Larry on Cascade with heavy snow falling.

Larry on Cascade with heavy snow falling.

I honestly don't know how they did it, but Killington's mountain operations team worked some kind of magic overnight on the trails at Killington. Unlike Thursdays tooth loosening rock hard surface, this morning found Killington with soft snow covered surfaces. Since we did not have any natural snow fall overnight, it can only be attributed to the work of the night team at Killington using all of the tools at their disposal. Way to go!. (Note from Bill: I try to be very balanced about life at Killington and conditions at the resort. I was truly shocked by the difference in snow surface condition from yesterday to today. The change was that substantial, and for the better!)

We spent most of our time between Bear Mountain and Needles Eye. Bear Trap/Bear Claw and Wildfire were all groomed soft with evidence of newly blown snow in high traffic areas. Dream Maker was still firm, but a lot of the bone shaking corduroy had been worked a second time into a softer surface. The Half Pipe at the base of Dream Maker looked interesting. The vertical sides were highly polished ice. Perhaps great riders would cherish the surface, but very few people were dropping into the pipe that we could see on our trips through Bear.

Cruise Control, Needles Eye, Bitter Sweet, Skye Lark, and Superstar were all in great shape. A little ice was showing on Panic Button, and the Upper Superstar headwall looked a little polished. But generally conditions were very good. New Snow was blown overnight near the merge of traffic from the Skyeship Stage 2 and Skye Lark.

The real story of the day started near 11:00AM. We took the K1 box to the peak. While in the box, it started to snow heavy. The temperature at the peak was 16F. I am not sure what the wind speed was, but snow boarders were getting knocked down by the wind when they made the turn onto Great Northern. We took a run down Cascade. Even in the short time since it had started snowing, there was rapid snow buildup on the trails because of the snowfall intensity. There was easily what seemed like an inch of new snow, on top of a well groomed surface. Other than the wind, it was a pretty nice ride.

The K1 was slow to load on the next trip, probably due to wind among other things. By the time we got back to the peak, it was about 11:40. The wind was howling. Near white out conditions. The temperature had dropped to 13F. Truly a life threatening blizzard was in progress at the peak. We decided to cruise through to North Ridge and down East Falls and outta there! By now both Rime and East Fall seemed coated with 2 to 3 inches of new snow. Really nice rides. When we got to the bottom, we called it quits because the weather was getting very rough. As we were leaving the K1 Base lodge, the resort was pulling the K1 gondola cars off the cable into there storage facility, closing the lift for the rest of the day. From what I saw at the top of the mountain, I can totally understand. The storm came in very fast, and with a very high intensity.

As I write this now at my desk at the inn at 3:45 PM, a very heavy snow/ice pellet combination is falling. Temperatures are in the mid 20's although the upper atmosphere must be over the freezing mark to create the ice pellets. With any luck we will stay this way and not progress over to freezing r@*n, but we won't know that one until we wake up tomorrow morning. If you are driving this evening to Killington, take your time and be careful.

Let it snow!