Forest behind the Birch Ridge Inn at Killington glistening under a heavy coating of ice. 

In typical New England fashion, the Killington region has experienced every possible kind of weather over the last 36 hours. Currently, 4 PM Thursday afternoon, it is snowing heavily. Previously we had experienced snow, sleet, r@*n, freezing r@*n, and a fair dose of wind.

Overnight the area experienced a considerable ice build up on exposed surfaces. Anything exposed to the elements is covered in a candy coating of ice from 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

The good news in all of this, however, is that snow levels actually rose slightly during the period. Once the slopes on the mountain get groomed out, conditions should be quite nice for some skiing and riding over the upcoming Easter weekend.

Let it snow!

Skye Peak Quad 

In a note to season pass holders sent out this afternoon, followed by a press release, the Killington-Pico Ski Resort announced a series of improvements that they plan to make for next ski season. Overall the mountain estimated that they would spend $8.4 million on improvements to the resort during the months leading up to the 2008-09 season.

The big announcement on the improvement list is replacement of the Skye Peak fixed grip quad with a high speed detachable quad. The mountain claims that the new lift will cut the time to ride up Skye Peak from 13 minutes to 5 minutes. From personal experience, the 13 minute ride was not unpleasant on sunny days like yesterday, but with the wind blowing in the middle of January, shaving 8 minutes off the time on the Skye Peak lift will be greatly appreciated.

Concurrent with the improvement announcement, Killington also announced Season Pass prices for the 2008-2009 season. If you would like more details, you can click through to the press release, and season pass pricing information on the resorts website: killington.com.

Let it snow!

Mary skiing across top of Superstar on her way to Skye Lark under a beautiful bright blue sky. 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day. And while the official color of the day is definitely green, the bright blue of todays sky is a strong challenger.

Mary and I headed to the mountain a little later this morning. Weather conditions over the weekend promoted some surface melting. Temperatures in the area dipped into the teens last night. We felt going out a little later would give the sunshine some time to work it's magic... and it did! While surface conditions around the mountain were generally firm, the warm temperatures made them just pliable enough for a late morning of carving turns.

Skiing today at Bear Mountain was still limited while the resort cleans up from the weekends Chevy Grand Prix. Upper Bear Trap and Wildfire were in great shape. Lower Wildfire, on the other hand, was turning into it's typical spring time beach, as all of the skier and rider traffic coming to Bear Mountain was funneled down it's compound fall line.

The park on Middle Dream Maker was in nice shape. It was funneling out onto Great Eastern, again due to the Grand Prix cleanup. On a lark, when we got on to Great Eastern we decided to keep going all the way to the lower skyeship terminal on Route 4. Most of the way we took "Home Stretch", which had great snow coverage. It was just a beautiful day to cruise down the mountain.

From the Skyeship, I took Upper Dream Maker to Cruise Control. Mary took Skye Burst to Cruise. Upper Dream Maker was still firm on skier's right in the shade. Skiers left, in full sunshine, was nice and soft with little bumps forming. Mary reported that Skye Burst had nice soft snow coverage. It had been closed for a couple of days due to the Grand Prix so it did not get packed down with skier traffic like some of the other trails.

We finished up with several loops through Needles Eye, Bitter Sweet, Skye Lark and Super Star. Under full sunshine with warm temperatures and a bright blue sky, they were all do overs.. We did not want to leave...so it goes.

Let it snow!

Chevy Snowboarding Grand Prix Competitors wait their turn on Bear Claw below the Viper Pit at Bear Mountain. 

The Chevy US Snowboarding Grand Prix at Bear Mountain, Killington, is wrapping up this afternoon. Under lightly overcast skies, the Men's and Women's Slopestyle competition was held on Lower Bear Claw on a park specifically created for the event.

The Halfpipe finals, originally scheduled for Saturday night, were rescheduled for this afternoon from 2:30 to 4:30 PM. Planned to take place under the lights on the half pipe carved on Lower Dream Maker,

People getting into position to watch the Half Pipe finals. (Click to enlarge.)

the half pipe finals were suspended on Saturday evening due to heavy fog obscuring visibility, limiting the judges ability to evaluate each competitor.

I skied over to Bear Mountain at mid day to watch the event for a few minutes. Crowds were just starting to form to watch the Half Pipe finals. Unfortunately, I needed to get back to the inn before the event took place, but it looked like it would be a fairly busy afternoon at Bear Mountain.

Let it snow!

Bear Mountain venue set up for the Chevy U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix 

While competitors took training runs, workers at the Killington Resort were busy putting the finishing touches to get Bear Mountain ready to host the Chevy U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix this weekend.

For the last 10 days, Killington has been rebuilding the Half Pipe on lower Dream Maker and a "Slopestyle" course on lower Bear Claw. The amount of snow that has been created and moved around to build the competition venue is nothing short of impressive. When you add in the lighting, public address, and television camera areas (NBC will be providing TV coverage), you start to appreciate that the resort did a lot more than just sending a couple of grooming machines out to move snow around to get ready for the event.

The schedule for the Chevy Snowboard Grand Prix this weekend is:

I went over to Bear Mountain this morning to take some background pictures of the venue. It is really impressive what the resort has done to rebuilt the half pipe on Dream Maker and build the Slopestyle course on lower Bear Claw. It should be a fun event to watch.

Half Pipe on lower Dream Maker. (Click to enlarge.)

Side View of the Half Pipe set up for the Chevy Grand Prix. (Click to enlarge.)

Snowboarding Slopestyle course set up on lower Bear Claw (Click to enlarge.)

A competitor takes some air during a practice session on the Slopestyle course. (Click to enlarge.)

Let it snow!

Mary and our friend Walt on the Canyon Quad 

When Killington is bad...well we live here...If you read my blog often you know what a picture of Johnny Boys means. But on other days, Killington is great. And today was one of them.

Today was not a powder day. The sunshine was not out, in fact it was snowing on the mountain all morning. The grooming was not perfect. The firm ice of the last couple of days has been groomed out, leaving beach sand and cookies on many of the trails. But today was one of those lift to lift, hard skiing, black diamond days that can only happen on the east coast at Killington.

Today from the get go, Killington had almost all of their lifts turning, at full operating speed. In the space of 2 hours and 15 minutes, we took 14 lifts skiing exclusively black and double black diamond terrain with only one ride to the top of the mountain (the first) on the K1 gondola. It was probably the hardest, most concentrated, morning of skiing we have done at Killington in a couple of years. And if it were not for work around the inn, we would still probably be out on the hill.

We started the day riding the Canyon Quad. Usually this chair is not running during the week. So it was a pleasure to see it running first thing this morning. We looped through the entire canyon area. Cascades and East Fall were in nice shape, worthy of multiple do overs. Double Dipper was groomed flat, but still very firm and slick. As the 3rd run of the day, it was not for the faint of heart, but the group we were with is made up of very technically proficient skiers, so we all just ripped down Double Dippers compound fall line.

After the Canyon area, we bypassed the K1 Base Lodge by skiing across the top of the mountain via Launch Pad to Superstar. Superstar, Skye Lark, Bittersweet were all better than yesterday, having experienced another groom overnight to break up a lot of the residual cookies. On our run down Bittersweet, we noticed that the Needle Eye Quad was also running, so we looped over there to finish the morning.

Needles Eye had 2 to 3 inches of ground up snow from top to bottom. I did several loops down skiers left. The snow was not conducive to bump formation, but because of the depth of the beach sand, plenty of turns were required. And then to top it off we were presented with Vertigo, groomed out from top to bottom.

Clearly Vertigo had probably only had one pass of grooming, as there were a lot of chucks along the trail. But the headwall was as sweet as can be, with no ice or slick spots. Vertigo's headwall supported a nice series of tight turns, which carried all the way through to the Snow Shed cross over. Now if we only had a couple of feet of champagne powder on top??? But I am getting greedy.

Let it snow.

Bear Claw being prepared for the Chevrolet US Snowboarding Grand Prix to be held at Killington March 15 and 16. 

Today was a beautiful ski day at Killington. Temperatures were in the high teens to upper 20's. Sunshine was almost 100%. Snow surfaces are continuing to improve from last weekends r@*n.

We started out this morning on the K1 Gondola with a couple of quick loops down Highline and Cascade. Both trails were well groomed but firm, as the mornings sun had not had a chance to soften up the surfaces. After Cascade, as the K1 Gondola was getting crowded (it is Canada week in Killington), instead of staying in the Canyon area we decided to ski across the top over to Bear Mountain.

Terrain at Bear is somewhat limited as the mountain prepares for the Chevrolet US Snowboarding Grand Prix this coming weekend. Lower Bear Claw and Dream Maker are closed off to allow the mountain to construct what can only be described as huge terrain features for the event. Never matter, though, as Wildfire and Outer Limits were in nice shape and worthy of several do-overs.

Upper Wildfire was flat and firm. Groomers had worked the surface over fairly well so there was minimal ice, but it was still firm under foot. Lower Wildfire was starting to corn up in the sun. It was not warm enough to get much melting going, but because of the concentrated ski traffic on Lower Wildfire, the surface was starting to break up heading towards a beach sand consistency. Outer Limits, in full sunshine, was also getting very loose. The trail was groomed flat, but skier traffic was chopping up the surface even more, turning over all sorts of "death cookies" and other artifacts.

From Bear we took several loops through Cruise Control, Needles Eye, and Bittersweet. All were nice. I finished my day with a couple of runs down Superstar. From the lift, Superstar looked like it might be a little slick, but at noon time the surface was quite nice. The headwall was very firm, but I found some loose granular on skiers right. Middle Superstar and the lower face were flat and fast. They were very receptive to carving turns while offering loose granular in natural high traffic sections.

All in all, a nice ski day at Killington. And we have a little snow in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow to keep things nice.

Let it snow.