"Blue Sky and Bumps" - Upper Vertigo at Killington

"Blue Sky and Bumps" - Upper Vertigo at Killington

Today was one of the top 10 ski days for the 2009-2010 season.

Beautiful blue sky. Mounds of soft snow. Moderate temperatures. It is hard to ask for more.

The snow storms of last week and the overcast of earlier this week have cleared to leave the Killington Resort set up for a great weekend of early spring skiing and riding. Wether you choose Bear Mountain and direct south facing sun, or Killington Peak with shaded soft trails, you can not go wrong skiing and riding Killington right now.

We started our day with a very high speed warm up run down Super Star. The trail was both perfectly groomed and bathed in early spring sunshine this morning at 9:00 AM. It was just a great run to start the day.

We followed with runs through Bear Mountain. Skye Burst, Wild Fire, Bear Claw, Bear Trap, and Dream Maker were all skiing great. Snow conditions in the morning had some firmness down the middle of the early runs where snow melted yesterday and refroze over night. But who needs to ski down the middle of the trail when the sides of the trails continued to feature delightfully soft packed powder snow to ski on.

Traversing over to Needles Eye we found soft conditions on groomed surfaces on Needles, Cruise Control, Great Eastern, Bitter Sweet and High Road. Vertigo was bump covered. Bumps on middle Vertigo were generally well spaced and allowed for a good pace. The lower section below the old Snow Shed Crossover were somewhat disorganized and choppy, but skiable just the same.

Skye Lark and Super Star continued to ski well on mid morning return runs. Upper Ovation had some nice soft regular bumps down skiers right which where were fun. We did not ski lower Ovation. It was also bump covered with what looked like Volkswagen sizes bumps.

The final runs of the morning were taken off Killington Peak. The trails off North Ridge were all nicely soft. Upper East Fall was basically groomed flat with lots of soft powder to carve up. Rime and Reason were more of the same.

Highline was closed for race training, so we did not have a chance to try it out. The Chute off of the Snowsdon quad rated a do over. It's snow surface was also quite soft on skiers right, which when added to the trails natural compound fall line made for some very nice runs.

Crowds at the mountain early were hard core skiers and riders. The base lodge was very crowded this morning at 9:00 AM. The crowd quickly dispersed around the resort, however, as all of the resorts terrain is available for play. By mid day there was an influx of weekend visitors starting to head out on the slopes. With the weather forecasted to be sunny and in the low 40's during the day, weekend skiers at Killington should be in for a treat.

......let it snow!