Killington, VT 1/25/00

[randy w]

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/26/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>I parked at the Bear side parking lot and was on the Bear quad (the only lift running on that side) just after 9 AM. Upper Wildfire still had low angle bumps from the weekend, it was groomed below where it intersects with other trails. Outer Limits was groomed yesterday morning and is chuffed up a bit, but not any serious bumps yet. It started snowing at about 9:30 AM, and was coming down heavy by 10 AM as Cookie noted. I then did a three runs down the upper section of the gondola - upper Vertigo has lots of new manmade snow, made just recently, so there is no ice in the base. To my suprise, lower Vertigo is open (the K. web trail listing is *wrong*) with natural snow only and skiing like a slightly bumped up natural only trail. Yum. Rode up K1 and did the Canyon quad. Snowguns running on Downdraft. Double dipper groomed flat but with fun new snow on the bottom quarter from the Downdraft guns. Not worth sticking around. Off of Superstar (by this time there was a good 2-3 inches of new snow) I toured around and found joy in Superstar headwall, hard left to skiers left of Old Superstar to middle Ovation back to lower pitch of Superstar, which was flat, but had a 4 bump wide bump field on skiers left on the bottom pitch. Lower Ovation headwall is closed, which according to ski patrol has a serious slide for life slick surface and is waiting for some winch cats to groom it. I had to do the headwall hard left to Old S.Star because the right turn off the top of the S.Star quad is closed - there are guns running on the connector there *and* - dig it - on the upper Ovation headwall - I haven't seen them make snow there for a few years. After I did few of the above runs, I did some more Vertigo before I had to head back to work. The entry to Vertigo from Bittersweet is closed and you have to go to the right and loop past the top of the Needles Eye quad to get there and this kept most people away. When I got back on Vertigo at about 11:30 AM, I found about 3 inches of new snow with very few tracks. YumYumYum. Middle Ovation has ungroomed new snowmaking on it and I could have starred in a Warren Miller comedy shot when I got way behind getting air off a whale, landed, flapped about, got air off the next whale still way behind on my skiis, landed and barely made it to something resembling being centered over my skiis when I got air off a third whale.