Crystal Mountain Becomes Alterra

[The AD]

The Seattle Times published a story today about ski area upgrades and it includes a photo of the new lodge at Crystal. It's the first time I've seen it, but heard a few people grumbling here about the (lack of) size. I must say it appears quite underwhelming in the photo.

[Shredhead]

Were they restricted from building larger?
Here the ASC is investing heavily in Food and Beverage. Expanding restaurants and upscaling.
The amount of money Cloud 9 makes is obscene.
Much higher margins than the actual product of skiing.

[The AD]

That's a good point. In the age where most skiers have passes, it seems like food and beverage sales would be an obvious place to increase sales.

[californiagrown]

The Seattle Times published a story today about ski area upgrades and it includes a photo of the new lodge at Crystal. It's the first time I've seen it, but heard a few people grumbling here about the (lack of) size. I must say it appears quite underwhelming in the photo.

My (entirely uneducated) guess is that they had to shrink the size of the day lodge to allow for a larger condo/hotel capacity because the sewer system has limited capacity. Since the condo/hotel will be more profitable than extra tables in the day lodge, space was prioritized accordingly.


Is the umbrella still there?

[Fishskisurf]

Or this is being done in phases and the brown lodge (bull wheel/rafters) is next to get dozed and re built

[BaseFloopy]

Oh crap, better leave seattle at 4am to avoid dropped trailers, swarms of attack elk drones and most of the teslas.
Just be sure to have a full tank of gas while waiting for the lots to be plowed by 9am.
(It's like a crustal rendition of Interlodge)

[greenmachine]

I left Kirkland about 6:05. Had to wait for three light changes at the turn at 410- that’s a first . Then followed snake moving fast until just before Alta crystal then everything stopped . Got into the lot about 8:45 . So crystal cost me 45 minutes . By the time o got there they had someone managing traffic flow at the vast of the blvd but it didn’t help.. they had someone at e lot just punching in license plates but not stopping people . Someone later said they saw them stopping people earlier up by the parking lots checking for reservations. I hope that’s not true because it a totally fucking stupid decision ..


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[counterfeitfake]

What the fuck. Left Seattle at 6 and just got my boots on. They were stopping traffic at the bottom of the boulevard for no apparent reason.

[timeo]

On Sat I left SEA at 6:15 and was parked at 9:25. WTF Xtal, get your shit together! The last 4 miles before Blvd was stop and go and took ONE HOUR. They had someone at the turnoff limiting access which caused a 4 mile backup, meanwhile the Blvd was empty (bare and wet) and once on it could cruise up at 50 MPH till the lots. They were scanning plates at F lot and that didn't seem to slow things down much except when they forced a couple cars to go into F lot, guessing they didn't have reservations, then those drivers tried to argue with them holding up everyone else.

Is it just me or does there seem to be like a huge number of beginners on the mountain now compared to prior years, Chinook had a line pretty much the whole day and it was just full of absolute newbies. In line someone asked me if Chinook had any good green runs on it or if they should go to Discovery

[nickwm21]

Have a newborn - so on the sidelines right now….

But…

Not sure what is more comical;

People believing early season pow days won’t be a shitshow on the BLVD…

or….

Crystal for the fifth year in a row, not having a gameplan for the early season BLVD shitshow…


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[counterfeitfake]

Yeah this is a valid question.

I understand that I am part of the traffic. What I don't understand is Crystal stopping traffic for 10 minutes at a stretch, at the bottom of the bare and wet boulevard, and directing everybody into F lot while E lot is empty.

The mountain wasn't crowded! So why was the drive 3.5 hours? How early am I supposed to leave?

[BaseFloopy]

I keep thinking crustal is the test site for some kind of MBA capstone project.

[f=ma]

Yeah this is a valid question.

I understand that I am part of the traffic. What I don't understand is Crystal stopping traffic for 10 minutes at a stretch, at the bottom of the bare and wet boulevard, and directing everybody into F lot while E lot is empty.

The mountain wasn't crowded! So why was the drive 3.5 hours? How early am I supposed to leave?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramp_meter

[PNWbrit]

What I don't understand is Crystal stopping traffic

I don't understand what authority they have to do it.

[californiagrown]

The mountain wasn't crowded! So why was the drive 3.5 hours? How early am I supposed to leave?

How are they supposed to be a destination resort unless it takes a full day to get there?

[S_jenks]

One of the motivators for the traffic stoppage at the base of the blvd was last January during the work week of 2024.

Buncha' morans got their vehicles stuck at the same time, and at one point there were 4 cars jackknifed across the road. No emergency vehicles could get up or down, and they believe it was caused in part by the traffic jam extending all the way up the blvd.

So now its going to become common on big days like weekend powder dumps and around holidays.

[puma]

One of the motivators for the traffic stoppage at the base of the blvd was last January during the work week of 2024.

Buncha' morans got their vehicles stuck at the same time, and at one point there were 4 cars jackknifed across the road. No emergency vehicles could get up or down, and they believe it was caused in part by the traffic jam extending all the way up the blvd.

So now its going to become common on big days like weekend powder dumps and around holidays.

I don't recall the event you mentioned, but makes sense based on what I've seen. I am not sure I see the stop as a bad thing as long as they are constantly parking cars at the top. (If they fail to send enough cars up in time and the parking folks are doing nothing and waiting...would be real bad thing) A trip up the boulevard with no backup and constant momentum seems like a good thing. Obviously there are worse approach roads to resorts and they don't do this, but feels like we have SO many more cars headed up there NOT prepared for challenging conditions.

[BaseFloopy]

If they are constantly parking cars at the top, that just means the group that got held at the bottom was going fast enough to catch up. This might cause a worse wreck if someone encounters a line of stopped cars in the middle of a corner.
Most of the time there are enough "natural breaks" due to slower drivers anyway.
This same stuff happened pre-Alterra and the tow trucks would just show up and yank people out of the ditch. They would be better off just plowing the damn lots on time and then get out of the way instead of trying to idiot proof everything.

[Ørion]

A pause in our regularly scheduled endless parking complaints to kvetch about the food.

Obviously pocket meats are the way to go and all ski area food is overpriced, but the quality seems to have taken an unprecedentedly rapid nose dive this year.

Campbell Basin isn't doing hot food at all mid-week and, when they are, the hot food is all grab-and-go heat lamp stuff. Menu size is greatly reduced and, while the shape changed back to slices, the new pizza slices are still the vaguely pizza-flavored cardboard introduced last season.

Their burger, no fries included now, had a patty thinner than a couple stacked quarters and was so overcooked that you couldn't say well-done anymore and had to say congratulations instead.

Not to mention the glorified hallway at the base is running the same menu.

Haven't tried the sausages from the place that replaced the Cantina but they're still doing the breakfast burrito and even that's suffered. It has this oddly consistent grainy texture like all the ingredients were minced to the same size. Suspiciously quick too, so I assume they went to heat-and-serve.

I know the easy-button answer is corporate greed but the food is so aggressively terrible now that I wonder if there isn't some other reason for this.

[bfree]

But what flavor was the soup?

[PNWbrit]

the easy-button answer is

The Elk.

[Huskier]

So overcooked that you couldn't say well-done anymore and had to say congratulations instead.
.

Stealing this. Great stuff.

I too sampled their sad hamburger offering. There's benign neglect, and then there's contemptuous abandonment. And that's what the food feels like. Like the corporate overlords are upset their hotel fever dream is not manifesting quickly and are taking it out on the menu.

And the soup was a passable salmon chowder.


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[Huskier]

The Elk.

Hush! There is no such establishment. You never saw it, it never existed.

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[BaseFloopy]

you couldn't say well-done anymore and had to say congratulations instead.

Gold.

[Ørion]

Stealing this. Great stuff.

I too sampled their sad hamburger offering. There's benign neglect, and then there's contemptuous abandonment. And that's what the food feels like. Like the corporate overlords are upset their hotel fever dream is not manifesting quickly and are taking it out on the menu.

And the soup was a passable salmon chowder.


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Not that I'm going to relive that culinary terrorism any time soon but, if you don't know, the fresh toppings (tomatoes, lettuce, etc) are stored in a separate deli cooler away from the heat lamps.

I didn't know and just accepted that bare flattened hockey puck between two dish sponges as the new normal but it makes sense in hindsight

I saw so many solitary sad burger wraps on people's trays though, it really does feel like contemptuous abandonment that they didn't have a prominent sign saying so or train their cashiers to mention it to people when they came through.