Paul coming out of woods between Summit Glades and Forty Niner

Paul coming out of woods between Summit Glades and Forty Niner

Temperatures today in Killington moderated to the mid 20's. As usually happens this time of year, when the temps go up, clouds develop and light snow falls. We have basically been experiencing a constant snow flurry since early morning. Not much accumulation...just enough to make everything white. But light snow is a great thing at a ski resort in the winter.

Today I had the pleasure of skiing at Pico Mountain. A travel writer, Paul, for Cape Air's inflight magazine stayed with us overnight. (Cape Air offers service to both Lebanon NH and Rutland VT connecting out of Boston's Logan Airport.) Paul had skied at Killington yesterday. Today was his day at Pico. After breakfast at the inn, we headed to Pico around 9:00. By 9:30 we had boots on skis and we were on the slopes.

The weather today at Pico was similar to the inn. Snow flurries were depositing new snow all over the mountain, except at the very peak. The peak was in the middle of the cloud...too high to snow! It was a little strange at first, until we realized that as soon as we got out of the cloud and could see, there was fresh snow on the trails.

As I had never skied with Paul and his friend, for the first few runs we went easy. We started off the Golden Express Quad down Fools Gold to Lower Pike. The middle of Gold Rush was groomed for cruising. On either side, there was a nice 3-4 inch accumulation of powder just waiting for our turns. For the next loop, we turned right off the Golden Express and took Prospector to Expressway. Conditions were very similar, except there were a few more bumps on Prospector, which helped get the legs moving.

Now that we were warmed up, we headed over to the Summit Express Quad for some runs off the peak. The top 250 feet or so of Pico were firmly covered in cloud. We started down Forty Niner. Being a wide boulevard just off the peak allowed the cloud to settle right on the slope. The good news is that off the peak, Forty Niner was groomed flat, because we could not see the trail. And as if by magic, just before the Easy Street cutoff, the cloud thinned out allowing us to see the trail for the run back to the lift.

Upper KA was our next destination. Because the trail is much narrower that Forty Niner, the cloud cover at the peak was much less dense. While there were a few slick spots to negotiate, there was plenty of snow over all of the trail from the constant snow flurry. We exited via Mid KA and decided it was worthy of a do over.

On the next go round on Upper KA, I decided to take the boys over to Birch Glade off of Easy Street. Birch Glades was moderately bumped up with loosely spaced medium sized bumps. In places they were firm, with a little scratch in the troughs. I had a pretty good pace going through the the bumps. Paul, the writer, kept up fairly well. His friend, Dave, (the innkeeper at the Cranberry Gardens Inn in Wareham MA) met up with a snow snake somewhere in one of the bumps. Shaken, but not stirred, he still was smiling ear to ear when he caught up to us near the junction with Mid Pike.

After a few more loops, I thought for the last run of the morning we would try the Summit Glades. By now the cloud had lifted off the peak, so the visibility was pretty good. The cloud cover still blocked out the sun, so it was still rather dark, but the vertigo inducing solid white horizon was gone. The Summit Glades are often times left au natural. Today was no exception. We did a couple of hundred yards of bumps; some of which were a little nasty for people who don't ski all the time. We got down to one of the many unmarked woods trails, this one being a short connector to Forty Niner, where we decided exiting the Summit Glades was the best choice. I skied through first, with the others behind me. It was a "Kodak Moment" resulting in todays picture.

From Forty Niner we took Sunset Schuss to C Slope to the base lodge and lunch. Pico, with it's trails winding through the woods is just a gem to ski on. And today was no exception.......let it snow!