Snow Cats building half pipe at Bear Mountain, December 12, 2005

Snow Cats building half pipe at Bear Mountain, December 12, 2005

When I got up this morning, another 2 inches of light fluffy snow had fallen overnight. Having been Inn bound for the last week with the bum ankle, I was determined to hobble outside and find out what is going on up on the mountain. Last week, we could see that the resort was blowing snow on trails leading towards Bear Mountain. So this morning, I was determined to go over there to check things out. I was not disappointed.

When I arrived in the Bear parking lot, it looked pretty desolate. There were a couple of employee cars in the lot, but things did not look promising. Snow was falling pretty heavily, so up slope visibility was pretty poor. I did not think that I would get any good shots to share as I approached the lodge.

When I got up to the base lodge, however, there was a lot of activity and noise from snow cats grooming the hill. It looked like tons of snow had been blown into the lower terrain park area. 2 snow cats were in the process of working together to push the snow around to build the half pipe. From the pictures, you can clearly see that they were pushing around all snow. This should give you and idea of how much snow Killington has blown into this area. For although we have some good natural snow in the last couple of weeks, the cats would be pushing mud if that was all they had to play with. Killington has reported that Bear Mountain will open next weekend. From the activity I saw, unless something disastrous happens weather wise, they are on track to make that happen.