Mary an Sky Lark with "ball bearing" snow.

Mary an Sky Lark with "ball bearing" snow.

Interesting day to comment about trail conditions at Killington. If you were a casual skier or rider visiting the area, you would have found firm but very skiable conditions. As a local, conditions were mostly boring, with milliseconds of anxiety thrown in for good measure. In either case, a good foot massage was enjoyed by all.

Overnight, temperatures dipped into the single digits, solidly freezing any residual moisture left over from the thaw on Saturday and Sunday. On top of that, the mountain received a couple of inches of insignificant fluff, the result of the cold air squeezing evaporated moisture out of the atmosphere. Throw grooming machines over all of this and you have a nice mix of faux corduroy which quickly disintegrates into loose ball bearings with skier traffic.

Of course, all of the resort was perfectly skiable. A casual Killington skier would just mutter something about east coast skiing and head down hill. But having experienced virtually pristine, soft snow, surfaces most of this ski season, as a local, todays conditions left me with a severe manyana attitude and a nice early lunch at Johnny Boy's Pancake House.

Looking at the trails today, Cascade was groomed early and covered with a couple of inches of snow. The underlying surface was firm but accepted an edge. East Falls seemed to have a snow gun problem. Our chef, Steve, found a lot of Ice on the top section, but the lower section was covered with soft velvet. The snow gun he skied through was wet leaving a sticky residue at its base which some people had trouble negotiating. Away from the gun, the snow it was making created a nice ski surface.

At Bear Mountain the Stash was very firm, as was Sky Burst, Bear Claw, Wildfire, and Outer Limits. Conditions were softer as you got to lower elevations, probably the result of early morning sun working its magic. Everything was groomed flat virtually edge to edge, which was a good thing as bumps would have been pretty hard. Cruise Control, Bitter Sweet, Sky Lark, and Super Star were similar to Bear Mountain, although the lower elevations absent early morning sun were still quite firm.

If history stays true, the usual case with conditions after thaw-freeze cycles is that they get better with age. The first groom tends to leave "death cookies". Today we had the smaller variant "Ball Bearings". Another grooming cycle should break up the clumps and leave a smoother surface. Sprinkle on top a little added snow, and our soft conditions will return. We can hope.......Let it snow!