Ski Boot on again!

Taken on the Sky Peak Quad, 11:00 AM, January 9, 2006 

I did not stay out long, but today I finally made it out on the slopes for the first time since spraining my left ankle 1 month ago.

Just for giggles, I took out a trail map to do a the trail count for the trails I skied today. They included Gateway, Frostline, Great Eastern, Bear Trap, Anti Venom, Bear Claw, Skye Way, Skye Lark, High Road, and Bittersweet. 10 Trails.... or was it 2 runs??? Not really a legal ski day but it was great to be out on the slopes.

Conditions this morning were good. We had a clipper system go through overnight, dropping some insignificant light snow. When I arrived at the mountain, all of the peaks were cloud covered. I stayed on groomed surfaces as the ankle is tender. Everything I was on was a beautiful combination of packed power and man made. I did not run into any scratchiness or ice. Crowds were very light.

On the mountain, construction has begun on the terrain park on lower Wild Fire. From the Skye Peak chair, you could see 2 snow cats pushing snow around to create the terrain features. It looked like they had just started when I was on the lift. I would guess that they have a couple of days work ahead of them before re-opening the trail.

"Frosty the Snowman"
Click on the picture
to see Frosty in action.
Requires Quicktime 

Killington is a little damp and dreary today. Light snow is continuing to fall as we continue in a pattern of "Lake Effect" snow flurries combined with small "Clipper" systems.

Mary is continuing to deploy snow men around the inn. Today's version is 'Frosty the Snowman". If you have quicktime on your computer, click on the picture to see "Frosty" in action.

With any luck, I will be on the mountain this week. While my ankle is still sore from the sprain I suffered in mid December, my plan is to try to get a ski boot on it tomorrow. With any luck, I will be back on the mountain taking pictures for the first time in a month Monday morning.

Snowman makes appearance at Birch Ridge 

Killington continued to receive light snow during most of last night. Minor accumulations, but with the bright sunshine found outside today, everything looks clean, crisp, and neat.

Most of today has been spent transitioning the inn from Christmas season to Winter season. The inn always looks a little sparse when the Christmas decorations come down...last night was no exception. The Christmas tree just dominates the Great Room for a month. To Mary and I, the room looks different without the tree, although most guests who have not seen our tree would not notice a difference.

To fill the void, Mary is in the process of distributing snowmen all around the inn. Over the years she has built up quite a collection. She has several that are similar to the ceramic snowman shown in todays picture. Over the next couple of days, I will take some pictures of the most interesting ones.

Birch Ridge Christmas tree comes down, January 6, 2006 

Killington continues to receive light snowfall. Overall accumulations are keeping up with the compaction of the snow from yesterdays storm, as a result there was little change in the snow stake overnight.

The winter snowmen are getting ready to make their annual appearance at Birch Ridge. The Christmas decorations were put away today for the season. The Christmas tree was taken down in the Great Room. Mary has started the shift to snowmen for winter inn decorations. About one hundred snowmen are all being brought out of storage and are being spread around the inn over the next couple of days.

Killington Peak shrouded in haze, January 5, 2006 at 2:00 PM 

Overnight and this morning, Killington received some much needed snow. At the inn, the snow stake registered an additional 2 inches of heavy, wet snow. At the Killington Base Lodge, it looked like the mountain had received a similar amount. More snow is predicted in the forecast for the rest of the week.

New IMac G5 

OK... I be bad.... I ordered a new IMac G5 for Mary for Christmas. She wanted a new computer at the front desk, as she was getting used to using my Powermac Dual G5 that I use in my office. It was supposed to be delivered on December 23rd, which would have allowed me to set it up for the holidays. It was delivered yesterday, January 3rd. (It's a long story... Suffice to say, if I get some free time in the next couple of weeks, I will probably write a letter to Jeff Bezos at Amazon.)

I have been using Apple Mac's since before they were Mac's (I had access to a Lisa at Motorola in the early 80's for the Athena project at MIT). I can tell you that it is everything Apple advertises. From the time I opened the box to the time I had it working on our network at the inn was less than 10 minutes. Of course, if we were running a single user system with standard applications, that would be the end of the story. However, we are not. By the time I got all of our inn software loaded, and configured user accounts for all the people who will have access to the machine, and tested everything, I got to bed this morning around 5 AM. (Oh... I did not mention that we went out last night for a few drinks and dinner with friends. So I did not start loading any programs till around midnight....The perils of having a shiny new toy!) Needless to say I did not go skiing this morning. But we have a shiny new computer added to our inn's computer network.

Mary did go skiing this morning. She reports that the mountain is grooming everything flat. She skied upper Wildfire at Bear for the first time in several years. Snow conditions were generally good with a few slick spots. Clearly the mountain is overdue for a snow storm. Hopefully we get one soon.

I won't get a chance to get out and take pictures of the area today, as there is a lot of work to do at the inn in the wake of the holiday week.

The majority of our New Years inn guests checked out this morning. They are either on the slopes, of driving home right now as I write this. While Mary and I run the inn as a business, at this point in time the inn is also our life, so our guests make all the difference. And the guests who visited with us this holiday season were really nice.

The guests we had this holiday season came from all walks of life. We had business executives, retirees, young lovers, kids with baseball caps on who when carded at the bar were in their late 20's. Skiing and boarding do have an element of danger, so we had a few bumps and bruises, and a broken wrist added to the mix as well. But, and this is the important part, all of our guests genuinely seemed to have a very good time visiting Killington.

In talking with people at the bar, and we all know who kept whom up till the early morning hours, people seem very up beat...perhaps for the first time in several years. The economy seems to be doing better. World events, while many are quite tragic, have morphed at least for a while into the background noise of life in the 21st century. And all of this allowed many of the guests to the area to take a break, to relax and spend time to recharge before heading out into the battles of 2006.

Mary and I are very grateful for all of the guests who visited with us this holiday season. We were re-acquainted with old friends, and made many new ones. And we look forward to seeing you again the next time you visit Killington.