The run home - Highline to Interceptor

The run home - Highline to Interceptor

It has been a very full day.

As I sit down to write this installment to killingtonblog.com, the clock has just struck 11:30 PM. My legs feel like Picaso's famous painting The Scream. They are talking to me...no yelling at me. And they are a bit wobbly as well. A day of rodeo riding beautiful powder bumps on the slopes of Killington followed by several hours behind a 9 horsepower, rattle your bones till the ache, snowblower will do that.

In short.... it was a great day to be in Killington!

I can't go into the details of everywhere we skied at the resort today. We did many of the usual suspects....Wildfire, Bear Claw, Cruise Control, Bittersweet, Skylark, Superstar. We traversed across the mountain for runs down Cascade, East Fall, Rime, Reason, Great Northern, Chute, Bunny Buster, Mouse Trap, Great Bear. And then we also did some bush whacking, some reserved runs through the trees, some places where knowing where you are does not mean you know where you are going.

It was a great day to be in Killington!

If you subscribe to the resorts newsletter, The Drift, you will read in the morning about feet of snow falling on Killington the last few days. You may be enticed to visit Killington to play on the mountain, and by all means please come to Vermont and stay with us at the Birch Ridge Inn. But that does not tell the half of what it was like on the trails today.

The morning started with snow, glorious snow. To the resorts credit, they did not over groom the place last night, letting the snow build up on the trails so skiers and riders could enjoy the experience of being in fresh powder. All morning long, the resort was experiencing a 1 to 2 inch per hour snow fall, so virtually every run was an opportunity to find fresh powder on the trail. You did not need to look far. Many times it was right down the middle of what ever trail you were on at the time. Of course, we rarely stayed in the middle of any trail for long. Like blood hounds in search of a scent,if the best powder was right, we turned right. If the best powder was left, we turned left. At least in the first 30-45 minutes, we tried not to cross each others path. We tried not to ruin it for other skiers and riders and restricted our turns to graceful swiggles in the snow, verses large arcing cross trail traverses. But by 10AM, all bets were off.

It was a great day to be in Killington!

Several thousand people turned out to Killington today to play in the snow. There were no lift lines. There was no rowdy behavior. There was a lot of ear to ear grins. And by 10 AM there were a lot of bumps.

The bumps were like Forrest Gumps box of chocolates. Some were ephemeral, vanishing into a cloud of fluff as you hit them. Some were like a goose down pillow, obediently and softly giving way when lovingly manipulated by your skis. Some were powder sugar coated hard candy, causing audible grunts when they were hit as your legs were pushed into your chest forcing all the air out of your lungs.

On some of the wider trails, where most days the careful grooming by the resort causes local skiers to experience a fog of boredom, the bumps were the most forgiving. Carving at speed was your friend with broad smiles at the end of the trail for the next lift ride up. On the narrower trails, the "natural trails", the trails not touched by human hands or tilled by GPS coordinated machines, the bumps became a wild bucking bronco rodeo ride. Speed, and momentum, and inertia, and flying powder, all came into play with even bigger smiles of self satisfaction in the next lift line.

It was a great day to be in Killington!

I have one more check in tonight to go before I go to bed. I hope they get here soon. I want to do it all over again in the morning!

Let it snow!!!