of Crystal to day pass users will increase this traffic even more.  Maybe most will choose Snoqualmie but even a couple hundred more heading north will create a noticeable impact.    Right now if you leave Bellingham by 6:30 it's a casual 1.5 hrs to Baker.  So three hours from Seattle might not sound so horrible if your sitting in traffic for five on the way to the Stevens or Crystal.  That said leave at 7:30 and you'll hit grid lock on the final five miles.   Already this season I've noticed a strong uptick in early birds with the parking lot filling up sooner and sooner.

My guess is Baker won't do anything soon.  They don't seem to have the infrastructure or desire to do something like create advanced ticket sales.   They certainly aren't going to limit how many they sell!   Maybe we'll finally see a more reasonable balance between day pass and season pass prices next year.   

The intractable parking situation up there seems near impossible to solve with so many stakeholders involved.  My understanding is that Baker would love to charge users of the upper lot they maintain but legal and implementation issues prevent them from doing so. 

Personally this is probably the last year I buy I pass there.  The mountain is just way to crowded.    Thinking I'll just get our lift skiing in on longer trips to more remote (non-Epic/Ikon) mountains with maybe some scattered days here and there locally.   As far as BC goes it's now always the alpine start along with a strong motivation to go far beyond Bagely Basin.

More people in Seattle should be skiing at Baker rather than Stevens or Crystal. From where I live in Tacoma if I drove to Crystal without crowds on dry road it is 1.5 hours. But on weekends, I now must leave at 5:30 am and then its a 2+ hour drive. If I lived in Seattle, I would need to leave even earlier than 5:30 am. So if you live in Seattle, it is a shorter drive to Baker than Crystal, at least on weekends. I used to think that White Pass was too far from Tacoma for regular day trips but now my drive to White Pass is essentially equal to my drive to Crystal (on weekends at least). If you want to live in a city and lift ski weekends in Washington you should be moving to Wenatchee or Spokane. Bellingham to Olympia is at full capacity for lift skiing on weekends, and that aint changing in any of our life times.