Snow guns in overdrive on Cascade at Killington

Snow guns in overdrive on Cascade at Killington

3 days in a row... not quite a trend, but has been nice to get out on the slopes of Killington this week.

Today, conditions at the resort were vastly improved from the last couple of days. Not great mid winter conditions, mind you, but the light snow that fell to earth yesterday afternoon and early last night really made a difference on the slopes. Many of the "blemishes" Mother Nature has created the last couple of weeks were at least covered up for the day.

The resort is continuing to make copious amounts of snow on Skyburst to support the upcoming Dew Tour. Lower Wildfire was opened today as the major trail into the Bear Mountain Base area. Groomers were clearly hard at work last evening moving the snow piles around, filling in water bars, and creating a skiable surface. In general, Wildfire was soft with a few residual chunks left over from grooming. The main difficulty on the trail was the fog created by all of the Low-E snow guns in operation on Skyburst beside Wildfire. Several hundred yards of the trail were basically a fog white out. The vertigo challenged should be on the lookout for conditions like that near snowmaking operations.

Snow guns were also operating on Cruise Control, working to cover some of the loose rocks turned over earlier in the week by grooming operations. Needles Eye is still waiting for some work, so we took a bunch of loops on Bittersweet, Skylark and Superstar, all of which were firm in spots, but with generally good snow down the edges.

Over on Killington Peak, Cascades lived up to it's diamond rating today as aggressive ongoing snowmaking is carpeting the trail in large, soft, irregular bumps. East Falls was a skid plate in places. Rime and Reason had nice snow, a product of a closed North Ridge Triple.

On Snowdon, the Chute was in really good shape. Mousetrap continues to be carpeted with snow from the continuously operating Fan Gun. Lower Bunny Buster also had nice snow and skied very well given all of the traffic it sees.

Overall, conditions were much improved. It just goes to show what a little snow can do. If only we could have a fresh 3 or 4 inches every night! Let it snow!!!