Wind whipped Killington Peak. 

I was so psyched....After 2 great days last Thursday and Friday, working hard all weekend, getting over an additional half a foot of snow above and beyond last weeks foot, spending almost 5 total hours behind a snow blower on Saturday and Sunday to clean it all up, I was in the mood for some pow. It was just not meant to be.

This morning when I left for the mountain it was a crisp 2 above zero. The wind was blowing. I did not pay much attention to it. I should have given the snow driven haze visible on the snow stake picture. I drove off to the mountain. The Killington Road was ice covered and a little slick, but hey.. this is Vermont, at a ski resort in the winter... you deal with it.

That is until my face almost froze off.

I parked my car at Bay 1, right next to the K1 Gondola. The wind was howling. The gondola cars were still neatly parked in the overnight shed. It was not a good sign. As I walked from the parking lot to the Killington Base lodge, the wind was just plain bitter. I just had a baseball cap on my head. Big mistake. Major case of ice cream head and frozen ears on just the short walk.

Inside the base lodge, I met my ski friends. Nobody has their boots on. An announcement comes over the public address....Only the Snowdon quad is operating. Rams Head may open at 10:00 AM. No time for other lifts on the mountain. Looking out the windows, the whole ugly story is on display. Flags are out straight. It looks like a blizzard out there, even though it was a beautiful sunny day. The powder was being stripped from the mountain by the wind. Ughly. So it goes.

We wait a few more minutes. Another PA announcement, it is not good. So one of the guys calls out "Johnny Boys", and the morning is done. At least we all got a nice breakfast out of the deal. There can be a lot of worse things in life, so missing a ski day is really no problem. At a resort, even though you want it today, there is always tomorrow...So it goes.

Let it snow!

Summit Glades near top of Pico Peak. Kent Pond is in the distance to the right. 

As happens from time to time on Fridays, this morning a couple of my old ski house mates came up early for the weekend to ski on the new snow we received this week. We decided to head to Pico, the seventh mountain at Killington, in the hopes of snagging some remaining powder from Wednesday nights storm. For years there have been ongoing discussions about connecting Pico with Killington. That's a blog post for another day. Today it was all about the powder!.

Pico is organized as a classic New England ski resort. Unlike the layout at Killington, most of the trails at Pico wander down the slope with minimum cross over points between trails. After an initial boost midway on the Golden Express Quad, we headed over to the Summit Express for the ride to the peak. We spent the next 3 hours looping off the Summit Express. The snow was that good!

Pick you poison off the top. With the exception of Upper KA, the trails were basically left au natural. We found a great combination of nice powder bumps of varying sizes, combined with stretches of minimally tracked terrain when we went off into the woods. (Warning...kids don't do this at home!) As we were coming down the various trails, if there were a single track without a rope across it, it was fair game. And with the exception of one 100 foot section of Powerline (not on your trail maps) it was all good.

Upper Pike was a nice combination of powder bumps. Unlike some of the other places we went, Pike is pretty wide. You had to force yourself to stay in a line and not wander off into big traverses. After the first run down Pike, we knew that the conditions on any trail were going to be soft, so away we went.

In addition to Barry on skis, and Larry on his board, Mary joined us this morning. She worked into it slowly. For the second pass, while we were off playing in the woods near Giant Killer, she decided to try her hand in the bumps on Sunset. From then on, she felt comfortable enough to stay with us for the next couple of hours.

In fairly rapid succession we did Summit Glades, Forty Niner, Sunset 71, Giant Killer and Birch Glades. Summit Glades and Birch Glades had large stretches of soft cut up powder...Just great! Forty Niner, Sunset, and Giant Killer were all soft powder bumps. Coverage was excellent with very little hard pack in the bump troughs. Once you picked a line, you could pretty much bounce all the way down.

We did take several excursions "off piste". In one instance, we were on a fairly narrow (shoulder width) stretch that was also fairly flat. Larry had to click out of his board because he did not have enough momentum. Bad idea. There was so much snow he was instantly up to his crotch. So it goes.

The previously mentioned Powerline was probably the most "interesting". The first 100 feet or so has the pitch of Panic Button at Killington. However, in this section it is also about 2 ski lengths wide. Previous skiers had stripped it pretty clean with several exposed ice cliffs in the middle of the trail. By this time, Mary had headed back to the inn (good thing). For probably the first time in years, all three of us were reduced to side slipping a trail. Once we got past this section, the trail widened out (4 to 5 ski lengths) allowing linked turns through the powder. If it were not for the top section, we probably would have done this "unmarked" trail a couple of times. So it goes...

It's hard to pick a run of the day, as they were all very good. Summit Glades and some tree excursions off it probably get the nod. But the area near Birch Glades is a close second.

3 hours after we started, we were all pretty cooked. As we have a long night tonight, being Friday, Mary let me take a nap when I got back to the inn. It was glorious! Life is good.

Let it snow!

Lift line at Superstar Chair, 8:57 AM, 2/7/2008. Only Killington Mountain School students in front of us. 

There are no friends on a powder day, but sometimes you have to make exceptions.

It started snowing hard last night. When I went to bed at 2:00 AM, it looked like about 3 inches had fallen. I set my alarm for 7:00 AM, figuring I would go outside and do a little work around the inn before heading to the mountain. Good thing. We had over 7 inches of new snow at the snow stake, with windblown drifts in the walkways around the inn well over a foot.

By 8:15, I am all done. I change into my ski clothes. Mary is right behind me. Usually we take two cars, but as her new car is not all wheel drive, we decide to go together and take the Subaru. I already have my Volkl Vertigo's in the car. I load Mary's K2 Kahuna's and we are off. By 8:45, we have all our kit on at the K1 base lodge, and are out the door headed towards the lifts.

Mary is a good skier, but not overly strong in powder. With that in mind, we decided to bypass Kpeak and head directly into the Needles Eye area off the Superstar Chair. On powder days you want a slope that is steep enough to allow gravity to create enough forward momentum to compensate for the increased friction between your skis and the snow. I figured that Needles Eye would have a steep enough pitch for Mary's first outing on powder skis this year....and we were rewarded!

At the Superstar Chair, the only people in front of us was a small group of students from the Killington Mountain School. As I would have guessed, most of them eyed Superstar with anticipation, letting us escape to the back of the mountain virtually unnoticed.

When we arrived at the top of Panic Button on Needles Eye, 1 snow boarder had already taken the slope. Whoever the boarder was, we did not see them, they were pretty good as they held a tight line down the mountain. There was plenty of fresh powder to play in! Panic Button and Upper Needles Eye were glorious. A foot plus of medium weight powder. My Vertigo's just floated down the trail, with a minimum amount of turning required to keep the speed in check. Mary on her Kahuna's worked a little harder. But as soon as she got comfortable enough to let the ski's run, she started to have fun. Lower Needles Eye was not quite as good as Upper Needles. The resort had not groomed the trail overnight, so there were a few bumps hidden in the powder. Not enough to be annoying, but just enough to keep one honest cruising down the trail.

For the rest of the morning we played between Needles, Cruise Control, Bear Trap, Bear Claw, Bitter Sweet, Skye Lark and Superstar. As the trails got progressively chopped up by traffic, I hugged the tree lines, where I found lots of pow. Mary followed me on several passes near the trees. She really enjoyed her Kahuna's on BitterSweet, which seemed to have 2 or 3 feet of snow on it, probably the result of some wind over night.

When Mary called it a day, I took one last run. From the Superstar Chair, I had been eyeing Ovation and Old Superstar. I decided to go for it. On upper Ovation, I went wide right, literally skiing in the scrub brush on the right side of the trail. No one had been over there all week, so there was loads of snow and no hidden bumps. I crossed at about High Road onto Old Superstar, then headed down hill towards home. A very nice morning indeed.

Let it snow!

Birch Ridge Inn covered in something white 

In a trend that started a couple of weeks ago, weird weather is continuing at Killington. Somehow, and it is not the magic of photoshop, snow depths at the inn's snow stake are continuing to grow. But the weird weather of snow, sleet, freezing r@*n and just plain r@*n is continuing.

Yesterdays ski conditions were best summed up by and English guest staying at the inn: "It was like skiing on creme brulee". 5 inches or so of snow on the mountain on Monday evening were followed with freezing r@*n, giving ungroomed surfaces a very crunchy topping over snow with a pudding like consistency. Groomed surfaces were wet but very skiable.

Overnight and into the early morning hours of today, light precipitation alternating between snow and r@*n of various genres has continued. Heavy fog developed in the overnight hours, which reduced the snow pack by about 1/2 inch around the inn, but a substantial natural, albeit wet, base remains. Precipitation is expected to turn to all snow this evening, with the forecast indicating a significant snow fall overnight, as a front passes through the area. The way the weather has been going, we will just have to wait and see.

Let it snow!

Superstar in pristine condition 

After skiing with some interesting weather for a couple of days last week, todays adventure on the mountain was fairly calm. Given the fact that the mountain faced an array of sleet, snow, and freezing r@*n since my last visit, the mountain was in great shape.

It is not often that the run of the day is the very first one. But today, you would have to call Superstar at 9:00AM the run of the day. Perfectly groomed, slightly firm packed powder conditions supported sweeping GS style turns from the top of the headwall all the way down to the lift corral at the bottom. If you can't have 2 feet of fresh powder, this was a pretty good alternative. We looped it a couple of times before boosting off the back towards Bear Mountain.

At Bear, we found pretty much the opposite of Superstar. Bear Claw and Bear Trap were not groomed. They were soft and interesting to ski on, but you needed to pay attention to your turns. Upper Wildfire was passable. Very solid with a few small bumps. Lower Wildfire was dreadful. Extremely hard icy patches interspersed with loose, ball bearing sized granular. Just awful, but the group skis enough so everyone survived.

From the Skye Peak Quad, Upper Skye Burst was in nice shape. Lower Dream Maker was fun as usual. Cruise Control was probably not groomed, but but by the time we got there the surface had been softened up by other traffic. Panic Button, Needles Eye, Skye Lark, High Road were all worthy do overs. Upper Bittersweet was not groomed and looked a lot like Wildfire so we avoided it, but Lower Bittersweet was in pretty good shape.

Off the K1 gondola, Cascade, East Falls and Highline were all in nice shape, as were the trails off the North Ridge Triple. There was an interesting drop off at the K1 Gondola maze. A snow making artifact about 2 feet high greeted people entering the maze about 5 feet from it's entrance. Ski it if you can I guess.

It looks like some weather will again be moving into the area. Pick your precipitation type and you will find it in the forecast. Temperatures look like they are forecasted to be at or below freezing in the Rutland area, so maybe the mountain will see most of the precipitation in a frozen state. We can hope.

Let it snow!

Larry on Cascade with heavy snow falling. 

I honestly don't know how they did it, but Killington's mountain operations team worked some kind of magic overnight on the trails at Killington. Unlike Thursdays tooth loosening rock hard surface, this morning found Killington with soft snow covered surfaces. Since we did not have any natural snow fall overnight, it can only be attributed to the work of the night team at Killington using all of the tools at their disposal. Way to go!. (Note from Bill: I try to be very balanced about life at Killington and conditions at the resort. I was truly shocked by the difference in snow surface condition from yesterday to today. The change was that substantial, and for the better!)

We spent most of our time between Bear Mountain and Needles Eye. Bear Trap/Bear Claw and Wildfire were all groomed soft with evidence of newly blown snow in high traffic areas. Dream Maker was still firm, but a lot of the bone shaking corduroy had been worked a second time into a softer surface. The Half Pipe at the base of Dream Maker looked interesting. The vertical sides were highly polished ice. Perhaps great riders would cherish the surface, but very few people were dropping into the pipe that we could see on our trips through Bear.

Cruise Control, Needles Eye, Bitter Sweet, Skye Lark, and Superstar were all in great shape. A little ice was showing on Panic Button, and the Upper Superstar headwall looked a little polished. But generally conditions were very good. New Snow was blown overnight near the merge of traffic from the Skyeship Stage 2 and Skye Lark.

The real story of the day started near 11:00AM. We took the K1 box to the peak. While in the box, it started to snow heavy. The temperature at the peak was 16F. I am not sure what the wind speed was, but snow boarders were getting knocked down by the wind when they made the turn onto Great Northern. We took a run down Cascade. Even in the short time since it had started snowing, there was rapid snow buildup on the trails because of the snowfall intensity. There was easily what seemed like an inch of new snow, on top of a well groomed surface. Other than the wind, it was a pretty nice ride.

The K1 was slow to load on the next trip, probably due to wind among other things. By the time we got back to the peak, it was about 11:40. The wind was howling. Near white out conditions. The temperature had dropped to 13F. Truly a life threatening blizzard was in progress at the peak. We decided to cruise through to North Ridge and down East Falls and outta there! By now both Rime and East Fall seemed coated with 2 to 3 inches of new snow. Really nice rides. When we got to the bottom, we called it quits because the weather was getting very rough. As we were leaving the K1 Base lodge, the resort was pulling the K1 gondola cars off the cable into there storage facility, closing the lift for the rest of the day. From what I saw at the top of the mountain, I can totally understand. The storm came in very fast, and with a very high intensity.

As I write this now at my desk at the inn at 3:45 PM, a very heavy snow/ice pellet combination is falling. Temperatures are in the mid 20's although the upper atmosphere must be over the freezing mark to create the ice pellets. With any luck we will stay this way and not progress over to freezing r@*n, but we won't know that one until we wake up tomorrow morning. If you are driving this evening to Killington, take your time and be careful.

Let it snow!

Flat and Fast is the order of the day.
Junction of East Fall and Rime just above North Ridge loading area. 

"eeeeaaaayyyyeeee thththththiiiiiiinkknknnknk mmmmmmmmmmymyyyyyyyyy ffffififififiiiiililllllliiininnnnnggggs aaaarrrrrreeee cococococoooommmmmmiiininnnnngggg lllllllooooooooossssssssssssssssssee" I was thinking as I roared through the North Ridge (AKA the Glades) this morning.

The mountain made a miraculous recovery from the wacky weather we had yesterday. Groomers were out most of the night mixing in the 2 to 3 inches of snow that fell on top of the ice coated r@*n soaked surface left by yesterdays storm. I skied by myself this morning, doing my usual loop. It felt a little like training for a GS or Super G event, as conditions were very fast over a very solid, but well groomed surface.

A couple of things stood out this morning. First, I do not know how the resorts grooming team did it, but I did not run into any "blue ice" anywhere. Don't get me wrong, east coast packed powder is ice to people who ski out west, but while firm, everything I crossed today was white and very receptive to taking an edge from my skis.

The other interesting thing was that there was actually a lot of good snow if you paid attention. With the winds we had yesterday, if you stayed close to the windward side of the trail under the trees, there was plenty of soft snow to be had. Not waist deep... Not powder shots... But nice soft snow worthy of a few turns (and a pleasant break from the chattering GS speed runs presented by the middle of the trails).

Let it snow!