Lift line at Superstar Chair, 8:57 AM, 2/7/2008. Only Killington Mountain School students in front of us.

Lift line at Superstar Chair, 8:57 AM, 2/7/2008. Only Killington Mountain School students in front of us.

There are no friends on a powder day, but sometimes you have to make exceptions.

It started snowing hard last night. When I went to bed at 2:00 AM, it looked like about 3 inches had fallen. I set my alarm for 7:00 AM, figuring I would go outside and do a little work around the inn before heading to the mountain. Good thing. We had over 7 inches of new snow at the snow stake, with windblown drifts in the walkways around the inn well over a foot.

By 8:15, I am all done. I change into my ski clothes. Mary is right behind me. Usually we take two cars, but as her new car is not all wheel drive, we decide to go together and take the Subaru. I already have my Volkl Vertigo's in the car. I load Mary's K2 Kahuna's and we are off. By 8:45, we have all our kit on at the K1 base lodge, and are out the door headed towards the lifts.

Mary is a good skier, but not overly strong in powder. With that in mind, we decided to bypass Kpeak and head directly into the Needles Eye area off the Superstar Chair. On powder days you want a slope that is steep enough to allow gravity to create enough forward momentum to compensate for the increased friction between your skis and the snow. I figured that Needles Eye would have a steep enough pitch for Mary's first outing on powder skis this year....and we were rewarded!

At the Superstar Chair, the only people in front of us was a small group of students from the Killington Mountain School. As I would have guessed, most of them eyed Superstar with anticipation, letting us escape to the back of the mountain virtually unnoticed.

When we arrived at the top of Panic Button on Needles Eye, 1 snow boarder had already taken the slope. Whoever the boarder was, we did not see them, they were pretty good as they held a tight line down the mountain. There was plenty of fresh powder to play in! Panic Button and Upper Needles Eye were glorious. A foot plus of medium weight powder. My Vertigo's just floated down the trail, with a minimum amount of turning required to keep the speed in check. Mary on her Kahuna's worked a little harder. But as soon as she got comfortable enough to let the ski's run, she started to have fun. Lower Needles Eye was not quite as good as Upper Needles. The resort had not groomed the trail overnight, so there were a few bumps hidden in the powder. Not enough to be annoying, but just enough to keep one honest cruising down the trail.

For the rest of the morning we played between Needles, Cruise Control, Bear Trap, Bear Claw, Bitter Sweet, Skye Lark and Superstar. As the trails got progressively chopped up by traffic, I hugged the tree lines, where I found lots of pow. Mary followed me on several passes near the trees. She really enjoyed her Kahuna's on BitterSweet, which seemed to have 2 or 3 feet of snow on it, probably the result of some wind over night.

When Mary called it a day, I took one last run. From the Superstar Chair, I had been eyeing Ovation and Old Superstar. I decided to go for it. On upper Ovation, I went wide right, literally skiing in the scrub brush on the right side of the trail. No one had been over there all week, so there was loads of snow and no hidden bumps. I crossed at about High Road onto Old Superstar, then headed down hill towards home. A very nice morning indeed.

Let it snow!