Killington 1-25-11

[Ride Delaware ?]

As I stated in the weather thread yesterday, I arrived at Killington at 5:30 PM to -6 degrees. By the time I got ready to go to sleep, it was around -11. However, this clipper system moving through brought some warm weather with it, and the temperature registered 7 degrees by 8:30 AM. We are staying in the Fall Line Condominiums which are about 1 mile from the Snowshed base lodge. The room is very dry and caused me some trouble going to sleep, so I got a little bit of a slow start to the day. As usual, I got out of the condo and onto the slopes by 9:30 AM to light snow and anywhere from 1-2" of fresh. It flurried most of the day but didn't add to the accumulations at all. When I was here at the end of December, there were about 80 trails open. Today there were 133 out of 141, and it has snowed a ton since I left. There is easily 3 feet of snow off piste with even more at the top of the mountain. The road itself is becoming smaller from lacking places to push the snow.

 

I started out at the Skyeship Stage 1 this morning and went to the top of Skye Peak. Although it is a beginner trail and has some flat spots, I love to ride the 5 mile (with the reconfiguration) Great Eastern. There were some slight winds this morning with limited visibility. It was still pretty chilly and I didn't take many pictures, especially in the morning. My first run down the Great Eastern was great. There were no crowds and the snow held up great throughout the day. The top half of Great Eastern was well groomed while the bottom half was groomed early last night and had an untouched 2" on top of it. I tried switching my binding angle last night, and wasn't happy with it, so I switched them back on the ride to the top, and I wasn't happy with that either, so I drastically changed my width and stance and am very happy with it. I was only able to switch one binding out a trip, so I got several more runs in to test the feel. I went down Cruise Control, High Road, and Bittersweet at least 2 times apiece, and they were all well groomed with fresh snow that was beginning to clump up but was easy to cut through. Around noon, I decided to head down to Bear Mountain to check out what it looked like mid season. Last time I was here, it was just opened with only Skyeburst open under a bunch of snowguns. The Dew Tour was this weekend, and they had most of the parks closed on Bear to try and reshape them. Therefore, most of the trails were under snowguns and also closed. However, enough snow had fallen that Outer Limits was open in its entirety. Part of it was under guns, and part of it was moguled up, but the middle was left ungroomed and was a great ride... But definitely a workout. After that, I decided to head back to the condo for lunch down the Fall Line Condo trail. It was groomed once with a light coating of snow on top of it, and it was by far the worst trails I have ever ridden. It makes the Birches at Camelback look steep as hell. It was easily a mile and a half long and was flat and partially uphill at times. It was a hell of a workout.

 

After a lunch of soup and a sandwich, I met up with my dad for several afternoon runs. We started off at Ramshead and went straight down Header. Even at 2 PM it was still in excellent shape with some untouched on the sides. Here are two shots I took from the lift looking down Header and Easy Street:

 

 

 

After taking 3 runs or so off of the Ramshead Quad, we headed over to the K1 Gondola to hit Great Northern from top to bottom. The view was starting to get obscured by some fog, but the amount of snow up there was amazing. Here is a picture mid-mountain of Great Northern where it intersects with Rime:

 

 

After Great Northern, we went back up the Gondola to hit Rime to Great Northern, both of which were in great shape and barely scraped off. We quickly got down to the Ramshead Quad to get one last run in before the end of the day. Heres a shot from the Ramshead Quad Base:

 

 

We shot straight down Header and through the tunnel over to Snowshed so that I could grab some stuff from the shop, which didn't have what I needed. Overall I got in 18 runs in for close to 28,000 total vert. It doesnt look the storm that was supposed to hit us is going to, but it is supposed to warm up a little bit and will be quite enjoyable tomorrow. Great first day...

Edited January 26, 2011 by Ride Delaware ?

[Justin]

im up at stowe for the week...it was coolllddd as fuck the past two days