Howie and Norm exiting "Blur Heaven"
underneath the South Ridge Triple.

Howie and Norm exiting "Blur Heaven"
underneath the South Ridge Triple.

Very nice ski day at Killington. Temperatures were in the mid to upper 20's. Fresh snow all over the mountain providing nice soft surfaces. Just a beautiful Friday to ski.

Where to begin on todays report is problematic. Overall, the mountain was in great shape. To get the negative out of the way quickly, the only trail that was a little scratchy was Needles Eye. Other than that it was generally soft powder or machine groomed packed powder surfaces everywhere.

Our tune up run was Upper Downdraft to Upper East Falls (formerly East Glade) to the North Ridge Triple. Downdraft was groomed sweet. Upper East Fall had nice well spaced soft carving bumps. The legs got working. it was a great start. In rapid succession we did the following: East Falls, Downdraft (top to bottom), Cascades(top to bottom). All were nicely groomed with a loose packed powder surface. After that, it was a trip down "Blue Heaven" to High Traverse for the run over to Bear Mountain.

The terrain park in Bear Claw was groomed sweet. Viper Pit and Lower Bear Claw were nice and soft. I think the trail of the day was Upper Wildfire. Beautiful soft bumps made for nice cruising turns. They were spaced just far enough that you could use the bumps like slalom gates with only a minor speed check at the bump. Really nice!

Howie on his way to the K1 Gondola

The Needles Eye chair was running today so we did the requisite laps on Cruise Control, the previously mentioned Needles Eye, and Bitter Sweet. Snowmaking operations had been suspended on Cruise Control leaving a nice soft surface with minor whales in the middle of the trail. Bittersweet also skied like it had some snow making on it in the last day of two, with nice soft snow down skier right. (It may have been the result of wind blowing snow the last couple of days, but skiers left on Bittersweet was also pretty good.) The bumps were a little tighter on lower Bittersweet, giving us a work out as we neared the end of the day. The final run was down Superstar to lower SkyeLark. The Superstar Headwall was deep with new snow. Some large but soft bumps were forming as the snow making whales were getting carved up. It was so soft, that you as long as you were not tentative you could pretty much cruise down the headwall. Middle Superstar had softened up considerably from yesterday. And Lower Skye Lark was just plain nice, with some mid sized snowmaking whales and plenty of soft snow.

All told, we were out over 3 hours this morning...a very good session indeed. Around noon time the area clouded over. We are expecting a little weather this evening with some light snow forecasted. The mountain is just getting better! Let it snow!