Ski Bridge from Killington Grand Hotel to Snowshed Base Lodge.

Ski Bridge from Killington Grand Hotel to Snowshed Base Lodge.

Kudo's to Home Depot. After a 6 week absence, my 9HP Ariens Snow Blower has been returned from warranty service. It was a good thing too, as the snow at Killington has kept falling. Since my last blog post, the snow stake has seen a net increase of more than 6 inches of new snow. While that may not seem like much, when you take into account that the snow pack underneath is compressing at about 2 inches per day, we have received about a foot and a half of new snow in the last 4 days. Or to put it another way, about 6 hours of snow blowing since last Friday. No complaints, snow is a wonderful thing at a ski resort in the winter. WE WANT MORE!

Speaking of snow, we have some really strange storms the last few days. Over the weekend we had a full blown severe thunderstorm accompanied by high winds, pea sized hail, sleet, and snow. Not a random clap of thunder, mind you, but a full half hour light show with thunder simultaneously crashing down on our heads with each lightning stroke. Really strange.

Yesterday we had a "No Name" blizzard. Snow flurries were predicted. White out conditions developed late in the afternoon. From about 3:00PM to 6:00PM about 6 inches of light powder fell. I usually don't break out the snow blower at night, but enough snow fell late yesterday afternoon that I needed to get it running to clear paths to allow restaurant guests to get access to the inn.

In addition to snow blowing, I have also started the process of removing snow from a section of flat roof over part of the inn. As you can see from the picture, the snow on the roof is about waist high. I could wait a few more weeks before I started this winter job. In past years, it has gotten shoulder high before starting to remove it, but now that the snow blower is back, I don't need to shovel walks around the inn. I might as well shovel the roof to keep the upper body in shape.

Clearing snow from a roof at the inn. Click to enlarge..

Lots of other things have taken place over the last couple of days besides snow removal which have kept me off my computer. Of course we have been out skiing in the new snow... that is a given. I was able to bracket a meeting at the Killington Grand Hotel on Monday on the Killington Wine Festival with an hour of skiing before and 2 hours after. (Including a couple of passes at skiing across the bridge between the Killington Grand and the Snowshed Base Lodge.) The Wine Festival will be the subject of future posts (Tenth Annual this year! July 22 thru 24, 2011)

Monday's excursion on the snow was punctuated with multiple high speed loops on Superstar. From 9:00AM to 9:45AM I was clocking in loops at about 6 1/2 minutes up and down Superstar. I had a knapsack on with my meeting material. Once the ticket checker figured out what I was doing, I was waved thru each time to keep my speed up. Fortunately (for me, not for the resort) there were not many other people skiing Superstar at the time.

Frozen Arctic air has descended on Killington Click to enlarge..

Today, Mary and I skied out of the car at the Snowdon Quad. Very cold air had descended on Killington. Temperatures this morning while we were out were in the single digits. That did not stop us from enjoying the resort, but it did keep us covered up from head to toe all morning.

We did a typical loop off the backside of Killington Peak over to Bear Mountain. The resort had groomed most of the trails to capture the fluff that had fallen overnight. We observed many drifts that were waist high or better in places. Hitting them was pretty much an instant stop, unless you were able to cant your skis airborne to ride over them.

The flat and fast grooming was great for cruising, but I also sought out some powder. Upper Dream Maker had not been groomed. I was not on my powder skis, choosing my all mountain skis from my quiver this morning. On Dream Maker that was a mistake. I got about a 3rd of the way down before I augured in. As the trail was not groomed, I got caught between two bumps buried by snow. About waist deep. I needed to figure out how to kick off my skis and swim out of the hole. It took me a while as Mary waited patiently for me at the junction of Dream Maker and Sky Burst (she went around upper Dream Maker). Once I righted myself, it still took a little work to get down. The snow was a little slabby. Every time I was on the down side of a buried bump, a mini avalanche would get started. But it was worth the excursion off groomed terrain to try to challenge the mountain.

A few more runs off the Sky Ship and we called it a day. I looped Superstar a couple of times, while Mary chose to do a Bitter Road before heading back to the car. Superstar on skiers left was groomed chunky and ski racer firm. There were a few wind blown areas, but overall the snow accepted edges nicely. On my bonus run (while Mary was waiting), I went down skiers right. The surface was covered with a couple of inches of soft powder, most likely blown over from the left side of the trail. Cruising on 2 inches of soft velvet was a nice way to finish the morning on the mountain, before heading back to the inn for another snow removal session.

.....Let it snow!