Ruts in the woods somewhere in 'The Stash'.

Ruts in the woods somewhere in 'The Stash'.

Once again the lights were out. The resort was covered in heavy clouds spitting a constant snow. Temperatures were in the mid teens...but there was not real wind. And snow guns were blasting the mountain almost at every turn with 20 foot drifts everywhere. It was "Glorious"!!!!

Because of the weather, a sane person might have thought that it was an awful day on the mountain. But if you ski in New England in January, you expect dim light and falling snow. And that falling snow, combined with the work of the snow makers at the resort, created really ski conditions all around the mountain.

We started our warm up run on Superstar. Straight top to bottom, non stop, point them down hill you chicken@#$t. Surface conditions were a firm groomed corduroy base with a couple of inches of fluff on top. Just perfect for sweeping GS turns down the length of the trail. it would have been a do over, but the Killington Mountain School was setting up a race course on half of the trail, so we headed over to Bear Mountain.

We started in the Stash. We followed some tracks into the woods on skiers right. The woods had been thinned out and were full of various hits and ramps. We came across this one huge structure, which climbed about 15 feet into a couple of trees. My friend, Ruts, thought about giving it a try, but then common sense took over.

We came out of the woods and went down Lower Wildfire. Snow guns were cranking out snow. Visibility was zero in many places. For the second real run of the day, it did a nice burn job on the quads. My legs turned to jello halfway down.

From the Bear Chair, Outer Limits was calling. It looked like it was relatively flat with nice fresh blown snow covering the surface. Oops...thank you for playing.... The fresh snow covered a very slick surface, interspersed with some ice balls that seemed specifically placed to stop your skis from turning after you got them pointed straight down hill. On his board, Ruts took most of OL on his behind (I have never seen him do that before in 20 years!) We took a couple of cat calls from friends riding the chair...but OL soon took it's revenge when they gave it a try. Later in the day when it was skied out, it looked like people were having an easier time. I am sure once it gets groomed out it will be fine for the weekend.

We took a run down Dream Maker next. Other than the top headwall which was all icy bumps which we avoided, the rest of the trail was just a perfect groomed cruiser. We exited down near where the base of the super pipe will be in a few weeks, right next to the new Fan Gun installed between Dream Maker and Skyeburst. The Fan Gun has pumped out a mound of snow that has to be 30 feet high. It is an impressive ride to the top, and an equally impressive ride down the back side.

Coming back to the basin side of the mountain, snow guns were pumping out huge amounts of snow up and down Vertigo and Skyelark. We chose not to do Vertigo as visibility in the guns was less than zero. Skyelark was covered with nice soft snow and huge snow whales. As long as you stayed close to the guns you could see. But if you strayed too far away from them you found yourself surrounded by a dense snow fog. The good news is that at 15 degrees, the guns were relatively dry. But every now and then you would hit a wet gun which completely iced over the goggles.

After meeting some other friends, we took a few runs in Needles Eye and headed back over to Bear Mountain. Even though the guns were still blasting on Wildfire, the next few runs were much better than the earlier experience. My legs were definitely warmed up and much more responsive in the deep snow. I still needed to check every now and then to figure out where I was, given the poor visibility, but the ski legs were back for the last couple of runs under the guns. Fresh snow, and good ski legs... that's what skiing is all about.

.....let it snow!