I'm Flying!
A competitor takes flight in
the moguls at US National Freestyle
Competition at Bear Mountain
March 24, 2006, 10:15 AM

I'm Flying!
A competitor takes flight in
the moguls at US National Freestyle
Competition at Bear Mountain
March 24, 2006, 10:15 AM

A little warmer but more cloudy today on the mountain at Killington. Spring skiing has definitely arrived.

Conditions are continuing to soften up this morning. Frozen granular "Beach Sand" is making an appearance across all of the mountains. The first few runs we took today were down Superstar. It was groomed out from yesterday, so conditions were very consistent. The upper and lower headwalls were nicely soft, allowing for broad carving turns. Middle Superstar had also soften up from yesterday, but it was still firm enough to just let it rip while cruising towards the lower headwall.

Over at Bear we found deep "Beach Sand" on lower Bear Claw. The portion of Outer Limits opened to the public had been groomed flat, but was quite soft. A Side Slip area has been installed on skiers left in an attempts to provide a safe pathway down OL for timid skiers who want to get up close to the mogul field to watch this weekends competition. We saw no one use it during our time at Bear.

Single freestyle competitions were ongoing down OL's mogul field. You can really tell the difference between world class freestyle skiers, and kids in development programs. The way the course is laid out, you can ski down OL and get right beside the course. Again today we camped out just below the first jump to snap some pictures of some of the big air being taken by the competitors. Really impressive.

On our way out of Bear, we took a lap on Dream Maker. Lower Dream Maker is set up with a terrain park. Coverage is pretty good, except for some exposed rock on the last knoll before the Super Pipe.

To finish the day, we took the "Box" (K1 gondola) to the top of Killington for a run down Cascades. I loved it because it had nice soft bumps which my ski's just ate up. Others, on GS skis were not quite as enthusiastic about it. But so it goes. Being a democracy, the vote for the final run of the day, pre "Johnny Boy's" for brunch, was down High Line. High Line was a touch firmer than Cascade, probably due to less skier traffic. All in all, a very nice day of spring skiing indeed!