Thanksgiving Holiday Weekend in New England, a time of blackout dates on Special Offers and crowded slopes at the larger ski resorts. With a marginal early season snow wise in which many ski areas were pushing opening days back and Non-Crystalline Precipitation had fallen fallen twice, not many solid options were available. I decided to do the previously unthinkable and make the trek up to Killington Vermont which was the only New England ski area that could offer up decent pitched trails and bumps. While the parking lot was quickly filling up, I paid the man a ridiculous $49 for a little over 20 trails and boarded the K1 Gondola.
From the Summit of Killington, I quickly tracked down Great Northern which is one of Killington’s many throw away connector trails. Today, Great Northern was more than just a connecting trail, it was a novice skiers’ only option from the summit which made it a trail to be avoided at all costs throughout the day. Bailing to the right onto an already scraped down Lower Reason was probably not the best option. I took the Northern Ridge Triple back up and tried Upper Rime where snow blowers were going top to bottom, a definite turn off. I quickly abandoned all the upper mountain trails on Killington Peak and held on for dear life skiing the middle portion of Great Northern where I managed to find some rocks which I threw back into the woods going down skiers left.
The Snowdon area was much more to my liking with exception of the middle Great Northern intersections which were simply organized chaos. Killington thankfully had an ambassador to help keep traffic running somewhat smoothly. I noticed the Poma servicing the upper trails of Snowdon and decided I was overdue for my first Poma ride. While awaiting my first poma experience, I watched a snowboarder get a huge amount of air time and fall to his knees. The determined fellow tried to hang on to the lift which dragged him up the mountain from a face plant position. The fellow soon gave up where upon another snowboarder boarder flawlessly and grace. From there I made turns down Upper Chute which was okay with some small bumps on skiers left.
Having spied some bumps on Highline from the K1 Gondola, I navigated the Great Northern intersection traffic and headed for Highline. Bumps indeed! Highline hosted big bumps with tight and often random lines on extremely soft snow, too soft actually probably due to recent rains. I took the steepest option skiers right making hop turns and working the legs fast and furious. Incredible run for early season given the tight lines on such a steep pitch. Novice snowboards managed to barely avoid hitting me while side slipping the entire trail and exposing frozen base in their wake. Not cool.
After returning to the lodge to rest my feet, I opted for the Snowdon Triple was a stop-and-go affair. I returned to the Snowdon Triple two more unfortunate cycles and the chairlift stopped without exaggeration no less than 20-30 times each cycle. Fortunately, the Snowdon Quad soon came online servicing the same exact terrain. I spent the remainder of my afternoon cycling on the Snowdon Quad with exception of my final run. Mouse Run was an awesome cruiser from the summit of Snowdon with excellent cover and snow. I returned to this trail to make high speed wide arcs several times. Below Mouse Run and the Great Northern Intersection was my favorite Run of the Day, Mouse Trap. I stayed far skiers left hugging the trees down the steepest part of the trail, and found awesome soft packed powder and bumps. I alternated between bump technique and hop turns as I had want to do, and made several graceful yet aggressive runs down this excellent pitch which dumped out into utter chaos.Below Mouse Trap was yet another four way intersection with Great Northern. Great Northern and Chute entered from skiers left as Mouse Trap ran out where Lower Chute continued straight down to the Snowdon Quad and Bunny Buster exited stage right back the the Base Lodge. This intersection was by far the most dangerous event I have ever witness in person on skis. Beginners and novices were flying every which way completely out of control, often times throwing themselves to the ground to avoid a near miss. That is when a collision could be avoided at all. The intersection area was scraped to the bone from all the traffic and skidding making matters worse. A disaster waiting to happen for sure, but at least Killington had no less than four ambassadors trying to help direct traffic.
Bunny Buster was a tough option to get down due to the traffic and amount of skiers either standing in the middle of the trail or flying down the hill out of control from above. I managed to pick my way down skiers left scoring a few soft bumps and pushed over loose snow. Back on the other option of Lower Chute, novices were equally challenged to get down the scraped run while avoiding the yahoos gone out of control and flailing to the ground. Thankfully for me, I spied some firm and scraped bumps to skiers right. While not too pleasant, it was a much better and far less traveled alternative to the chaos ensuing down the center of the trail.
After I tired with the hassle of dealing with the masses on Snowdon, I decided to conclude my day with my first ever ascent of the Superstar Quad. The infamous Quad rises over Killington’s ever shrinking late season ski trail Superstar. From the top of the quad, fine views could be had towards southern Vermont in which cloud cover created a false sunset that was quite cool to watch. Skyelark was the only way down, which proved to be quite the mixed bag! The initial pitch was a steep and scraped pitch that wasn’t too pleasing but leveled out into random small bumps and variable soft snow. Soon, a bump field of random bumps of varying sizes and lines came into view that wasn’t the most fun but kept people on their feet. Again the trail leveled out and then dipped again with some nice tight bigger bumps before coming to the crux of the trail that sported a steep pitch with huge tight bumps. Most skiers paused at the top of the monsterous bumps denying the reality that there was no other way down. I managed okay despite my dislike for bumps so large, but most people did not fare so well. The remainder of the run was a decent run out of variable random bumps and variable snow.
An incredible day at Killington I must admit and I offer full props to Killington for putting out such an incredible product given the recent non-crystalline precipitation, warn period, and high amount of traffic. Killington not only offered up so much more vertical and trail counts than any other ski area in the East, but they did so with style offering quite a few bump runs on steeper terrain. My biggest concern this ski day was the amount of novice and beginner skiers flailing and having a miserable go at skiing due to the high crowds and horrible conditions on the beginner slopes. Experts could enjoy fantastic conditions on most slopes but beginners simply had no where to turn to enjoy a nice moderate sloped with great snow conditions and elbow room. Certainly this type of introduction to the world of skiing can not be good for new skiers and I hope Killington re-evaluates its approach to handling less skilled skiers during the early season.
