January 3, 2011, Crystal Mountain Gondola Cruise

An exceptional day of glorious sunshine, 100-mile views, moderate temps, very light wind, and no more crowds.

[size=small]180-degree panorama looking west from the upper gondola terminal. (click for triple-size version, 2400 pixels wide)[/size]

For me, at a ski area it's either powder or groomers, not a big fan of bumps -- no thanks! I prefer to carve my turns where I want to, not where previous skiers have sloppily dictated, and to save my knees for future decades. So mostly groomers for me today, a lovely day to cruise 65,000 vert of smooth packed powder. And that's with a bit of time off to take photos and enjoy the sun, could have hit 75K if max vert were the goal for the day.



Took my first-ever Crystal gondola ride to start off the morning at 9am sharp, and didn't expect to ride it much, figuring I would just yo-yo Rex as usual on such days. But the allure of nonstop top-to-bottom runs of 2456 vertical feet soon overtook me, and eventually I was lapping the gondola instead, cruising down Iceberg to Lower Bull Run (aka Upper-Middle-Lower Ferk's). Ended up with 13 rides on the magnificent new machine, plus 21 more on the aging warhorse Rex (which actually ran quite reliably and almost nonstop all day). The gondola however had a number of stoppages throughout the day, there's some issue that a Doppelmayr engineer is working on, involving a fault as the cabin exits the lower terminal -- the lifties were fixing it by tugging on something above the gondola cabin with a long metal pole, couldn't see what it was from inside the cabin. Anyway, it was nice to go a whole day without a single ride on Chinook/Midway, the first time in my 17 seasons skiing Crystal that I could avoid that lift.



Gondola first impressions: it's beautiful, smooth, and quiet. Despite my prior skepticism about its usefulness for skiers (as opposed to tourists), I was surprised to find that I really liked it, enjoyed the ride, and could actually ski from it all day if desired. At other ski areas where I've ridden gondolas (Whistler, Blackcomb, Squaw, and Heavenly come to mind), the gondolas feel much more like an access lift to be used once or twice per day, not a primary lift to ski from all day. So that's all I was expecting at Crystal, but it turned out that the new gondola offers a lot more.



As expected, its capacity is minimal (1/5 that of a high-speed quad), and it doesn't take more than a moment for a 5-minute line to form because the gondola cabins are spaced 1-minute apart. This will not be a very useful option on busy weekends, it will probably have a half-hour line even when Chinook will be under 5 minutes wait. It's also slow compared to most gondolas or high-speed lifts, although that's not noticeable when riding inside it (except by the clock). But the new gondola's max line speed of 800 ft per minute is 20% less than the standard 1000 ft per minute of most such lifts. The reason: lower cost (of course) and also shorter lift stations at top and bottom (there is limited space at both locations). A higher line speed requires a longer lift terminal to allow more distance for the cabins to accelerate onto the moving haul rope. For lapping lots of vert quickly, the "slow" gondola still provides a maximum of 4 runs per hour with no line, roughly 10,000 vert per hour, which is more than you can get on any other lift in Washington State except Rainier Express, where it's easy to exceed 7 runs (over 11,000 vert) per hour.



All in all, the new gondola is a great addition, and makes a big improvement to the Crystal experience on a midweek day. A fair number of tourists on foot were also enjoying the ride and the views, and the KING-5 helicopter circled overhead around noon, so Crystal's marketing hype machine should be quite pleased.

It is a nice ride. It will be nice when they add the additional cars rumored to be in the pipeline which should shorten the lines considerably. Not sure what the timeline is for that.

Also kind of neat to see that familiar terrain from a whole new perspective.

Also kind of neat to see that familiar terrain from a whole new perspective.

:'(

Can't lie, I am stoked to use the Gondola.

We can relive our memories of 'Hotdog'.....or not;)

Great pics, thanks for the nice report. I'll need to wait for cmskier and ddk to weigh in with their feelings before stating my opinion. As a totally unrelated aside : Are we entering the realm of Vertical George and tracking wrist bands ? Is there going to be a chart in the lodge for each contestant ? Instant realtime leader board? How about the cool reflex poles, vests and pins ? I know our passes can track monitored lifts (gates) How about sensors at Campbell Basin Lodge ? Bathroom break tracking ? Hours in the Bull Wheel ? Party on Wayne. Ski Area RFIDs

Thoughts on vertical tracking: I enjoy skiing the best snow I can find, with the best company, and with at least tolerable weather. Smiles, not vert. However, I have an Avocet watch that spits out the daily vert and runs, so, I keep track as a secondary stat to the adrenaline and whoohooo stats. Personally, I enjoyed Jan 3 more for the 33K of bumps we skied than any amount of blasting smooth groomers. I was surprised by a post by Kim Kircher that they don't know how many skiers they get in a day. You'd think any pass reader system worth its salt would know exactly who skied when and how many people went through the gates and how often. Given that, I doubt personal vert and run statistics are in the mix any time soon.

Thoughts on Gondola: It's a nice ride to the top, out of the weather (although monday was beautiful) and great views. Very quick and relaxing. The lift line looks like another story. It won't take many people to make the line wait plus trip up much longer than riding the 2 chairs. I roughly counted 6 seconds per chair for Rex unloading. That equals 40 people per minute, 5 times the current Gondola capacity. I was also very disappointed at the Gondola stopping for buckets being miss-sensed at the base. Hopefully, they can adjust that out of the system. The fact that they had a special tool prepared to fix the issue leads one to believe it might be around for a while. Hoping I didn't waste 89$ to add the Gondola, it looks like a weekday ride at best. You can see from the top of Exterminator if the line rounds the conner of the building but some lift line time indicators around the mountain would be really nice. Much more of a help than the not-quite-working-yet lift open signs. As of now, looks like the Gondola is more of a tourist (17$ per ride) item to make money than a lift for serious skiers. We'll see.....

Kkz

We can relive our memories of 'Hotdog'.....or not;)

They're way too far apart.

Gotta say the report of the 65k day sounds pretty big Amar…kinda like the 22” trout I caught the other day…Gondy’s very nice ride, but can get plugged up pretty fast from what I’ve noticed with the limited number of buckets at this time…and as noted the shorter load/unload areas…thanks Amar for that insight…I was wondering why it seemed so hard to load the buckets the first day, but the process seemed a little smoother on Monday – but still a rush. But, I got poked cause of Amar’s report for my relatively tame hamster big day on REX, seems like sometime in the last year or two on a perfect sunny, somewhat firm (for the deep pow crowd), groomed to perfection, nobody on the mountain kinda day, I clocked for me what some folks thought was highly suspect, couldnt find the number, but it seemed kinda big for me at the time. So when I read Amar’s claim of only 13 Gondy rides and 21 REX runs….hhhmmmm…(21 REX runs seems big by itself), even on this last Monday which was a pretty nice day of no lift lines. I only managed 36k, but that included only 2 Gondy rides, 2 Exterminator runs, 5 PB/BP runs and numerous front side of REX runs in the little bumps. Gondy is nice, Gondy will be nice on weekdays, Gondy will be better when fully bucketed out. Gondy is nice to suck a few folks into standing in line on weekends, Gondy is good for Crystal bottom line, I’m lookin forward to riding it this June after Whistler closes.

Mt. Bachelor uses their RFID to track your entire day on the mountain. Here's a look at what you get through their tracking.

track.mtbachelor.com/tytticket.asp?passm...urrentday=01/01/2011

I was totally surprised that my lap times are so consistent (within a minute of 25 minutes each run).

In my defense it was a pretty casual trip that included lots of drinking

Great pics, thanks for the nice report. . . As a totally unrelated aside : Are we entering the realm of Vertical George and tracking wrist bands ? Is there going to be a chart in the lodge for each contestant ? Instant realtime leader board? How about the cool reflex poles, vests and pins ? [/url]

Wow, what a blast from the past! I remember Club Vertical quite fondly from my first season in the Northwest (1994-95), after moving from the East Coast. I thought it was the greatest thing ever in lift-served skiing, giving away free gear just for skiing lots of vertical?? What an amazing concept!! I was sad when they gutted the program in 1995-96 and then discontinued it entirely a couple of years later. 

I still have the free Reflex Aero poles I won, and I've used them every single lift-served ski day for the last 16 years, still going strong! Used the free Smith ski goggles for many seasons (they eventually broke), and still have the nice Club-Vertical-logo Roffe vest too, along with the pins and the plaque. Best of all, most of my ski days were midweek, when prices were only $18 (Mon-Tue) and $20 (Wed-Fri). So I barely paid $250 for my 14 days of skiing (1 day was free) and then got over $200 in free gear (goggles, poles, vest for reaching 350K, 500K, and 750K vert), plus lots of coupons for free sodas and whatnot. Quite the deal for a physics grad student, struggling to live and ski on a teaching assistant's salary of $1006 per month before taxes. But no wonder Crystal had to cancel the program, with poor economics like that acting against it.

And Vertical George with his crazy fat skis! (It was 1994, my skis were still 64mm underfoot GS racing skis, and most everyone else's were that width too.) What a character, rode the lift a number of times with him. Heard that he once managed 58 rides on Rex in a day (over 92,000 vert), on one of the spring days when they stayed open until 5pm -- can anyone confirm that number?

My personal best was 50 Rex (+ 1 Midway) for 80,050 vert, which I've still never matched. Lots of days over 75K since then, but never quite 80K. One of these days, I'll go someplace with a nice high-speed quad and night-skiing, and try for well over 100K in 12-13 hours.

Here's my final Club Vertical statement from that season:

Mt. Bachelor uses their RFID to track your entire day on the mountain.

I like Mt Bachelor and its vert tracking system a lot (obviously), it's too bad I only manage to ski there once every few years. Although it used to suck when they had the lift tickets on a bungee cord around your neck, you had to insert the ticket in the reader at the lift corral, and then it would spring back and snap you in the face -- RFID is much better!

However, I have an Avocet watch that spits out the daily vert and runs, so, I keep track as a secondary stat to the adrenaline and whoohooo stats.

I love my Avocet watch dearly, it's still going strong for over 16 years since I bought it on clearance at LL Bean for $68! And it looks brand new again now, since I sent it in to Avocet a couple summers ago and got the entire case replaced for $30. It's still quite accurate, but it always counts a few percent too much vertical. And all altimeter watches used for counting ski vertical have the same issue.

The reason is that there's a dynamic pressure caused by one's speed moving through the air, which increases as velocity squared. This effect causes an extra pressure equivalent to about 30 extra feet of vert per run at 30 mph, with 55 extra feet at 40 mph and 85 extra feet at 50 mph. So this error typically adds an extra 3-6% of false vertical to the day's total, with more error if you're skiing faster or riding lifts with less vertical per run. It's something to be aware of if using the Avocet's total for bragging rights, since 50K on the watch is really only 47-48K of true vert. For accurate counting, the only way is to count the runs on each lift and then multiply by the correct vertical for each lift, if you can find the numbers (only certain enlightened ski areas list the vert for each of their lifts, other lame ski areas don't). Or have the ski area count it for you via RFID!

Amar,

Don't talk too loudly or you might ruin this guy's day

He made two million vertical feet of back country runs in a single year (just completed his goal a few days ago).

www.greghill.ca/pages/the-2-mill-day/

Looks like he tracked it all on his watch. Hopefully he had some kind of super accurate altimeter watch.

I stand corrected....for my part...impressive...

Those were the days. Went night skiing March 7, 1996 with my daughter and her friend. Total cost of lift tickets were $29.97. It was KISW's promotion night. $9.99 per ticket. ;D


Total vertical feet for the 95-96 season was 815,550 v/ft.

Club Vertical. Blast from the past.

We used Club Vert to get the 5$ discount on a day ticket and usually only hit the counter about half the time, tracking vertical on the Avocet.

Amar, I agree the only was to accurately total vertical is using the lift stats.  I don't think, however, that dynamic pressure is increasing the Avocet's vertical reading.  Full dynamic pressure would only be an issue if you wear the altimeter on your head with it's pressure port facing directly forward causing a Stagnation Point .  There is a point, even on airplanes that they read actual altitude pressure .  So, dependiing on where you wear it, it could read higher, the same, or lower than actual altitude as you mode.  Since I keep my Avocet in my fanny pack behind me in a low pressure area at speed, does it read less vertical than reality?  Since I ski faster than my buddies  ;D , why do our altimeters read nearly the same at the end of the day?

I've always thought the Avocet's errors were more related to its temperature compensation and differences from body heat and/or sunlight messing with altitude.

All in all, way too anal, and I use it just for general indications.  I've had 20K days that are some of the best of memories and 40+K days of boring Iceberg repeats.  Thanks for a stimulating a romp through the fluid dynamics I haven't thought about for many, many  years.  Took some Wiki roaming to ramp up the memories.

Kkz

And Vertical George with his crazy fat skis! (It was 1994, my skis were still 64mm underfoot GS racing skis, and most everyone else's were that width too.) What a character, rode the lift a number of times with him. Heard that he once managed 58 rides on Rex in a day (over 92,000 vert), on one of the spring days when they stayed open until 5pm -- can anyone confirm that number?

Can't confirm that number for fact, but he has ADD and just did the same run over and over again. The real funny part is that his skiing technique never improved from the 1st vertical foot to the last. Had he improved his stance/form efficiency he could have really cleaned up. And when he broke one of his skis he just replaced it with another ski, not of the same make, Same with a broken boot. Quite a character, nice guy if you could figure out a way to have a two way discussion with him.


DDK-I'm not a real vert counter, but 65,000 is a pretty attainable number of vert if you are just yo-yoing the groom for 3/4 of a day. I'm sure you do it all the time and just don't realize it.

Unfortunately, George's biggest claim to fame was being called a "hamster in a wheel" by Powder Magazine when they did a short blurb on Club Vert the next fall. Was just thinkin' the other day that I haven't seen him for a while. He was relentless.

Kkz

Amar,

Don't talk too loudly or you might ruin this guy's day

He made two million vertical feet of back country runs in a single year (just completed his goal a few days ago).

www.greghill.ca/pages/the-2-mill-day/

Looks like he tracked it all on his watch.  Hopefully he had some kind of super accurate altimeter watch.

Just a guess but I'm pretty sure Amar was probably already aware of Greg Hill's 2 mill

Amar, I agree the only was to accurately total vertical is using the lift stats. I don't think, however, that dynamic pressure is increasing the Avocet's vertical reading. Full dynamic pressure would only be an issue if you wear the altimeter on your head with it's pressure port facing directly forward causing a Stagnation Point .
...
So, depending on where you wear it, it could read higher, the same, or lower than actual altitude as you mode. Since I keep my Avocet in my fanny pack behind me in a low pressure area at speed, does it read less vertical than reality? Since I ski faster than my buddies ;D , why do our altimeters read nearly the same at the end of the day?

I've always thought the Avocet's errors were more related to its temperature compensation and differences from body heat and/or sunlight messing with altitude.
...
Thanks for a stimulating a romp through the fluid dynamics I haven't thought about for many, many  years.  Took some Wiki roaming to ramp up the memories.

I guess after years of observing that my Avocet usually gave fairly accurate top/bottom elevations (depending on weather), but always counted a few percent too much vertical (and never ever counted too little), I decided that dynamic pressure might be the reason. That effect can only add extra vert, never decrease your vert, because you still come to a stop at top and bottom, so any negative effect must vanish to zero. Other effects related to temperature compensation, inversion layers, etc., could give either positive or negative errors in counting vert -- yet my Avocet has never once undercounted vert in hundreds of days of use, all errors have been positive.

After years of occasionally thinking about it, I finally decided a few years ago to calculate the amount of error that dynamic pressure could cause. I expected the effect to be small and unimportant, including for the reasons you state, of the watch sensor not facing the wind directly. But when the numbers worked out so perfectly, giving 30-85 ft of error at typical fast skiing speeds of 30-50 mph, which just about matches the usual error per run, it seemed like a good match, and therefore the likely cause. If the watch is worn exposed on the wrist (as I do, usually barely covered by a glove cuff), it can certainly end up close to the stagnation point on one's knuckles. The only skiing speed that matters is the maximum speed on the last flat heading onto the lift, higher speeds at other points in the run have no effect at all, since you haven't yet completed the full descent for the dynamic pressure effect to add onto. So unless you are skiing significantly faster than your partners on the flats approaching the lift, your altimeters should read nearly the same.

If you like fluid dynamics (or statics), then one of the interesting things I discovered while doing the calculation is that the dynamic pressure effect, expressed in units of height (ft or m) is nearly independent of elevation, all the way up to 30,000 ft -- for example, 50 mph causes a 84.9 ft effect at sea level, while the same speed at 15,000 ft causes a 85.1 ft effect. The reason is that in the Standard Atmosphere, the rate of change of pressure with height (dP/dH) increases upon climbing higher just as fast as the density decreases, so the product of dP/dH and density is nearly constant from sea level to 30,000 ft. It's not quite exactly constant, but the product only varies from 1 to 1.005 (in arbitrary units) from 0 to 30,000 ft.

Anyway, I've never been fully certain that dynamic pressure is the reason for the always-positive Avocet errors, and I'm always open to other suggestions. I guess there's a very simple test to see if dynamic pressure is part of the cause: have the watch count ascent instead of descent, and see if the error is closer to zero, since the lift is moving a lot slower than I'm skiing. I've never tried this test yet, but I'll do it the next few times, and see if the typical error changes.

Amar,
Don't talk too loudly or you might ruin this guy's day
He made two million vertical feet of back country runs in a single year (just completed his goal a few days ago).
www.greghill.ca/pages/the-2-mill-day/
Looks like he tracked it all on his watch.  Hopefully he had some kind of super accurate altimeter watch.

I hope he didn't stop at 2,000,716 ft -- looks like he did though. If I were going for a mark like that (one where accurate counting is difficult and fraught with error) and then publicizing the result so heavily, I'd want to exceed it by a few percent at least -- say 50-100K extra in this case, just to be safe. But I'm happy for him that he reached his personal goals.

If he's counting vert while skinning up, then obviously dynamic pressure has no effect, he's moving far too slow (even Greg Hill!). But over a multi-hour ski ascent, real pressure and temperature changes will cause errors of a few percent on any watch (even with the best temperature compensation, you can't overcome real pressure changes), and those could end up either positive or negative. For a variety of complicated reasons, those errors tend to be positive more often than negative, but that depends on the weather conditions and atmospheric pressure profile during each of his ascents.

DDK-I'm not a real vert counter, but 65,000 is a pretty attainable number of vert if you are just yo-yoing the groom for 3/4 of a day. I'm sure you do it all the time and just don't realize it.

Joedabaker - I was wrong to question the vert totals for Amar and admit that I have heard of “big” vert numbers in the past and realize that some folks have those kind of days. My big (relatively) vert days have been when I was yo-yoing REX (as you say) because nothing else was remotely skiable (or it was a perfect slush cup day down the REX chair line in the Showtime arena). But I can pretty much swear on the good book that 65k days are not some accidental thing that has ever happened in my current life. Most days for me involve skiing bumps in the Valley, the front side of REX, runs down Powder Bowl into Bearpits, various lines up in Campbell Basin and even the hikes out south to the King (or the be nice to friends runs out North). Kinda like today, lots of folks were running the Gondy, but my best runs were in Bearpits and on Exterminator….cant make to much vert per minute on those runs…and also I’m kinda old and hardly ever make last chair ride. I have a Avocet and sadly am kinda of a vert counter.

I'll give Amar another kudo...just looked at his Club Vert statement again....14 days for the season and 819,000 vert....I just did my 30th day and only have 828,000....dang I'm slow and old.

I still count my vert but am more of a quality vs. quantity guy these days.

Joedabaker -  I was wrong to question the vert totals for Amar and admit that I have heard of “big” vert numbers in the past and realize that some folks have those kind of days.  My big (relatively) vert days have been when I was yo-yoing REX (as you say) because nothing else was remotely skiable (or it was a perfect slush cup day down the REX chair line in the Showtime arena).  But I can pretty much swear on the good book that 65k days are not some accidental thing that has ever happened in my current life.  Most days for me involve skiing bumps in the Valley, the front side of REX, runs down Powder Bowl into Bearpits, various lines up in Campbell Basin and even the hikes out south to the King (or the be nice to friends runs out North).  Kinda like today, lots of folks were running the Gondy, but my best runs were in Bearpits and on Exterminator….cant make to much vert per minute on those runs…and also I’m kinda old and hardly ever make last chair ride.  I have a Avocet and sadly am kinda of a vert counter.

I know that the numbers really rack up quick. When we skied the hope For the Cure a couple years ago I did not want to pull a vertical George, but just enjoy the day ski my thing. We went all over the place with several Right angles to the trail and even a King hike to end the day and we had 55,000 vert normal skiing. So it really racks up even doing bump runs and bear pits and the queen.

Hey, at least your out there skiing, whatever the totals. I'll take that any day over work!
Good on ya Amigo!

So tripping down memory lane is fun...who got a Garmin for Christmas ? How accurate is the Edge 805 ? Is 65mph down Lucky reasonable ? (It is a bunch of fun on 176s no less)

I got a Garmin Foretrex 101 about 6? years ago. Used it skiing only a couple times. Hit low 60s coming out the bottom of Luckyshot when we had a clear run with no "bogies". Went and bought a helmet the next day. Another day was hitting mid 60s at the bottom of Green Valley heading to Iceberg with fast snow, good grooming, and now crowd. Highest showed 68. Those speeds seem high for rec skiing, however, I watched the speed steadily increase and hold in mid 60s for a while so it wasn't a one-data-point anomaly that you sometimes see. They still seem high but I keep it as a personal record. The helmet turned out to be a good idea. Took a very nasty crash last year on a no crowd but not the best grooming day on Gandy's. Estimated speed around mid 40s. Left both skis, poles, and gloves 100 feet above where my rag doll tumble ended. Lots of ugly crunching noises but my head head came through OK (some might disagree, however).
kkz