East River opens Friday at CBMR

Lift issues on the mend

By Alissa Johnson

Crested Butte Mountain Resort is gearing up for the holidays. More terrain is set to open this weekend and the season’s first big jets also started arriving this week. And, just in time, Paradise Lift appears to be back on track for the holiday crowds.

According to Erica Mueller, director of innovations and relations, East River opens on Friday, December 18, and Prospect, Gold Link, and the tubing hill open on Saturday. If all goes as planned the new Umbrella Bar will open at Ten Peaks this weekend as well, although that depends on finishing up some final construction.

Mueller also confirmed that recent issues with the Paradise Lift have been resolved. A series of what she described as small issues related to fuses and battery charging as well as scheduled maintenance closed the lift on a few occasions over the last couple of weeks. And while the lift maintenance was scheduled for a Monday, the repairs fell on weekends.

“They were all small things with bad timing,” Mueller said, noting that even when the size of the repair is small, it takes time for lift maintenance to diagnose and fix the problem. “Lift maintenance has been working hard to make sure Paradise works well the rest of the year.”

Mueller also emphasized that the lifts are safe, with multiple redundancies built in, and the repairs are not indicative of larger issues.

“Although we can see where concern or a conspiracy theory could come from with the recent events on Paradise Lift, we can assure you that the sequence of closures was circumstantial and were not related to each other. We take the safety of our guests and employees extremely seriously and have a robust maintenance program for all of our lifts,” she said.

The resort ironed out the wrinkles just in time, as the first big planes arrived at the Gunnison–Crested Butte Airport this week. The first Alaska Airlines flight from Los Angeles landed on Wednesday, December 16. The flight is 74 percent full throughout the month of December—a great performance measure for such a new flight, according to airline consultant Jeff Moffett, senior analyst for Community Flights.

“We’re certainly very pleased with it,” he said.

Four Alaska Airlines marketing employees joined the first flight—which was greeted by Bubba and Betty—to spend a few days in the Gunnison Valley. Moffett sees great potential for the flight, both in terms of tourists coming to the valley and opening up new options for locals to head to warmer climes during the winter.

In addition, American Airlines is bringing about 300 more holiday visitors from Dallas than last year. During the holiday timeframe, the airline flies two planes per day into the local airport. This year, American added capacity to the second flight, from 63 passengers to 128.

“They added more flights to just about every ski market from every hub,” Moffett said, noting that the airline aims to compete with United Airlines in the ski market.

Direct service from Houston and Chicago is on track with last year. Overall, Moffett says, “We’re looking at about the same amount of people coming in this winter as last, so far. For the last several weeks we’ve been outselling last year’s pace, so we’re on a trajectory to exceed last year’s sales and are certainly doing that for December. If that continues and the other months end up like December, we’ll be satisfied.”

As for after the holidays, Mueller said resort bookings for January are on par with two years ago. “We had a really good January last year because we had some good group business,” she said.

According to Megan Collins, marketing communications manager, the resort is working on some promotions for January, including specials for Military Appreciation Month, which will include $99 lodging, $35 lift tickets, and $35 skiing and snowboarding lessons through a partnership with Adaptive Sports. In addition, $2 of each lift ticket purchased through the special offer will be donated to the Adaptive Sports Center’s Operation Rise and Conquer program, which provides adventure activities for military service personnel.

For now, it’s time to celebrate the holidays, hit the slopes, take in the Torchlight Parade and call on Ullr to grace Crested Butte with his presence.