Summit Glades near top of Pico Peak. Kent Pond is in the distance to the right.

Summit Glades near top of Pico Peak. Kent Pond is in the distance to the right.

As happens from time to time on Fridays, this morning a couple of my old ski house mates came up early for the weekend to ski on the new snow we received this week. We decided to head to Pico, the seventh mountain at Killington, in the hopes of snagging some remaining powder from Wednesday nights storm. For years there have been ongoing discussions about connecting Pico with Killington. That's a blog post for another day. Today it was all about the powder!.

Pico is organized as a classic New England ski resort. Unlike the layout at Killington, most of the trails at Pico wander down the slope with minimum cross over points between trails. After an initial boost midway on the Golden Express Quad, we headed over to the Summit Express for the ride to the peak. We spent the next 3 hours looping off the Summit Express. The snow was that good!

Pick you poison off the top. With the exception of Upper KA, the trails were basically left au natural. We found a great combination of nice powder bumps of varying sizes, combined with stretches of minimally tracked terrain when we went off into the woods. (Warning...kids don't do this at home!) As we were coming down the various trails, if there were a single track without a rope across it, it was fair game. And with the exception of one 100 foot section of Powerline (not on your trail maps) it was all good.

Upper Pike was a nice combination of powder bumps. Unlike some of the other places we went, Pike is pretty wide. You had to force yourself to stay in a line and not wander off into big traverses. After the first run down Pike, we knew that the conditions on any trail were going to be soft, so away we went.

In addition to Barry on skis, and Larry on his board, Mary joined us this morning. She worked into it slowly. For the second pass, while we were off playing in the woods near Giant Killer, she decided to try her hand in the bumps on Sunset. From then on, she felt comfortable enough to stay with us for the next couple of hours.

In fairly rapid succession we did Summit Glades, Forty Niner, Sunset 71, Giant Killer and Birch Glades. Summit Glades and Birch Glades had large stretches of soft cut up powder...Just great! Forty Niner, Sunset, and Giant Killer were all soft powder bumps. Coverage was excellent with very little hard pack in the bump troughs. Once you picked a line, you could pretty much bounce all the way down.

We did take several excursions "off piste". In one instance, we were on a fairly narrow (shoulder width) stretch that was also fairly flat. Larry had to click out of his board because he did not have enough momentum. Bad idea. There was so much snow he was instantly up to his crotch. So it goes.

The previously mentioned Powerline was probably the most "interesting". The first 100 feet or so has the pitch of Panic Button at Killington. However, in this section it is also about 2 ski lengths wide. Previous skiers had stripped it pretty clean with several exposed ice cliffs in the middle of the trail. By this time, Mary had headed back to the inn (good thing). For probably the first time in years, all three of us were reduced to side slipping a trail. Once we got past this section, the trail widened out (4 to 5 ski lengths) allowing linked turns through the powder. If it were not for the top section, we probably would have done this "unmarked" trail a couple of times. So it goes...

It's hard to pick a run of the day, as they were all very good. Summit Glades and some tree excursions off it probably get the nod. But the area near Birch Glades is a close second.

3 hours after we started, we were all pretty cooked. As we have a long night tonight, being Friday, Mary let me take a nap when I got back to the inn. It was glorious! Life is good.

Let it snow!