Crystal Mountain fancies itself to be the best "resort" in Washington state. As they like to say in Texas, that claim is all hat and no cattle.

The Boyne Corporation that owns Crystal has had big plans for years. Give them credit for persevering against the forces of No and the National Forest Service to get the Campbell Basin lodge and High Campbell chair, the Northway chair and now the gondola built. While the latter does nothing really to improve uphill capacity (it was built more with an eye to summer tourism). Even if Boyne can build it's proposed hotel, Crystal still won't be a ski "resort" and will never be a four season resort (if you don't like to hike, there's nothing else to do there in the summer). What lodging they have now is no better than motels you find adjacent to interstate highways.

I've been skiing off and on at Crystal for about 35 years. It can be an enjoyable mountain on the rare sunny days if you ski midweek, with an unsurpassed view of Mt. Rainier from the top of the Rainier Express. But because West Side Cascade snow is so marginal, because the mountain is full of traffic choke points and never properly/sufficiently groomed, it's pretensions of being a serious ski resort are just that. It will always remain a favorite with the side/back country enthusiasts, and the new Northway chair has opened more of that up to those of us who don't want to spend most of our day hiking for 600' of vertical. But otherwise, it will never be a destination for people outside the PNW or even a vacation resort for locals.

Crystal veered a bit further into the ditch this off season by building a new terrain park under the Forest Queen 6-pack. Doing this has assured that this part of the mountain, already the most crowded, will be that much more so as a couple hundred acres is given over to a relative handful of customers. At the same time, Crystal has an aged, rarely used double chairlift in a more or less sequestered area that would have been much more suitable for a park and better served the needs of the majority of the area's customers.

I wish them luck because there is still untapped potential, but I have faith that they have management to realize this and so I, again, won't be making the 90-minute trek many times this season unless I can somehow do so weekdays.