its not a matter of it being crowded. ill explain how the whole thing works. basically, the goal is for at least 1 member of your team to take a run up the gondola (cause the checkpoint is at hte gondola) every hour. you really only have time for 1 run per hour with the lines and since you get so tired. so basically what happens is at hte beginning of the hour the line starts moving for the gondola and they add another run to your teams score and then you take hte run, get down with like 30 minutes to go until the next hour begins. so ya, you end up sitting on your ass for a long time all throughout hte night and day. its really not that fun. not to mention that around 150 teams make it through the 36 hours so you barely have any chance of winning the $3600. they raffle off prizes but they are pretty crappy prizes. our team won copies of shanghai six. id say its not really worth it for everyone on your team to pay 36 bucks to enter when you could just ski for free if you have a keystone pass.