Killington cloud lingering on Killington Peak

Killington cloud lingering on Killington Peak

The leaves are starting to fall off the trees at Killington. Preparations at the resort and at businesses around town are moving to a winter footing. Lawns are getting their final cut of the season. Brush is being mowed down. Outside building maintenance has taken on a sense of urgency. The weather is predicted to be cold at Killington all week. Snow is even mentioned in passing in the weather forecasts. Winter will soon follow in the mountains of Vermont.

The big question on the minds of East Coast skiers and riders is when will the 2009-2010 ski season kick off? The Killington Resorts return to the "Beast of the East" brand is but the first salvo of the season. All marketing slogans aside, however, the rubber does not hit the road, or in this case the skis don't hit the slopes, until there is a nice white carpet of snow covering the ski trails at Killington.

In the local community, all eyes in town are looking at the Resort to determine if the "Beast of the East" brand was resurrected as a marketing mantra, or as a business operating model. And in the near term, that means only one thing...when will the Killington Resort turn on the worlds largest snow making system and signal the true start of the ski season in Vermont?

Of course the buzz is building. Any marketing person worth their salt knows that to create interest, you need some buzz. The resort has been very visible in trimming all of the trails to make them receptive to the first snow of the season, be it natural or from a snow gun. They have been very aggressively public in stationing compressors around the mountain to pressure test the snow making system to fix any problems, and prove that it is ready to operate. The resort has stimulated a competition with snow making equipment vendors by installing different fan guns at different places around the mountain for "field trials". And finally, the resort has made it known to every fall foliage hiker and gondola rider going to the peak that snow making guns are set up and ready to rock on Rime, traditionally the first trail to see snowmaking each year.

Last week, we saw cool and damp weather around the area. Very unfavorable conditions to attempt to make snow. This week, cold is the order of the day. Temperatures last night were in the 20's. All week, similar conditions are forecasted. And you need cold to make snow.

In the days of Pres Smith, before ASC, snow making often started on Killington Peak at the end of September. In general, the activity was a canard, designed to capture the first video's of skiers inaugurating the ski season at the easts largest ski resort. Everyone knew what was happening. But it still was great fun. Hundreds of television stations around the United States picked up the video feed. It got the juices flowing in the eastern ski community. It created buzz. It made people want to travel to Killington to ski. Nothing more, nothing less.

In more recent times, business operating models have delayed the start of snow making till late October, when snow making conditions were more favorable. If you think about it, it is hard from a business operations standpoint to burn megawatts of electricity to pump water up hill to turn it into snow...then have it melt back into the Roaring Brook, and various resort water retention ponds. Of course the fallacy of that approach is that while it may appear to be good for the bottom line, it does nothing for the "buzz". In many instances a slow start to the ski season is no start to the ski season. As the weather turns cold in the population centers of the Northeast, the absence of a strong skiing message creates a void which is all too often filled by other pursuits. Out of sight truly is out of mind.

Which of course begs the question....If the Beast of the East is back...when will it roar? When will the Killington Resort turn on its snowmaking system and begin the visible effort required to recapture the glory that the mantra the "Beast of the East" represents?

With the change of the season, and the arrival of cold weather to Killington this week, it will be interesting to watch.....Let it snow!