Howie at the junction of Cruise Control
and Panic Button, fresh from a battle
with a snow snake.

Howie at the junction of Cruise Control
and Panic Button, fresh from a battle
with a snow snake.

I am actually not sure what to say today. Ski conditions at Killington were so good, it is an embarrassment of riches. When you add in the fact that it is still early December and other than locals, virtually nobody else was on the mountain this morning....well you get the picture.

Snow fell continuously overnight. It did not amount to a whole lot, but every run had a couple of inches of fresh powder from 9:00 till Noon (yes Virginia, I wrote the word Powder..it seems like Santa is dropping a little gift on Killington every night in preparation for Christmas). Even at 11:00 AM on, when each run was supposed to be the last, every trail seemed better than the previous one. But work does call, after all there is an inn to run. So around noon I did head home.

We started as we usually do with a trip on the Box for a few warm up runs on North Ridge. Rime and Upper East Fall were beautifully soft with nice snow cover edge to edge. East Fall proper, and Cascade were next on the agenda. East Fall was perfect. We were pretty much all able to do broad sweeping GS turns on East Fall as it was groomed flat with a soft fluff covering. Upper and middle Cascade were also in great shape. I thought lower Cascade had a slight granular feeling....but you need to put it in perspective.... we were skiing on fluff so anything else just doesn't cut it.

Sufficiently warmed up, we then proceeded to do multiple laps on Superstar. At this point, after 3 or 4 runs down Superstar, it was probably the run of the day, but there was more to come. Bitter Sweet and Skyelark were very nice. We did an expedition over to Panic Button at the entryway to Needles Eye. Again, beautiful snow, but our run was terminated at the Snow Shed Crossover as the Skye Ship at Needles Eye is not yet running for the season.

After another run down Superstar, we crossed back to the K1 Gondola for a final run down Snowdon. Wrong!...Too Nice... Thank you for playing... your punishment is you must ride the Snowdon Quad and try that again! So down Chute we come for what is supposed to be our last run of the day. Again, crazy fluff everywhere. Once again the snow gods banished us to the Snowdon quad. For some reason, at the Snowdon quad, my pass was not scanning properly. But, even that was ok... for there was a cute ticket checker at the quad to entertain us. Every time thru, she made imitation beeping noises to compensate for the defective scanner. It was all in good fun.

By this time, it was getting quite late, so one more run down Chute and out on Lower Bunny Buster we went. Work is definitely getting in the way of great skiing this December. Oh well... so it goes!

Let it snow!