Snow making operations taking place on lower Superstar.

Snow making operations taking place on lower Superstar.

It does appear that Mother Nature's snow machine has finally decided to turn on at Killington. Light snow from a clipper system started falling in the area late last night. Snow totals at the inn are just a couple of inches of very light powder. Higher snow totals have fallen at the higher elevations.

We started our ski day with boots on in the Vale parking lot followed by a trip up the Ramshead Quad. As we were at Ramshead and there was new snow, we decided to take a first run down Swirl. Swirl was covered in 3 to 4 inches of light fluffy powder. Previous skiers and riders had chopped the surface up some what, but the snow was so light, that what looked like bumps when poof into the air when you skied across them. It was so much fun that we actually did it twice!

From Swirl we traversed through the ski tunnel at the base of Rams Head to the Snowshed Quad for a quick boost up to KBase level. A traverse over to Superstar and we were off on a more normal ski route.

Bear Mountain was in pretty good shape. The Stash with the new snow was fun. With the exception of the Stash, it looked like minimal grooming had taken place overnight, as there were areas of scraped off surfaces from the busy weekend. Never matter, there were plenty of good places to plant and turn our skis as we continued our descent to Bear Mountain base.

Killington resort in bright sunshine on Sunday February 9, 2014.

At Bear Mountain, Bear Claw, Skye Burst, and Wildfire were covered in small bumps. Not the kind that you see at the Olympics mind you, but enough that you needed to keep the cruising speed in check and make some turns. Panic Button and Lower Wildfire were slick in spots. The surfaces had been scraped down to the hardpack. Undoubtedly this was left over from the weekend, as there were not enough people on the mountain early Monday morning to scrape any trail down. There was a snow making pipe problem at the junction of the Stash and Skye Burst, resulting in a small brown river down the trail towards Wildfire. The area had been cordoned off by Ski Patrol, but I would expect that in the next day or so an excavator will appear on the trail to dig down to the problem. There was plenty of room to negotiate a nice skiing line around the pipe break, so the problem is more of a curiosity than anything else at this point.

Moving to the northern side of the resort, Bitter Sweet and Skye Lark were in nice shape. I hugged the tree line down the left side of Bitter Sweet to avoid some skier traffic and was rewarded with shin deep powder. Superstar was freshly snow covered. It did not appear to have been groomed overnight. Snow making operations were being restarted around 11L00 AM this morning. I am not sure if this is the beginning of the assault on Superstar to build base for the spring, or if this is just touch up to get ready for Presidents week. Either way, the resort is working to make sure the snow product on Superstar remains fresh.

Conditions on Killington Peak seemed 5-10 degrees colder than either Bear Mountain of Skye Peak. I began our traverse back to the car on Great Northern by dropping down FIS. It was nicely snow covered, and a great way to avoid the crowds. Great Northern down to the Chute was nice and soft. Lower Chute between the junction of Great Northern and Mousetrap had beautiful powder high and tight to the trees on skiers right. Lower Chute continued the small bump paradigm leading back to Great Northern for the run back to the Vale lot.

With our morning jog completed it's back to the inn for some work (like writing this blog) before we hit the slopes again tomorrow.

Let it snow!