Today had all the makings of fantastic adventure: equipment failure, gear breakage, poor packing skills, lost helmet ear pads, and horrific skiing. Depending upon one’s outlook on life, it could have either been a comedy or a tragedy. Or both. My amusement while “skiing” (i.e. attempting and failing to link two turns) suggested comedy. But my frustration with trying to engage my Dynafits after falling (again) and associated broken brake suggested tragedy. I laughed, but I didn’t cry.
A foot of fresh blanketed Killington under a blue bird sky, a rarity the day following a storm. While changing and donning gear outside in the cold, I commented that “this is always the worst part of any tour,” the cold blast of wind in your thermals when pulling on your pants and jacket. If anyone had warned us that the worst was yet to come, we would have scoffed and still charged up the mountain. And I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
To give you an idea about the conditions, I could show you an awesome powder spraying mid-air action shot:
But that would grossly misrepresent the skiing that we “enjoyed”. Conditions involved disturbingly difficult multi-layered snow requiring full lean back-tips up-unsteady skiing “technique”:
The sitzmark was the turn utilized most by skiers today. The “straight line across the fall line” was another favorite. We all laughed in frustration and befuddled puzzlement that such visually appealing snow could dish out so much pain and suffering. And then we hiked back up for a second run.
8 thoughts on “Beastly Skiing at the Beast”
Hey I wasn’t there, so I can still look at the pics and droool, right? Do you think it was better in the dark last night? Photos are beautiful regardless.
Well, at least it kept Steve off the mean streets of Plymouth, or cruising in RutVegas, but more importantly got him to log off for a few hours.
Pretty heavy stuff, eh? How many did you do?
What was the club of the day? 4-iron?
Was it really that cold that you missed your ear flap? Hey I have a spare set of Giro flaps if you want them.
I found the missing ear flaps in my bag when I got back to the car. We did two-ish runs. I’m on vaca this week so I was already logged off. 🙂
Well, it looks like fun, even if it was challenging. Thanks for the report!
Good on you for getting out man!
Sounds like an interesting adventure to start the season!
I hope you have a great day on Sunday.
🙂
-w
Beastly or not, the furst turns – and the first TR of the season – are always fun!
Hi Killington Dude:
Do you have any opinion if the conditions this year at Killington (as of 12/4/2011) are typical for this time of the year ? We have reservations for Dec 19-22, 2011, and there have been some recent warm days that are taking the toll on the beast.
I’ve been watching the ski-cams on killington web site, and it appears that the conditions don’t look very good at this moment (12/4/2011). Some of the ski-cams don’t work reliably anymore, or are overloaded with too many people trying to watch at the same time (NOT SURE WHICH).
First, I ain’t no “Killington Dude”.
Conditions everywhere in the east are sub-par. It has been above average temperatures for over a month now. Who knows what will happen in the next two weeks.