Mary looks on as KMS student sticks a jump on Dream Maker

Mary looks on as KMS student sticks a jump on Dream Maker

17 runs. 2 hours 35 minutes. Bright sunshine. Temperatures in the mid teens. Machine groomed packed powder or little 2 foot bumps. Wow!

I had Mary in the lift line at Superstar this morning at 8:50AM. There were about 15 people in front of us. It had all the makings of a great ski day. It did not disappoint.

We started, as we often do on cruising days, in the Stash. Nicely groomed with a slight coating of fresh powder made for a good warm up. After that it was multiple loops on the Skye Burst Quad, the Bear Chair at Outer Limits, the Needles Eye Quad, and the Superstar Express. Even though there were more people than previous Fridays, we barely spent more than 30 seconds waiting for a chair; many times being able to ski right to the lift after all of the group assembled from the previous run.

The choice today for us was primarily between machine groomed packed powder trails, or little soft bumps.

The trails at Bear Mountain were the former. 3-5 inches of packed powder covering a firm base allowed Skye Burst, Bear Claw, Stash, Dream Maker, and Lower Wild Fire to become a series of high speed cruisers. Upper Wildfire featured some large bumps which we choose to ignore. In todays conditions, large bumps meant 3-5 foot mounds with hardpack skid plate between them. Very navigable if you found yourself in the middle of such a bump field, but with so many trails to choose from today you did not need to subject your knees to that kind of torture.

On the Skye Peak side of the resort, Needles Eye was just a beautiful little bump field. 1 to 2 food powder bumps with plenty of soft snow in between. It was a welcomed change from the high speed loops at Bear Mountain. You had to think about your line, execute turns, get into a rhythm. Give me more!

Bitter Sweet, Skylark, Superstar, Ovation, and Vertigo offered much of the same. Each featured stretches of packed powder interspersed with stretches of small bump fields, the product of skier and rider traffic.

After 17 runs, we were "cooked". The 1 hour ski nap back at the inn was, to quote members of the Klingon empire, "Glorious". It should be a great weekend to ski at Killington.

Let it snow!