Solitary snow gun in operation at K1 Base Lodge

Solitary snow gun in operation at K1 Base Lodge

When I went up to the mountain this morning, I had this strange feeling of deja vu. Perhaps I have done too much reading in life, so my mind races to create connections, but the scene at the K1 base lodge this morning could have come directly from a ski town version of "The Mouse that Roared".

In a brave act of defiance, the Killington resort has declared war against Mother Nature. For those of you who need an update on "The Mouse that Roared", it is a story about the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. This little principality decided that the only way for it to get out of it's economic woes was to declare war on the United States. It knew that in any battle that it would lose. But it also knew that in the process it's economy would be rebuilt due to the American peoples largess to provide economic assistance to any country suffering from the ravages of war. Such is the stage that has been set this morning as Killington wages a similar battle with Mother Nature.

When I arrived at the K1 base lodge, the temperature in my car read 34 degrees. The air was thick with a very cold overcast. The cloud deck was down below 3000 feet. Heavy frost is forming on all of the trees only a couple of hundred feet higher than the base lodge. And here was this solitary snow gun just blasting away. The noise from it was fantastic; the air pressure blasting the water stream seemed to be set incredibly high, probably to compensate for the high relative temperature at the base lodge.

The one solitary snow gun will not do much in the short run to get the resort open. But it clearly was putting a marker down. It clearly was a statement of defiance to Mother Nature that Killington is committed to have snow to open, no matter what it takes at this point. It will be an interesting week as we see how the story of opening the ski resort for the 2006/2007 season unfolds. Will Killington's massive snow making machine allow it to overcome, at least in the short term, the torment thrown it's way by Mother Nature? Or will Killington lose the battle, only to have Mother Nature relent and provide us with a blanket of natural snow? An interesting week indeed!