Lift tickets at the Crested Butte Mountain Resort are comparable in price to those of other resorts in the area, and typically sell for around $100. There are occasional discounts at different times and for some special events. Whatever the reason, a $40 lift ticket is a real deal, and you can ski Crested Butte for $40 on December 15 of this year (2018). There are several conditions attached, but there are always strings attached to particularly good deals.
What You Need to Do
To qualify for this great discount, you have to show up in a Santa suit. Just wearing a Santa hat won’t cut it. You have to be dressed in red from head to toe. You need to have a Santa beard as well, which can be purchased, rented, or your own. Santa just doesn’t look like Santa without the white beard, and you don’t want to look like just another guy or gal in a red suit. You are allowed to remove the beard when skiing, but you are encouraged to wear it if you can. That’s a total of four things to remember to wear to get your discount – hat, top, bottom, and beard.
There are two things you need to be aware of. First of all, there is not an unlimited supply of Santa suits available. The organizing committee is hoping for at least a thousand entries this year, and hopefully has made arrangements for about that number of suits, but to be extra safe you might want to bring your own if you happen to have one lying around.
The Dangers of Early Partying
The second note of caution is this. The downhill event starts at the Umbrella Bar at Ten Peaks halfway up the mountain at 3:30 in the afternoon. If you pay $25, you get a free Santa suit and 5 free drinks. That means if you, and several hundred others meet at the Umbrella Bar an hour or so before the downhill event is scheduled to begin, a party could easily get started. This has apparently not been a problem in the past, but if you have several hundred people going down the same slope at the same time and a hundred or so of them are three sheets to the wind, there could be some problems.
The sobriety committee has apparently thought this through and dictated that drinks at the Umbrella Bar will not be served until 2:30 PM. It isn’t impossible to go through five drinks in an hours’ time, but skiing down the slope is a lot more fun than sliding down or somehow getting lost. Save the drinks, or at least four of them, for later in the day. The downhill run is a blast, and something you will want to experience to the fullest.