Sampling wine in the tent at the K1 Gondola Base

Sampling wine in the tent at the K1 Gondola Base

Over the last several weeks, some times I have felt like I was trying to drink from a fire hose. I have spent the last 6 weeks working as the producer for the Killington Wine Festival as part of my duties as a member of the board of directors of the Killington Chamber of Commerce. It has been a wild ride...a lot of people got to enjoy Killington, and some very nice wine was consumed along the way.

While there were many events associated with the Killington Wine Festival over the weekend, the primary event was the "Grand Tasting at 4241". This year it was a split event between a tent at the base of the K1 gondola, and the restaurant at top of Killington Peak. 100 or so wines were set up for sampling in the tent. Almost 200 were available at the peak.

I arrived at the mountain in the early morning to coordinate setting up the days activities. At 1:00 PM, when the gates opened, over 300 people were queued in line to begin tasting. I had a great team of volunteers at the gate checking people in. Things were going great until around 1:45 when I got a message from Killington Operations that they would be shutting down the K1 Gondola at 2:00 PM for 15 minutes of so to let a thunderstorm pass.

Right on time at 2:00 PM, there was a clap of thunder and the gondola stopped running. By this time we had 200 people in the tent at the base of K1 and 250 people in the peak restaurant. Everybody was having a great time because we had lots of wine to sample, and some great food made by chamber volunteers and vendors participating in the festival. Then the rains came!

One of the reasons we selected the site at the K1 Gondola for the tent was because it offered good drainage. It has a slight downward slope that would not collect water...very important as the tent was installed on Wednesday afternoon. After all, we were trying to build a wine pavilion, not a coy pond. Then the rains kept coming!

At about 2:15, torrential rains blanketed Killington. In the tent, we did not think much of it...everyone was carrying on, drinking wine, eating cheese, listening to an ensemble of players from the Killington Music Festival. Then the rain came down harder!

By 3:00, the gondola has now been down for an hour. Chris Nyberg, the president of Killington, and I have a quick conversation about evacuating Killington Peak. We really did not want to truck 250 people down the mountain in a driving thunder storm. We decide we are going to hold everyone in place to ride the storm out at the peak, hoping for a break in the weather to allow the K1 Gondola to run again. Then the rain started to come down so hard, I was beginning to look for the ghost of Charlton Heston. It was raining so hard it seemed biblical...

Then the dam broke! The Red Sea parted...Literally!

The down hill grade of the tent funneled a nice river of water throughout the area. 1 to 2 inches of water swept down hill, mixing with the red clay under surface, producing a nice wine colored slurry as it passed through the tent. It was not enough to cause any damage, but enough to make everyones feet very wet. Ladies in stylish summer shoes were particularly hard hit. But by now, everyone had been tasting wine for 2 hours. The great mood of the crowd was not going to be defeated by a little water. Besides, everyone in the tent could head home....the people on the peak might be stuck for the night...

And then, just after 4:00, as if on queue, the skies broke, the rain stopped, the thunder storm had moved a safe distance away, and the peak evacuation could begin.

At about 4:20 the first survivors from Killington Peak arrived at the K1 Base. They were grinning from ear to ear! They had been trapped for almost 3 hours on the top of Killington for a spectacular natural light show with 200 different kinds of wine to sample, and stories to tell for years to come.

In running the event, I would have preferred a clear, sunny day...but then again that does not have quite the drama of a good Vermont thunderstorm.

I intend to head out for a few rounds of golf this week as I catch up on life. I will post picture out takes from the wine festival in the coming days as I process the photos. Until then, keep it in the fairway... and don't forget your sunscreen.