Mary on new Bittersweet

Mary on new Bittersweet

It was not the prettiest of days, but if you were a Star Trek fan you will recognize the term "It was glorious".

Today was my first day back on the mountain since before Thanksgiving. The weather was overcast. A light something was falling from the sky. It was alternating between wet and freezing on your goggles before finally turning to snow. The wind was just howling at 9:00 AM. The resort was trying to run the K1 gondola. We would have nothing of it. We headed to the Superstar Quad. It was glorious!

Snow surfaces off Superstar were delightfully soft. As a warm up, we decided to head over to Bittersweet, as we had not skied it before the Thanksgiving recess. The first runs were groomed beautifully. The feed into the bypass around the Bittersweet Headwall was perfectly natural. It was just a nice, groomed cruiser. Killington purists will probably be outraged, and on a powder day their outrage will be well placed. But for most days, the fall line of the new Bittersweet trail will work just right as a break from some of the steeper terrain off Superstar. Today it was glorious!

By 9:30 Am, as we are taking our fourth lap on the Superstar Quad, the K1 gondola was knocked out of commission by the wind. It was just howling. When you got off the top of the quad, you needed to have a plan in mind. Would it be the Superstar headwall, or a trek over to Skylark. Because if you hesitated, the wind just pushed you in what ever direction your tips were pointed. It was glorious.

Skyelark was nicely groomed from the top to the lower section off High Road. By 10:00 AM nice soft mounds (they were not bumps) were developing where skiers and riders had moved the groomed snow. They were just enough to keep you on your toes, as visibility in what ever was falling from the sky was pretty poor. But the skiing was just glorious.

Superstar from the top to the lower headwall was groomed flat. Snowmaking whales were present in middle Superstar to give the slope some character. Once one skied past the High Road cutoff to Bittersweet and Skylark, I swear that many sections of Superstar sounded "hollow". It was definitely a weird sound, especially since a few of the runs were skiing by braille. But overall the snow surface conditions on Superstar were just glorious.

The Lower Superstar headwall was not groomed. On our first runs, our initial reaction was to hold back, as we had expected it to have a frozen, crusty feel. It didn't. We were surprised. It was glorious!

Lower Superstar was a nice mix of small mounds and small bumps. Whereas the other trails off of the Superstar Quad were definitely cruisers, Lower Superstar got the legs working nicely. There was no worry about being cold, as the bumps kept causing you to look ahead and complete your turns. As the snow was soft, overall it was not really technically challenging, but it was a nice little work out for the legs. Absolutely glorious.

And by 11 we were done. I lost count on how many laps we made. It was just glorious.....let it snow!