Winter Wonderland!
Great Eastern and Launch Pad Junction. 

I finally had a chance this morning to take a few turns on the hill today after a little adventure along the way(more on that later).

Todays conditions were mixed. Several inches of light snow had fallen overnight. In areas where the snow had blown together with the wind, the powder surface was fairly consistent. On areas where the wind had blown off the powder, those surfaces were also consistent. In between, where there was an inch or so of powder, surface conditions alternated between silky smooth and skid bumps.

I only had about an hour to ski today, as I had breakfast duty this morning and an appointment in Woodstock at Noon. I did a loop from the Snowshed Quad, thru the K1 Gondola to the Superstar Quad to the Rams Head Quad with a couple of runs at North Ridge. Chute had the skid bump effect in sections. Rime and East Falls were in very nice shape. Superstar was interesting at best.

On Superstar, snowmaking operations were taking place on the headwall. Middle Superstar was covered with whales of man made snow topped with an inch or so of natural. The surface was somewhat grabby. Edges were not necessary in Middle Superstar. Lower Superstar on the other hand was ugly. A strong up slope wind had scoured the crest of the lower headwall. Several very wet snow guns from prior days snowmaking laid down a skating rink in sections that the NHL would have been proud of. Edges were a must, but many people still wound up on their behinds and other places. As is usually the case after an extended snowmaking session, Lower Superstar had not yet been groomed. I am sure all of the sins will be taken care of once the grooming machines hit the surface.

I then looped down Skye Lark to High Road to Snow Shed, up the Rams Head Lift to Caper to the car. All of these trails were in great shape. I would have done more laps on Skye Lark if I had more time. But it was not meant to be.

Jeep sucked in by the K1 Parking Lot

For those of you who may be superstitious, we had our third car event of the week this morning. Because I was short on time this morning, I decided to park at the end of Bay 1 in the K1 parking lot, put my boots on in the car, and hop on the Snowshed quad. Nice idea... but bad execution. When I go to the parking space, the area had been freshly plowed. I pulled in even with the car beside me, and proceeded to sink the front end of the car to the oil pan. The plow had pushed back the snow bank over a drainage ditch. Five feet on either side of me was solid ground... but the jeep was stuck. A quick call to the local towing company, Habro, and 30 minutes later with a slightly lighter wallet the car was back on solid ground. Instead of 90 minutes on the slopes, I got an hour. But, as they say, it's better than working! Tomorrow is another day. Let it snow!

Birch Ridge Inn covered in light snow. 

The snow gods are being kind to Killington as we end the month of January.

Light snow continues to fall on the area keeping snow surfaces fresh and white. The weather forecast has this pattern continuing right through the weekend. While total accumulations are not amounting to much, an inch every day goes a long way towards maintaining ski surfaces.

Our chef skied at Pico this morning. He reports that surfaces at Pico were soft powder surfaces over a packed powder base. Trails from Pico Peak including 49er were in excellent shape due to the continued snow fall the area has received. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to get out this morning as I needed to do some maintenance work around the inn. With that behind me, I should hit the slopes again on Thursday and Friday mornings. Let it snow!

Howard Zack
Photo from Rutland Herald Article 

This morning when I opened my email, I had received a sad message. Long time Killington resident and town constable Howie Zack passed away yesterday. He leaves his wife, Pat, and two children, daughter Sarah and son Joe.

The first memories that Mary and I have of "Howie" are probably shared by many "new" Killington residents. When we first came to the area, we drove high performance sports cars. Mary had a fuel injected Thunderbird, I had both a Nissan 300ZX and a gull winged Mitsubishi 3000 GT. We would be tooling down the access road, and coming in the opposite direction would be a pick up truck flashing it's lights with a hand waving out the window. It was Howie telling us to slow down as we were driving through town. Of course he was always right. But instead of a speeding ticket, Howie would give you a friendly smile, and on occasion a stern talking to when you ran into him at the post office later in the day if you were really going fast. Of course that was a simpler time, or so it seemed. Howie was definitely one of the many long term Killington residents Mary and I have become acquainted with who have made living in Killington a pleasure. He will be missed.

A funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007, at Woodstock Jewish Community Center, Shir Shalom, followed by a celebration of life at 5 p.m. at Killington Events Hall at 3775 River Road in Killington. An obituary for Howard S. (Howie) Zak can be found on the Rutland Herald's web site.

Middle Superstar...Beautiful soft little bumps 

We are so lucky to be able to live in Killington and to be able to take advantage of great mid week ski days. And today was another one.

We did much our our usual loops, all surfaces were in very good shape. But 2 trails stood out. The first was Downdraft from Killington Peak. We took the first turns of the day on it just after 9:00 AM. It was groomed to perfection. Because of the cold temperatures over night, it was rock hard, but very receptive to edges, allowing side to side sweeping turns. The first time we took Downdraft we headed over to Highline. The second time we went to Cascade. The third time we went to East Fall. In all the years of skiing at Killington, this was Mary's first time on Downdraft. She had always been hesitant to take it because it is very steep off the peak and usually blue ice. It seemed like we were the only people taking this route, even though it was clearly visible from the K1 box.

My second pick for trail of the day was Superstar. Even though I only had a chance to do it once as our group was transiting from Bear Mountain back to Killington Peak, I really enjoyed it. Middle Superstar (todays picture) was filled with soft well spaced bumps. I went down skiers right. Even though it looked bumped up, the bumps were spaced such that you could almost cruise through the soft snow, versus banging into each bump. A lot of fun and very different from cruising the groomed boulevards we had been taking. Lower Superstar was under the guns. Snow Making has been ongoing on Lower Superstar for the last day and a half. With morning temperatures in the single digits, the tower mounted guns were putting out a velvety fluff. Due to the gun alignment, big, broad whale bumps were forming. The up side of the whale was pure velvet cruising. The down side of the whale was boot high powder with mini avalanches. The only thing missing on lower Superstar that would have made it perfect was a little sunshine. But it was all good just the same.

Temperatures today were comfortable in the morning. When we started the day it was 8F at the peak. By noon, the temperature had dropped a couple of degrees to 6F. Good snow making temperatures are anticipated all week. And with snow flurries in the forecast as well, I look forward to several more nice days on the hill before next weekend.

Flat Tire... so it goes.. 

Light snow last night has continued to improve ski surfaces on the mountain. Guests coming back to the inn to change prior to departing the area reported mainly packed powder conditions. Some trails had a nice coating of light fluff, probably the result of being groomed early in the evening allowing time for natural snow to accumulate. Temperatures in the area are in the low 20's with bright sunshine. A very nice late January ski day!

On a comic note, this must be our time for Mary and I to have car trouble. Last week the Subaru gave us problems. Today we awoke to a very flat tire on Mary's Jeep. Of course the lug nuts were frozen (or rusted) on. I had no success in getting them off. The local service guy had no luck getting them off (Standing on the wrench handle jumping up and down). So it was hauled away to a local garage for a little pneumatic lug wrench action. As the say..."So it goes"...but I would rather be skiing!

Pico Mountain in the late afternoon sun.
Friday January 26, 2007 

Unlike last Saturday, today was not a ski day for me. However, I would bet that conditions this morning are great!. Light snow has been falling around the inn all morning. We have seen around 3 inches of accumulation since last night. In addition, temperatures have warmed up from yesterday to the low teens today. I am sure that friends visiting us at the bar tonight will be telling us of their Saturday conquests. I am jealous already.

Over the last 10 days or so, I have been very busy moving the web hosting service for my various web sites. (The fact that you are reading this is a testament to the move of Killingtonblog.com being successful.) For the last several months, we had been having problems with our old web hosting company. Unfortunately, our old web hosting company had fallen behind the technology curve in the last few years, resulting in several of my sites experiencing prolonged outages, primarily for email service, over both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Starting last week, I began moving my sites to a web hosting service provided by Network Solutions. I have used Network Solutions as my internet registrar for years, and I have used them to host several of my customers web sites, so they were an easy choice for me to host my websites. The inns web site, birchridge.com, was the last one moved. It completed the transfer early Thursday morning. For those personal friends who have experienced problems sending Mary and I emails over the last few months, I hope that those problems are behind us. After moving birchridge.com, our email inbox went from over 15,000 email messages on Wednesday (basically all spam) to less then 50 on Friday (virtually all real messages). And for everyone else who views our websites on a regular basis, I addition to continuing to visit because of the snowstake and the pithy prose, I hope that you find them more reliable and responsive to use.

Outer Limits - Groomed and Beautiful 

Very cold at Killington today!

My day started out long. At the inn it was a brisk -9F. My Subaru decided it did not want to come out to play. Tried to give it a jump start and everything... It wanted to sleep this morning... So I took Mary's jeep to the mountain.

We started out on the Box at K1. At Killington Peak, the temperature was -12F with a nice 10 to 15 mpg breeze. Highline was glistening in the sun so we headed there. Even though it was cold, the snow surfaces were primo so it was a great run.

Back on the box, we decided to head south to Bear Mountain. Bear Claw and Bear Trap were really nice. The parks were groomed to perfection, allowing nice cruising over the terrain features. When we got to the base of Bear Mountain, we noticed that one in our party, Billy Mac, had strong hints of white on his cheeks, a precursor to frostbite, so we went in for an early coffee. While sitting in the base lodge, Outer Limits was beckoning... we just had to do it!

At the top of the OL Chair, the temperature read -5F (See, it really is warmer at Bear Mountain). There was some minor snow making going on at the top of OL. Just enough to keep some of the crowds off of it. On the first run, we were the only people on Outer Limits. All 4 of us were skiing in a single line, spaced about 20 feet apart, doing broad sweeping GS turns. The surface was firm, after all it was cold out, but carving turns was not problem. It was definitely worth a do over. On the second run, I think we ran into a bus tour from New Jersey (No offense to New Jersey meant here). We started off down the hill followed by about 40 people skiing in a pack. Some of the pack were hot dogging it, which did not give any of us great comfort, so that was the last run on OL for the day.

We then did a run on Cruise Control. The snow that was blown into Cruise on Wednesday was nicely groomed. Needles Eye was also in similar shape. After a quick trip up on the Skye Ship, I took a run down Bitter Sweet. Bitter Sweet was really nice...I probably skied it a little too fast, as conditions were just so consistent. After that, I headed out to look after the Subaru (of course it started when I got home). But I got my 3 days in this week on the hill. And nice day's they were.

Tommorrow at Killington the weather calls for warmer conditions. Still below freezing all day, but not bitterly cold like today. It should be a great weekend for skiing and riding at Killington.