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Crank

Making fresh tracks
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Back in the late '70's- early 80's you had to buy a ticket for Snow Summit in Big Bear, CA at a Ticketmaster by Thursday evening if you wanted to ski on Saturday. They limited ticket sales. I remember more than one time trying to buy or sell an extra ticket in the parking lot.

Limiting ticket sales made for a much better skiing experience than other regional ski hills.
 

crgildart

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Back in the late '70's- early 80's you had to buy a ticket for Snow Summit in Big Bear, CA at a Ticketmaster by Thursday evening if you wanted to ski on Saturday. They limited ticket sales. I remember more than one time trying to buy or sell an extra ticket in the parking lot.

Limiting ticket sales made for a much better skiing experience than other regional ski hills.
Back in the 70s at Buck Hill the tickets were sold at little hut you drove through entering the parking lot. When busy, cars were backed up for almost a mile up the access road. Employees had a separate entrance they could use to access parking.
 

markojp

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So have the crowds in WA redistributed and somewhere else ,(Stevens?) is significantly down? Otherwise given we've established none of the ski hills are material destination areas you're basically talking about the skier base of the area having increased. It's a local population problem not an Ikon problem and is the reason the biggest whines about megapasses come from places like A Basin and Deer Valley and not places like Big Sky and Sun Valley.

Ikon and Epic have simply accelerated the population/economic reality of the region. But make no mistake, it is resulting in very real growing pains that will not be quickly resolved.
 

Eleeski

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We hate anything new and popular. Scooters, vaping, VRBO and Ikon passes are the scapegoats du jour. To blame crowds (on the historically crowded times) on Ikon might be absurd but the blame is certainly assigned.

If the problem is really parking, solutions like bussing in from remote locations make sense. Paid parking, while unpopular and kind of mean spirited, makes sense - especially if the profits go to more parking infrastructure. I don't know if public transportation can work (or pay off) in the USA but certainly worth considering (Elon Musk tunnel subway?).

The lift line problems have been mostly solved by conversion to high speed six packs at Squaw (still a problem when 10,000 people show up for opening bell on a stormy powder day with 3 lifts able to open - but those are isolated events -- good events!). More uphill lift capacity is a straightforward response to chronic overcrowding of the lifts.

I hope the day ticket blackout is a temporary emergency activity. It is a horrible strategy for the long term health of the sport.

Eric
 

fatbob

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Paid parking isn't actually a solution - it's just a way of kicking the can down the road a bit while "taxing" the customers a bit more. It'd be better long term to "educate" customers out of the driving habit entirely by banning or severely restricting parking on site at weekends. Wanna drive up and drop off your tribe? Sure, but you're back down the highway to the remote lot to park so dad is on the slopes later. Carpool 4+ maybe works but it massively discriminates in favour of families v everyone else

Now that means investing heavily in buses (including maybe kids or families only) and a very frequent schedule, and at a risk if you are first mover in an area that'll pee off your customer base. But if you've been to places like Zion in summer you see how it ends up being so much better.
 

Posaune

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There are zero failed ski resorts near Seattle. Only one near Mt. Baker, which is still independent.
? Mt. Baker is far from failed. I skied there yesterday. But there are two failed ski areas near Seattle: Mt. Pilchuck, and Yodlin. However, they shut down more than 30 years ago. Yodlin shut down because of financial problems due to an avalanche that destroyed some buildings and killed people, not from crowd failures.
 

Itinerant skier

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I hope the day ticket blackout is a temporary emergency activity. It is a horrible strategy for the long term health of the sport.......

This I agree with, and it exacerbates a problem that's very much caused by IKON and EPIC. Total increases in skier days but likely decreased numbers of people joining the sport for the first time. Learning to ski is often a spur of the moment weekend decision. Telling these folks to bug off is hugely damaging to their future clientele.

The puget sound area was booming well before IKON and Crystal had nearly empty weekdays and mildly crowded weekends. At times it seems like every other person on the mountain is an Amazon employee. The crowding can't be simply chalked up to population growth.

Multiple buses from locations around the region at a very low fare should be started immediately, to at least offer a legitimate alternative to driving and parking. A big cost for the mountain? Absolutely, but an investment that needs to be made.
 

Other Aaron

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markojp

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? Mt. Baker is far from failed. I skied there yesterday. But there are two failed ski areas near Seattle: Mt. Pilchuck, and Yodlin. However, they shut down more than 30 years ago. Yodlin shut down because of financial problems due to an avalanche that destroyed some buildings and killed people, not from crowd failures.

Mt. Pilchuk.... is what I was referring to. I said "near Mt. Baker". Yodlin as well, but not for lack of traffic. Permanent avy hazard base area, that one. Great place for taking people for their first ski touring outing though.
 
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Posaune

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Bonus points on Yodlin if someone can tell me what happened to their chair lift after they closed.
OK, I'll answer it. The Yodlin Chair became the first iteration of the Tye-Mill chair at Stevens. They put in the foundations for Tye-Mill and then used sky cranes to fly the towers from down at Yodlin up to their spots at Stevens. That was a fixed double and it was replaced later with the triple that's there now.
 

markojp

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oldschoolskier

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Good position to be in, unfortunately it may drive the occasional skier that later converts to a season pass holder, to forego this resort altogether.

In short, short term solution to a long term loss.
 

Scruffy

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The Independent mountains should start marketing themselves as the "less crowed, less hassle " places and take advantage of this mega pass glut.
 

David Chaus

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I think Pilchuck was the first ski area victim of climate change. They were no longer able to operate reliably due to low elevation (the parking was at 3000’ but a lower lift went down to 2500’. None of which presented a problem when they originally opened.

They were trying to do a state land-for-national forest land swap to gain some needed terrain, but it was determined that the wouldn’t make it more viable.

FWIW my dad was head of ski patrol at Pilchuck for a few years.
 

Nathanvg

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Is it just me or is there a simpler short-term solution for busy parking lots on prime weekends. You don't see it much anymore but parking for major sporting events used to be "blocked in." E.g. no gaps between cars which allows for more than double the number of parked cars. You wouldn't have to make every lot like that but on busy weekends, just make half the lots that way and you'll get about 40% more cars parked. Yes, that means you can't count on leaving before last lift, but in practice, you typically can. Sure beats getting turned away. You could even coordinate different lots to different leaving times (e.g. lot A requires you to leave by 2, lot B by 3, etc.)
 

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