Power outage at Crystal

Wow did Crystal suck this weekend.

First of all, it snowed a ton this week, but it rained all Thursday and Friday meaning the weekend was a big letdown everywhere. Stevens declared they'd open, then downgraded to 'maybe' status... Now they're closed with no light in sight. Snoqualmie remains closed and Baker lost a lot of base.

Crystal was open, but I'm not sure it should have been. We woke up early and made it to the hill by 9am. There were rocks on the main runs, there was a massive wind storm, and any snow on the hill was hard as ice. If you could find the wind loaded side of certain slopes you could find a few turns, but dodging the rocks was still difficult.

During lunch in the new lodge on the top of the Forest Queen Express the power went out. We dismissed it as 'well, maybe they just haven't figured out how much power they need to run this new place', but it was worse. On our next run, halfway up the lift the power went out for the lift. After sitting up there for 10 mins a patroller came by to each chair explaining that things would be down for a bit but should be up in 10 more mins... 30 minutes later we hadn't moved. Given we were in a wind storm it was actually pretty cold. After a few more minutes the lift started moving and we were able to get out.

In short when we got to the bottom of the hill we noticed all the power for Crystal was out (wind knocked some trees over some power lines etc...). We got some coupons for $20 off our next lift ticket, and headed out of there. On the way back home I saw a road block with wires down on the road. Further on I saw a light explode with the sparks carrying across the street in the wind which was kinda interesting.

Anyhow, I won't be skiing until after Christmas, so hopefully we have better snow by then.