Category Archives: Closures

February 18th Tour of Crystal

By Christina on February 3rd, 2012 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures, Conditions, Employment, Events and Activities, Place Names, Safety Patrol/Speed Control

I’m really excited about all the feedback from the last blog post about skiing with a patroller and learning the ins-and-outs of Crystal. Kim and I will go through all the input and come up with a way to go over all your questions on Saturday February 18th. We’ll meet by the Easy Searcher on the South side… Continue Reading

Tour of Crystal through Patrol Eyes

By Christina on January 30th, 2012 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures, Conditions, Employment, News, Place Names, Safety Patrol/Speed Control

Who here would be interested in taking under an hour to ski with a patroller and go through some of the ins-and-outs of Crystal? We would like to offer a chance to ski with a patroller to our locals (you), in hopes to answer any questions you may have, share avalanche conditions, and ski some secrete… Continue Reading

Weather, Wind Hold, Road Closures and other Catastrophes

By Kim Kircher on January 20th, 2012 Posted in Closures, Conditions

With an active weather pattern this week, we’ve been busy with avalanche control. On Wednesday we planned to open the upper mountain predicting that the winds would be kind to us. Not so. We ended up with a big crowd skiing only the lower half of the mountain, where the temperature rose and turned Tuesday’s… Continue Reading

Free Avalanche Awareness Class

By Christina on January 14th, 2012 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures, Conditions, Place Names, Weather

Check it out: Free Avi Course This is a great night of good people, some snacks, and a chance to gain the inside scoop into the avalanche conditions around Crystal. It is also a great time to get all your questions answered by patrol. It starts at 7pm in the Chapel and goes however late… Continue Reading

Employee Housing: New Slide Path, Old Ropeline

By Kim Kircher on December 6th, 2011 Posted in Closures, Place Names

Last season a large avalanche ripped out a new slide path just south of Niagras in Employee Housing. Shown below with the new slide path, this area has always been known as Employee Housing, but had filled in with trees in the past few decades. Much of this area had been reclaimed through limbing. While… Continue Reading

A Little More about Closed Areas and the New Skier Safety Law

By Kim Kircher on December 3rd, 2011 Posted in Closures, Safety Patrol/Speed Control

In response to a recent flurry of questions regarding the new Skier Safety Law currently in effect, I thought I’d go over a few basics. At Crystal, like many ski areas, we use ropelines to delineate areas we don’t want you to ski. We currently have a ropeline across the lower part of Mel’s Madness… Continue Reading

Early Season CLOSED Areas

By Corey on December 2nd, 2011 Posted in Closures

The sun is out and the skiing’s GREAT! I hope you aren’t missing it! Brent, our Assistant Director, got an e-mail from Andre asking for clarification about how we indicate CLOSED areas in light of the new law authorizing $1,000 penalty for violating ski area closures. In the ski & snowboard biz, CLOSED is designated by: Rope… Continue Reading

Crystal Mountain Opening Tomorrow

By Kim Kircher on November 17th, 2011 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures, Conditions, Events and Activities, News

It’s finally here. The 2011-2012 Crystal Mountain Ski Season will commence tomorrow, Friday November 18th. We are starting with a limited opening, then hopefully adding more terrain over the weekend. Tomorrow the Gondola and Green Valley will be running for skiing in Green Valley only. Be sure to bring your rock skis and get ready… Continue Reading

Fingers Crossed for an Opening Friday

By Kim Kircher on November 15th, 2011 Posted in Closures, Conditions, Events and Activities, News, Weather

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch starting tomorrow morning. Right now, the NWS is predicting a few FEET of snow to fall at Crystal Mountain by Thursday night. If that forecast materializes, Crystal will open Friday November 18th. And what a great opening day it will be. We currently have a… Continue Reading

Re: Taking Responsibility…

By Corey on March 16th, 2011 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures

I started to write this as a comment in response to the other comments responding to Kim’s recent post about the guy who wouldn’t cough of the dough to reimburse Crystal for his after-hours, out-of-area rescue. But then I thought it would be better to post as it’s own entry, hoping more folks might see… Continue Reading

Get Your Jib Park On

By Christina on March 11th, 2011 Posted in Closures, Terrain Park & 1/2-Pipe

A dear sweet goodbye to the old Mr. Magoo run, and welcome to a younger more active model- the Jib Park. For all of you that loved skiing the rolling run of Magoo things have changed; skis are fatter, clothes are brighter (almost back to 80′s neon’s), and there are features all over Magoo. On snowy days… Continue Reading

Take Responsibility For Your Actions

By Kim Kircher on March 8th, 2011 Posted in Closures

On Monday March 7th at 4pm, after six long days of searching for our missing skier, we tired patrollers were looking forward to some much needed rest. We received a cell phone call from a skier lost somewhere in the Mt. Rainier National Park towards Hwy 410. Patrollers were dispatched to search the boundary for… Continue Reading

What?! This is a CLOSED AREA? and Other Bad Questions

By Kim Kircher on November 26th, 2010 Posted in Closures

We still have many closed areas, including Exterminator, Bull Run and Kelly’s Gap, not to mention Bear Pits, Brand X, etc, etc. We are trying to get as much terrain open as possible. However, Lower Exterminator and Kelly’s Gap will remain closed while the Gondola construction crew completes the cable splice.

FAIR WARNING

By Corey on April 4th, 2010 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read Kim’s previous entries CLOSURE POACHING on March 30th and RESPONSE TO COMMENTS ABOUT CLOSURES on April 1st, but if you haven’t, this will make more sense if you take a moment to do so now. (dum-dee-dum-dee-dum) After repeated unfortunate encounters with guests not exercising common sense, we’ve… Continue Reading

Response to Comments about Closures

By Kim Kircher on April 1st, 2010 Posted in Closures

Thanks to all who have commented on Closures at Crystal. We welcome this kind of dialogue, and your suggestions give us an idea of the vibe out there. Let me just add a few things here: Ropelines: We use rope to mark hazards, close terrain, and delineate our boundary. Think of them as stripes on… Continue Reading

Closure Poaching

By Kim Kircher on March 30th, 2010 Posted in Closures

Monday was a great powder day. Over a foot of snow fell overnight, and the wind and new snow kept filling in old tracks making the skiing great all day. It was the kind of day that true powder hounds love–the upper mountain is constantly in jeopardy of going on wind hold, skiers wear neck… Continue Reading

Ski Industry Myth of Early Closure

By Kim Kircher on March 9th, 2010 Posted in Closures

I don’t want to steal Corey’s thunder here (he mentioned that he soon wanted to address ski industry myths) so I will be brief. Crystal Mt. isn’t the only area that come closing time the customers simply shrug and say too bad the Forest Service won’t let them operate anymore. That myth is industry-wide. We usually… Continue Reading

Hiking Into Avalanche Terrain

By Corey on March 2nd, 2010 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures

“Turns-All-Year” website has a recent thread regarding hiking into “closed” terrain and avalanche runout zones within/nearby ski areas. This is especially timely in light of last Sunday night’s avalanche rescue, where we had to cross avalanche starting zones to get to the injured skier.

Avalanche Basin Boundary Line Now Longer!

By Corey on February 17th, 2010 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures, Place Names

More and more people seem to have taken up the sport of hiking uphill into the runout zones of avalanche paths in A-Basin, when we have it closed. I dunno, maybe they caught Olympic fever this week and wanna get a jump on it being a 2014 demonstration sport. In any case, ya’ gotta admire their willingness… Continue Reading

Southback Planned to Open! + Low A-Basin Gate

By Corey on November 20th, 2009 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures

The plan is to get Southback open this weekend. More about the low A-Basin gate…

Whatever Happened to K2 Face

By Corey on April 8th, 2009 Posted in Closures, Place Names

Actually, the K2 Face gate isn’t too high. It’s just not there. In fact, K2 Face isn’t there! Poof–Whole thing–just gone! Look at your Trail Map. It vanished!

Terrain Opening Sequence

By Corey on March 31st, 2009 Posted in Avalanche Hazard, Closures

It’s not uncommon for us to stagger the opening of Crystal’s “Most Difficult” (Black Diamond) and “Experts Only” (Double Diamond) terrain…

Wind speed and Direction

By Kim Kircher on March 14th, 2009 Posted in Closures

In answer to some questions about wind speeds and directions that close chairs, here’s what I can tell you…

Northway Open Later

By Corey on March 12th, 2009 Posted in Closures

Now that Daylight Savings has smacked us in the patootie, we are trying–WHEN FEASIBLE–to keep Northway terrain open until the last chair loads at 3:30pm. At about 3:15 we’re flipping gates 1-7 to say "Northway Lift Closed–No Shuttle–Return to Base via I-5". Guests are free to ski back to the base area or to make… Continue Reading