Willamette Pass Ski Area

I had a terrible experience interacting with the owner: Tim Wiser, and if I could give zero stars– I would. Just moved to Oregon from Colorado and have been able to skin up countless mountains that reside within the bounds of the U.S. Forest Service. According to Tim, Willamette Pass has a «special use permit» that means that we are not allowed to skin up the mountain even though we are not using his chairlifts and doing the work ourselves. Fair enough– except I did not know this. After one run and fully thinking that what I was doing was legal, Tim came out and forced us to buy at FULL DAY TICKET or he was going to call the police on us for trespassing. This was at about 12:30pm by the way. It should be noted that there are NO SIGNS in the parking lot or otherwise indicating that skinning up the mountain was against their rules or trespassing! It was clear that he was not going to negotiate on this point even though it was very apparent that my friend and I had good intentions, and were not trying to get away with anything. In a way, it was almost extortion the way he forced us to come buy a full day ticket while every other customer was allowed to buy hourly rates or discounted rates. Sometimes I like to ask myself in a situation like this, «what would a reasonable person do in this situation?» My take is a reasonable owner of a resort would give a person who just moved to the area the benefit of the doubt (especially if he wants them to be a patron in the future), and either ask them to leave the premises (politely), or ask that they pay a discounted or hourly rate for the time that they DID ski on the mountain. Tim Wiser is not a reasonable person. My guess is he is super jaded from being in the business for 34 years, and in my opinion, he needs to move on. A business like his will never grow if he continues to be rude, disrespectful of peoples’ situations, and not willing to listen. I have a lot of skier friends who will be visiting me at some point, and you can be rest assured I will NOT be taking them to Willamette Pass resort. Was charging my friend and I the full $ 50 really worth losing lots of future customers Tim?

Skiing is good if you are beginner to intermediate. Lots of good terrain. The lift to duck soup and the lift on the backside are kinda slow and it’s hard to maximize your slope time skiing from lift to lift like bachelor. The major thing lacking here seems to be service, the staff is slow and marginally friendly. The service in the bar flat out sucks, the staff spend as much time talking to each other as they do serving customers. It takes forever to get a drink even if it’s empty. A little more effort towards providing excellent service in all areas would go a long way. Short drive from Eugene is a plus.

Falling down is part of snowboarding. More so when you are starting out. Willamette pass a good place for that. With Hood and Bach prices more than a few dollars more and the amount of falling for a beginner the same, Willamette Pass a great practice mountain. On clear days the view is great and on bad days it’s close enough to home you didn’t waste a whole day heading out there.

Cheap place to go snowboarding with plenty of runs to hit up. This place won’t be as packed as some of the other resorts and you can pay by the hour to board, which is a pretty sweet deal. They’ve got some great views of the lake and mountain when you hit the top of the slopes. Really gorgeous, and the drive up there is worth it all on it’s own.

Willamette Pass won’t blow your mind, and you’ll fall asleep on the ski lift up to the top of Duck Soup, but it also won’t destroy your wallet like a trip to Mt. Bachelor will.
Not bad if you’re a novice, might get boring if you are an experienced rider.
Go now, it seems every season starts later and later at Willamette Pass. This liberal hocus pocus about «global warming» may actually have some credibility to it. Before we know it Willy Pee will look like Bolivia’s Chacaltya.