Will controversial Reserve Pass change under Crystal Mountain’s new leader?
Crystal Mountain, Washington’s largest ski resort with over 2,600 acres and over 80 named runs, sits at the densely forested doorstep of Mount Rainier National Park. Mount Rainier is right there. For anyone who’s been to the top of Mount Rainier Gondola, or Chair 6 on a bluebird day, you’ve likely found yourself distracted by the Cascade Range’s largest and most prominent peak.
Crystal Mountain is singular in its Mount Rainier views because, as the crow flies, the summits of these two mountains are only about 13 miles apart.
So it makes sense that Crystal might experience a good amount of the same weather as Mount Rainier, famously one of the most temperamental environments on the West Coast.
It’s quite common for Crystal Mountain to experience a sunny, clear morning, only to be hit by a sudden, intense blizzard or whiteout an hour later.
Both Crystal and Mount Rainier even have their own microclimates, with Rainier commonly feeding Crystal its weather patterns throughout the winter, with Crystal Mountain getting caught, in a sense, in the volcano’s meteorological wake.
This type of volatility can raise quite a few safety concerns for a ski resort, but, according to the resort’s newest president and COO, Linnea Hansen, it’s also what makes Crystal Mountain so special.
“We have certain slopes at 25- to 45-degrees angles,” Hansen told the News Tribune. “What makes our terrain exciting is also what might make parts of it at greater risk for an avalanche.”
The News Tribune caught up with Hansen and communications manager Rhyan McLaury at Crystal Mountain last week for an interview. We walked around the lower mountain on a chilly Northwest day before finding ourselves inside a fireside room in the new Mountain Commons Lodge.
Crisis management mode
Crystal Mountain’s topography, geographical location and uniquely vertical slopes lend themselves to capricious conditions, with consistency inside the mountain’s management offices recently mirroring the weather outside.
Denver-based Alterra, which owns 19 ski resorts across North America, purchased Crystal Mountain in 2018 and has installed three presidents and COOs in eight years.
Hansen, previously the VP of marketing and sales for Crystal, was announced as the newest president and COO in March.
Previous Crystal Mountain president and COO from 2018 to 2023, Frank DeBerry, told the Seattle Times in April that the job of president requires “crisis management mode” 25% of the time due to the stress behind keeping the public and employees safe.
When asked about DeBerry’s comments, Hansen said mindfulness is key to avoiding stress and burnout next season.
“It is just taking it day by day and moment to moment,” she told the News Tribune. “And expanding what we might feel is the capacity of our minds.”
Hansen’s team will have daily morning meetings in the winter on what Hansen calls the “dangers of the day,” where they plan crisis operations, and even go through mock trials with ski patrol.
“It’s something we take literally and seriously,” she said.
Hansen says Crystal Mountain’s ski patrol begins doing damage assessments at 5 a.m. then hits the runs to check the safety and stability of daily snow conditions.
“We don’t open up the terrain until they’re ready,” Hansen said. “And if that means we don’t open Northway or Southback, or any of our most coveted terrain in a day, we don’t do it.”
The mountain also keeps a patroller at the summit overnight in the winter to monitor conditions, and it has an extensive explosive plan laid out from the beginning of the season.
An immediate controversy
Perhaps the most controversial matter Hansen has helmed is the Reserve Pass, which debuted last season at $1,449 and allows guests to skip various lift lines. This year, it was available for early purchase for $999 until May 15, when it bumped up to $1,149. The Reserve Pass will max out at $1,349 later this year.
So why is it $150 cheaper this season? Hansen says it has to do with understanding the perceived value for guests and a little bit of weather variability. With less snow and highway closures on State Route 410 in December and March, last season’s inaugural run of the Reserve Pass was marred with environmental hiccups.
This year, Crystal officials are hoping to get a better idea of who might be interested in them.
Hansen says Alterra ran a macro study on consumer behavior to find out what people want from their home mountain versus what they want when visiting a resort.
“People, when they’re at their home mountain, and they want to be able to save time and be efficient, distance and time are some of the barriers as to why sometimes people don’t ski anymore,” Hansen says.
“The cost of skiing is always going to be there. But with a particular customer, they’re prioritizing skiing. And they want insider status at their home mountain. No matter how much they spend, they want to be included in the community. That was an insight from the study.”
Across different mountains and resorts, Alterra brainstormed what servicing premium customers looked like. As a result, a handful of Alterra resorts launched the Reserve Pass last season.
“It wasn’t just a Crystal thing,” Hansen said.
Almost immediately, Crystal received pushback not only from skiers on websites like Reddit but also from Change.org, which launched a petition to cancel the Reserve Pass, claiming it was discriminatory.
The Reserve Pass has been marred in controversy ever since.
Hansen’s role has been trying to figure out how to make it work for Crystal.
“What lifts does it make sense for? We’re not going to put it on Northway and chair 6,” Hansen said. “Wanting to respect our community is important. We decided it didn’t work for those chairs. Chair 6 does get a line, and if someone cut that line, it would get pretty contentious.”
Hansen is aware of the pushback.
“Yes, people are upset about potential community impact,” she said. “Most of them ended up being imagined versus real.”
Kristopher, a regular at Crystal Mountain who lives in Seattle and asked that we withhold his last name from publication, has kept an RV in B-Lot for the past two seasons. He re-upped his spot this year and says he skied 44 days last season.
Between securing his RV parking spot in B-Lot, six IKON passes for his family, and ski school for his kids, he figures he’s already in for $18,000 to $20,000 before the next season starts.
But he’s not a Reserve Pass customer.
“It just makes no sense,” he told the News Tribune. “I didn’t see a single person using the reserve line. They often didn’t even have people guarding them. For the first little bit, they’d have someone standing there. Then they’d see that there was no lift line, and they’d give up and leave. Then you can just go through the reserve line anyway if you want to.”
Kristopher admits that last season was a tough one to debut the Reserve Pass due to poor conditions.
“It was dead in February. People just weren’t coming up because they didn’t think there was any snow,” he said. “We were still skiing up there. It was still fun.”
He says that even if the conditions were good, he still wouldn’t buy one.
“I’d rather spend that money on a brand new set of touring skis. If it’s really that bad that you need a Reserve Pass, it’s going to be a zoo on the run. No self-respecting Crystal local would buy a Reserve Pass. It’s a giant flashing red sign on your back that says ‘I am not from here and I don’t know what I’m doing.’”
Paul Brown, a Crystal Mountain regular who is also from Seattle, says he is not a Reserve Pass customer, but he understands its existence. He’s retired now, but used to work for Salesforce, which helped Disneyland implement its Lightning Pass program, which lets guests skip the ride lines.
“Disney was a big Salesforce customer, and I got a look at the really impressive machinery they used to optimize the movement of guests,” Brown told the News Tribune over the phone. “It’s super interesting. They are beyond dialed with their FastPass.”
Disneyland was met with guest pushback when it debuted its FastPass system, but it has since been widely accepted by most customers. Are skiers more possessive over their mountains than Disneyland guests are over their theme park, or does the Reserve Pass just need more time?
“It’s the cost,” Brown volunteers. “With Disney, you pay for the day instead of a season. With Crystal, it’s a massive commitment. And it doesn’t include the best runs.”
Protecting the snow
Hansen recently returned from the National Ski Area Association Conference, where a big part of the schedule was dedicated to addressing what she calls “winter resiliency” or “climate resiliency.”
Due to climate change, Crystal Mountain is researching options that weren’t at the top of the list in the Pacific Northwest before. Things Hansen says are more often used in the Midwest or at lower-elevation resorts.
“We already had some snow making at Crystal,” Hansen says. “But now we have a couple of areas identified where we think we can increase snow making.”
Last season, Crystal did have the majority of its lifts open, though Hansen says some of the headlines kept people away.
“But Northway maybe wasn’t open as much as we wanted it to be,” she said.
Hansen is interested in extending the life of snow making at Crystal with plans for snow blankets (just what they sound like) and snow storage.
“We are looking at these things more than we would have in the past, based on our location, elevation and terrain,” Hansen says. “Because of weather trends.”
Hansen and her family – her husband, and two young children – moved from the Shoreline area of Seattle two years ago to Enumclaw, the closest town to Crystal Mountain. She’d grown up skiing Crystal and saw the move as a way of becoming more committed to the community surrounding her favorite mountain and to shorten the “brutal” commute.
“When I moved to Enumclaw, the number of people who told me, ‘I used to ski at Crystal,’ was quite high. I was like, ‘Wow, why used to’?
“As a parent, I understand shifting priorities — kids doing so many sports, the cost, and families are just busier these days.
“So, with my role as resort president, I want to expand ski access,” Hansen continued. “How do I do that? I listen.”
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