Snow guns burying Lower Skyburst in man-made blizzard

Snow guns burying Lower Skyburst in man-made blizzard

It only took 4 days but now I can officially say that I skied in 2012. The end of the world as we know it may occur this year, at least as predicted by 2012 doomsday wonks, or not... but I can proudly say that I buckled up my boots, clicked on my skis, and once again enjoyed throwing myself down a mountain verifying the law of gravity and validating Newtonian Physics along the way. And we call this FUN!

Today started a little late, the product of the bone chilling cold and a warm blanket. By 10:00 AM, I was up at Killington's K1 base lodge, waiting for some friends who were also skiing for the day. A fairly large line of college students were queuing for the K1 Gondola, so we decided to go the southern route via the Superstar Quad and head towards Bear Mountain.

In a season bereft of copious natural snow, the resort has been spending their snow making resources covering Skyburst. It's a smart strategy as it gives the resort access to the Bear Mountain base area and the high speed Skyburst Quad. It also plays into the hands of the Dew Tour, which is scheduled to visit Killington in 3 weeks. Upper Skyburst was flat and fast. Lower Skyburst, in the snow guns, was soft and bumpy. Huge mounds of snow are everywhere, the product of multiple days of continuous snow making. Snow making was also occurring on Lower Wildfire, but that was still closed off to skiers and riders.

From Skyburst, we then headed into the Needles Eye area with a run down Cruise Control. Upper Cruise was well covered but thing, with many rocks churned up by snow groomers littering the trail. Lower Cruise Control was the proverbial flat and fast run. Snow coverage across the trail was good, with the trail being significantly firmer in the middle, versus down the sides. Ominously, on the ride up the Needles Eye Quad after Cruise Control, we noted that the resort has not made any attempts as yet to make snow along Needles Eye. Hard to say exactly why (all those guns going at Bear?), but it will be a while before we are skiing and riding down Needles Eye unless Mother Nature delivers a monster dump in the near future.

From the Needles Eye Quad, after another loop on Cruise Control, we headed down Bittersweet. Upper Bitter was scratchy in multiple places, with a lot of hard pack on skier left and down the middle. Skiers right had a thin coating of loose snow, the product of skiers and riders sliding down the middle of the trail, but it was only covering more hardback underneath. Lower Bittersweet on the other had had nice snow all the way down skiers right to the junction with Skylark. Because of the cold, we decided to skip another ride up the Superstar Quad for a few runs over on Snowdon.

At Snowdon, we took a traverse from the top of the Snowdon Quad over to North Ridge. Rime and Reason were both skiing well, as was Great Northern. Mouse Trap was seeing constant snow making from the tower mountain fan gun, leaving the surface soft and creamy. Lower Bunny Buster was also soft, but there were a few places that were skied off, creating some skid zones in heavy skier traffic.

Overall, it was a nice day to be out on the mountain... But getting your snow dancing shoes out is in order.

Let it snow!!!