Dew Tour Village at Bear Mountain taking shape as seen from top of Outer Limits. Village at the base; Super Pipe to the left.

Dew Tour Village at Bear Mountain taking shape as seen from top of Outer Limits. Village at the base; Super Pipe to the left.

There is so much to talk about today...it is exciting.

Mary and I headed to the mountain this morning at the crack of 10. (Skiing midweek is just so civilized!) We parked in Bay 1 at the Killington (K1) Base Lodge; probably no more than 50 feet from the gondola. On with the boots, walk into a gondola cabin, and we are on our way.

At the peak, we traversed across the top of the resort for a run down to the Dew Tour village at the Bear Mountain base lodge. Last night, we met Elisabeth Stone, a production manager from Lensley Automatic. At the Dew Tour village, there are several photo kiosks, and the "Toyota Photo Booth" that Elisabeth has been setting up for the event. We stopped over to check things out.

Toyota Tent in the Dew Tour Village at Killington. Click to enlarge..

We visited the Toyota Tent. Really sweet set up. Inside a Toyota SUV that was brought up to the Village there is a photo booth that Elisabeth set up for Lensley. It's pretty goofy, just like the old 25¢ photo booths of old, except it is in a shiny new Toyota. Of course we had our pictures taken inside (that is the whole point). After that, there were a couple of very pretty girls outside with Ipads taking your email address to send you the "masterpiece". I am pretty sure the Toyota Girls were used to working events in warmer locations (with fewer clothes on...I guess I can type that). They were all bundled up in white ski parkers with special conductive gloves (to type into the Ipad's touch screen). When you think of everything that is going on behind the scenes to take a picture in a car, link to an Ipad, shoot it across the internet, all from a mobile set up less than 24 hours old, at a ski base lodge with sketchy cell phone service, in below freezing temperatures, with snow falling in the background; a geek like me realizes it is all wonderfully high tech. Did I mention that the Toyota Girls were pretty... (the car was nice too!) but I digress.

Toyota Photo Booth Pictures.... For some reason Mary always blinked when the pictures were being taken... Click to enlarge..

The Dew Tour Village has a really nice vibe to it. It just felt like it would be a nice place to hang out and enjoy the party. It was all very high energy. It had a great fun feeling... and this was on Thursday morning, just after it opened, with only a couple of hundred people milling about. Put 5 to 10 Thousand people there on Saturday and the place will be, as they say, "hopping".

Skiing today at Killington was very good. On our way over to Bear Mountain, we did the down link on Bear Claw to Wild Fire. Snow making was taking place on Upper Wild Fire (it was about 15 degrees in the shade). Lower Bear Claw was relatively soft from recent snow making, although I am sure that the traffic heading into the Dew Village will chew it up. If you are heading that way, you can also take the lower Wild Fire cutoff to the bottom of Outer Limits. This would give you another alternative to get to the Bear Mountain Base area (if you can ski black diamonds).

Outer Limits was groomed perfectly flat to support the anticipated skier and rider traffic over the weekend. The surface was relatively firm, with a 2 inch coating of mixed granular and fluff from Mother Nature. It was extremely reliable, with no slick spots (although heavy skier/rider traffic could change that.) When we skied OL this morning, there was basically no one on the trail. I was able to do sweeping side to side carving turns down OL's whole length. Mary enjoyed OL as well, on her maiden run down it for the season. It was a lot of fun on what is usually the crown jewel of bump runs in the east.

We experienced the same conditions on Dream Maker, Sky Burst (upper), Cruise Control, Needles Eye, Sky Lark and Super Star. All of the trails were beautifully soft, supporting high speed carving turns down their length. We saw one woman on a carving snow board with hard boots lay down edge to edge on Needles Eye. We hooked up with her in the Skyship Cabin and just had to tell her how graceful she looked carving down the trail. With few people on the trails, and superb, soft snow, it was easy to look really good on the mountain today.

Old Superstar in it knarly glory. Click to enlarge..

Once again, after a few laps on Superstar, I finished my day with a run down Old Superstar. The soft snow just keeps piling in. Unlike trails with snow making on them, Old Superstar is "au natural". It's all the work of Mother Nature. The tops of many bushes and small trees are still exposed, forming the bases for little bumps down the trail. The little pine tree at the far lower right of the frame got me today. I got a little to close to it resulting in a full 360 in the soft snow. It was actually quite funny, taking me a minute or so to stop laughing at myself. The rest of the trail was just a beautiful shallow pitched, soft, bump run. It got the heart pumping, and the legs working; reminding me that skiing is not all about cruising down groomers at high speed. It's about being outside, enjoying the mountain, and learning about yourself in the process.

If you come to Killington this weekend for the Dew Tour, have a great time. Dress warm, as it is Vermont in Mid Winter. And above all, enjoy the show!

.....Let it snow!