Way to Frolic at top of Snowdon Quad
February 8, 2006, 10:00 AM

Way to Frolic at top of Snowdon Quad
February 8, 2006, 10:00 AM

Conditions keep getting better. Killington has continued to receive light snow over the last 24 hours. It is not amounting to much, just a couple of inches, but it is helping to continue to improve ski conditions.

This morning when we got to the mountain, we though we would try something different. We have been bombing down the mountain the last couple of days, so today we thought we would try to forget everything we knew about Killington and act like first time visitors. We give our inn guests advice all the time on where to ski. We thought, that with the busy February Holiday period coming up, that we should ski some of the terrain we tell people about.

Not to go totally crazy, we did our warm up run down Cascade. Upper Cascade was well groomed with a light fluff on the top. Lower Cascade had a few small but manageable cat tracks with death cookies, but was still very enjoyable. it was a good warm-up for our adventure.

We took the K1 up to the peak on our second run and tried to do Great Northern as it is laid our on the ski map. Surface conditions were quite nice. We did run into some missing signs where Great Northern joins Klllink, but other than that it would be a good trail for an advanced beginner to start out on. Up the Snowdon Quad next to Frolic. Many of our guests had mentioned Frolic to us, but quite frankly we have never been on it. Frolic turned out to be a nice, winding green trail, which leads over to Rams Head mountain. From the bottom of Frolic, we entered the terrain park set up on Rams Head on Timberline. The park was a lot of fun with a fairly gentle slope punctuated with several ramps, jumps and hits along the way. Up the Rams Head lift we went. We decided to take Swirl which is a blue trail to the right of the top of Rams Head lift. The trail itself was pretty easy, but the cover was thin. Before getting all the way to the bottom, we detoured into another park set up on Easy Street. Again, manicured to perfection, this time with a number of small "beginner" ramps, rails and hits.

We left Rams Head thru the tunnel under Killington Road to catch the Snowshed Quad to High Road. We then took the Skyeship to Skye Peak for perhaps the scariest skiing we have ever had at Killington.

Atmospheric conditions on Skye Peak were totally surreal. At the very top at the Gondola station, there was a little cloud, but visibility was generally good. Upon exiting the top on Skye Walker to 4 Way, you ran right into a cloud bank. For those people who know the area, when you turned right to go to Skye Lark, you literally could not see 2 feet in front of you. I could not see my ski's on the ground below me. There was quite a crowd of people in the cloud suffering from vertigo, to the point where Mary found herself nauseous. I kept calling Mary's name and skied to the right until I came to the up mountain side on 4 Way. We carefully followed the trail on the right until we came to the wind shield for the Skye Ship. Under the wind shield, we traversed by the top station of the Skye Peak quad, which we could hear but not see. Staying right, we traversed the top of Skye Burst re-entering 4 Way. We skied down 4 Way another 100 yards in very dense cloud, emerging at the junction with Frost Line. All told the cloud was probably about 250 tall. And it was definitely a cloud, not fog, as there was a defined edge to it were in a matter of feet you went from no cloud to can't see. Very weird indeed.

Mary was quite shaken by the experience, so we headed over to Bear Mountain to try to ski it off. We did a couple of runs down Bear Claw and Wild Fire, then we took the Snow Shed Crossover (to avoid the cloud) back to the K1 Base lodge and called it a day.

Overall, conditions are continuing to improve. In addition to the continuous light snow fall, Killington is assaulting the mountain wholesale with snow guns. Guns were still blasting on skiers right on Outer Limits. In addition, guns were going on Skye Burst, Wildfire, in the Viper Pit, and top to bottom from Upper Skye Lark (in the cloud) to Lower Bittersweet.

In terms of new features, the resort has the boarder cross area set up and opened on Dream Maker (which I will have to try soon), and it looked like they were getting ready to build another park on skiers right down Snowshed. All in all, with the exception of the cloud, another great day of skiing at Killington.