Riding a whale on Superstar

Riding a whale on Superstar

With temperatures in the mid 20's, sunshine peaking in and out of puffy clouds, and an occasional snow flurry, Killington was set up nicely for skiing and riding today. While we are not receiving the heavy snows that are expected in the Mid Atlantic region, continuous snow making combined with an ever present snow flurry have left parts of the resort nicely covered in fluff.

We started with the usual haunts today over at Bear Mountain. Conditions have maintained themselves quite well at Bear this week. There is a NorAm competition on Outer Limits today and Saturday. While the bottom 2/3rds of OL was relatively soft, the top third this morning was getting scraped off by competitors side slipping to get to the competition course. I would expect more of the same through out the weekend.

Wild Fire, Bear Claw, Bear Trap, Skye Burst, the Stash and Dream Maker were all good. Expect some scratchiness on the upper sections of Wild Fire and Dream Maker, but there is plenty of snow to make some turns on.

Cruise Control was beautiful. I skied both the left and right tree lines in the zone 2-3 feet off the trees. Both sides had a nice soft fluffy coating. Not powder skiing, but nice just the same.

Snow making was taking place on Needles Eye. The moveable snow guns were a little wet this morning, leaving you with a candy coating. The Pole mounted guns were much drier and offered some nice new snow to ski and ride on.

Super Star was interesting this morning. It is covered in classic snow whales left over from many days of constant snow making. The Upper Headwall was as treacherous as it gets. Huge mounds of snow have solidified on the upper headwall, leaving a surface that is both slippery and grabby at the same time. A grooming machine will knock these mounds down at some point, but in the mean time use some caution entering the upper reaches of Super Star.

Classic snow whales on Super Star. Click to enlarge.

Middle Super Star was covered in gigantic snow whales. The ones with the steepest back sides had been marked by the resort with bamboo poles; much like giant harpoons on the back of a whale. Some nice snow was to be found if you traversed down the spine of the whales. This contrasted sharply with a collection of bumps which were hiding down on the right side of the whales, the result of skier traffic chopping up the soft snow while the snow guns were blasting.

From Super Star we took the K1 Gondola to Killington Peak for a run down Cascade. Nice soft fluff was still present down skiers right at 11:00 this morning. The lower headwall had a scraped spot or two down the center, but soft snow was on both right and left sides allowing sweeping turns.

We drifted over to the Snowdon Quad, thinking we would take a peek at North Star, Vagabond, and the shallow tree runs in the area. North Star was roped off, so we turned around and headed down Bunny Buster to Mouse Trap. At this point, around 11:45 AM, myself and the 2 guys I was skiing with were the only people in sight. For some reason we had the whole trail top to bottom to ourselves.

For the final run of the morning, we did Highline, entering it via a nice traverse down MTS. On Highline, I hugged skiers right along the guard fence put up to protect errant racers. There was a 4 to 5 foot strip of nice 6 inch powder. The tight turns required to keep in this zone led to a quick trip down Highline. In the late morning sun it was a lot of fun.

......let it snow!