Mary in the little bumps on Upper Wildfire.

Mary in the little bumps on Upper Wildfire.

For the first time in weeks, Mary saw her shadow today on the ski slopes of Killington. With the remnants of this weeks snow storm moving east, a cold arctic air mass has descended over Killington, bring with it partly cloudy skies filled with puffy white clouds and copious amounts of sunshine....just the perfect combination to match the powder that has layered the resort in a nice soft covering of snow.

For years before becoming innkeepers, Mary and I used to take our spring vacation to Killington on the week of St Patrick's day. Historically, this week offers some of the best, most reliable, most fun, skiing and riding at Killington. And with a few spectacularly noticeable exceptions, last year for instance, St Patrick's week still delivers.

We started from the bay 1 parking lot on the K1 Gondola just at 9. Unlike the last couple of days, the powder hounds had withdrawn from Killington to search our stashes at Pico which re-opened today after being closed on it's normal Tuesday Wednesday schedule this week. With the powder hounds absent, Killington was virtually empty. And what we saw from the K1 gondola on our first boost just sucked us in.

Everything in the Canyon area looked superfine, so we decided to start on the Killington side on the resort with a warm up run down Cascade. With it's steep compound fall line, it is not usually a first run... but it was just beckoning with a full pitch of soft, groomed, packed powder. While it was a touch firmer than we had expected (it did get very cold last night approaching single digits) Cascade was just a beautiful steep cruiser to get the juices flowing for more interesting runs to come.

Sky Peak gleaming in the morning sunshine from Dreammaker.

Looking north up the spine of the Green Mountains with Snowdon, Ram Head, Pico, and Little Pico all standing tall in the snow as seen from Sky Lark.

Killington Peak as seen from Superstar Quad.

After Cascade we traversed in front of the K1 base lodge and headed to the Superstar quad. Superstar looked like a great high speed cruiser as well, but we decided to head to the Stash and play on the features. While Mary went around, I ventured into the woods around the Stash House. Several nice bump lines were clearly visible, which I negotiated rather quickly. We exited down lower Sky Burst. It was basically flat and fast, with the exception that it was not hard as a rock, but covered with a nice soft carpet of snow. With no one on the trail, I was able to basically travel at warp speed making sweeping carving edge to edge turns all the way to the Sky Burst lift area. It was a lot of fun!

On the Sky Burst quad, we saw that Upper Wildfire had some nice soft bumps, so off we went. The soft snow of the last couple of days, combined with a decent cadre of skiers and riders, laid down row after row of soft, pliable, bumps on Upper Wildfire from the Outer Limits entrance right down to Bear Claw. While being a minor work out, they were so good Mary declared them a do over... In over 20 years of skiing together, I don't think I have ever heard Mary declare a bump run a do over. They were just exceptional.

We continued to play around off the Sky Burst lift, taking the obligatory top to bottom Sky Burst, Sky Burst to Wild Fire, and Sky Burst to Dream Maker runs. They were all good.

We then headed into the Needles area. Cruise Control was filled with soft, ephemeral, powder puff bumps that vanished into a cloud of dust whenever you hit them. Needles Eye was superb. The trail proper was groomed with powder puff bumps. Skier right was left "au natural". Just a perfect combination... Mary was able to cruise down the groomed; I dabbled in the bumps; we met up back at the bottom..Oh... and did I say the sun was shining brightly!

After a few runs off the Skyship, we called it a day with a couple of runs of the Superstar Quad. Bittersweet was lovely. Upper Skylark was soft and pliable. Lower Skylark was surprisingly firm, but very edgeable. Middle Superstar had tons of soft powder between the rope line and the snow making whale on skiers left. A few people had played in it, but it was far from cut up. (it was like people did not see this today and by now it was already noon???) Lower Superstar was a mixed bag; some parts soft and chewy, other parts like hard tack. But it was still a nice run to end todays ski session on in the bright noon day sun.

Overall this week has yielded some of the best skiing of the year. Today was clearly in the top 10. And we still have the weekend to come!

Let it snow!