Lots of people played "hooky" today at Killington.

Lots of people played "hooky" today at Killington.

I am cooked. After 2 1/2 hours on the slopes followed by 2 hours behind a 9 horse power snow blower, my legs are shot. It was another nice powder day at Killington. And instead of sunshine, we kept getting more snow!

Today I was not in search of powder. It was a day for pure recreational skiing. The resort decided to open the Snowdon Quad and North Ridge Triple at 8:00 AM this morning to allow powder hounds to chase the goods. Having gotten my share yesterday, I took a much more relaxed approach and headed out at my normal weekday day 9:00 hour.

The K1 parking lot was totally full at 9:00 so I parked down at the Vale lot and started my day on the Rams Head Quad. Caper to Snowdon was surprisingly nice with soft powder from the quad all the way down to the junction of North Star. From the Snowdon Quad, I took the North Ridge Triple and traversed across the top of the resort to Bear Mountain.

At Bear Mountain, Bear Claw, Wild Fire, and Skyburst were relatively small soft bumps, as one would expect. The very top of Skyburst had a touch of scratch, as skiers and riders slid into the trail. But by the time you were 50 feet down the slope, you were on soft packed powder.

Bear Claw. Not tracked up much at all, with nice soft bumps.

Needles Eye... a veritable rodeo of steep, deep, bumps.

Upper Skylark. Perfect soft cruiser.

Dream Maker, Cruise Control and Needles Eye were all super fine, and very different. Dream Maker was more packed than chunked, the result of boarders going thru the terrain park. Cruise Control looked like it was groomed early in the evening. The soft snow was forming nice soft bumps, but they were a little random. They were soft enough you could basically ignore them, but by the time you got to the box at the bottom, the legs were talking.

Needles Eye, on the other hand, was unbelievable. The normal blue, yet well pitched, trail usually groomed flat for race training was a classic Killington snow day black diamond. The trail was not groomed over night. Add to that a bunch of new snow, and Needles Eye turned into a bump field with 2 foot bumps every direction you turned. And these bumps, because of their size, needed respect. You could not blow thru them like the powder puffs on some of the other trails. You had to earn your way to the lift by turning thru the bumps. It was actually quite fun!

I did a couple of runs down Skylark and Bittersweet before heading back to K1. Both were nice and soft, but by this time my legs were rubber. I headed to the K1 gondola to gain some altitude so I did not need to skate all the way to the car. I took a nice leisurely cruise down Great Northern back to the car. Another nice ski day in the books.

The weather forecast in Killington is calling for continuous snow flurries right through the weekend. With super soft snow, if you enjoy powder, you should get to Killington.

Let it snow!