Killington Peak covered by storm clouds

Killington Peak covered by storm clouds

Snow....drizzle....Snow....ice....Snow....sleet....heavy fog....Snow.... Pick your poison; it was all on display on the mountain this morning.

When I left the inn this morning around 8:45, a moderate wet snow was falling. A little more than an inch of new snow was covering all cold surfaces. At the K1 base lodge, the same held true, although there was marginally more new snow on the ground.

With the cloud on Killington Peak, we traversed off the back of Superstar over to Bear Mountain. Bear Trap, Bear Claw and Wildfire were all in good shape. Surfaces were soft. I skied down the tree line to stay in fresh snow. Most of the time I was the only line down the edge of the trails. Several others went down the middle of the trails. Lower Bear Claw and Lower Wildfire were softer than the upper trails. But not quite into spring corn snow, as freshly falling heavy wet snow was mixing into the surface.

To get out of Bear, we took the Bear Quad and traversed over to Cruise Control. It will be nice when the Skye Peak Quad is replaced with a high speed lift, but where conditions were rather damp this morning we opted for shorter time on a chair and more time on trails. Cruise Control was a little chunky down the middle, similar to what people in the group experienced yesterday. I continued my routine of holding a line next to the trees on skiers right, were I found some more nice untracked freshly fallen snow.

From the Skyeship we ran down Superstar. This was the first of 2 runs we would take on Superstar this morning. The first run was fairly nice. The surface was soft but not cut up. When we got back to Superstar about 45 minutes later, we found the soft surface had been cut up substantially, particularly on the lower face. The surface had not started to form bumps as there were not enough skiers on the trail to develop a rhythm, but the soft surface was certainly a harbinger of several weeks of spring skiing to come.

To get out of the weather, we took the K1 to the peak. Although the peak was still cloud covered, we though maybe it would be colder there resulting in a drier snow. Nice idea...but not in April. We did a few passes through the Glades, and down East Fall before giving up the "dry" idea. From East Fall we took the run out over to Superstar then called it a morning.

It was not the longest day on the hill, nor the best conditions, but it was a morning skiing...and thats not all that bad.

Let it snow.