Killington, VT 5/22/99

JSpin · Apr 17, 2000

(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 5/24/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.) We had a couple of free tickets left for Killington, so we decided to go down on Saturday for a few runs. I joined up with my friends E and Chris, and we arrived at Killington for the afternoon. The temperature felt around 70 degrees, and the sky was basically fair with a few high clouds. Ticket prices are currently $25, but if you bring an old ski ticket, they take $10 off, bringing it down to $16.25 when you include tax. We had two free passes that needed to be used up this season, so all around it was a pretty cheap day. Here is the current situation with Superstar (as of Saturday at least). You get on the lift with skis in hand (not on feet), ride to the top and walk off. There is no snow above the top of the first steep pitch, and you have to walk down the first steep pitch for about 20 yards, and then you get to where the snow starts. Lots of people were chucking their skis off the lift right near the end of the ride to avoid carrying them down the hill. After I discovered that the edges of my skis were missing in two different places (no idea when that happened), I readily adopted this practice as well. Once you click into your skis, you ski the rest of the first steep pitch, which is well covered, just about the whole width of the trail. Then you ski the flatter middle portion of the trail. The first 50 yards of this actually have a few rocks showing in the troughs of some of the bumps. At about the 50 yard mark on the flat section (almost exactly where tower 11 is, there is a two foot strip of dirt that cuts across the whole trail. Many people were jumping it, but we found that it was narrow enough that you could simply push some snow from above and make a snow bridge across. The remainder of the flat middle section has excellent coverage, no rocks, although the trail is only about half it regular size in width. As you approach the steep pitch near the bottom of the trail, you are forced to the right because that is the only section that has continuous snow. This section is about 3-5 bumps wide for about 10 yards, and things are getting thin there with rocks poking through in almost all of the troughs. After you pass this bottleneck, the trail widens out again and you can finish off the steep pitch with great cover. After the final steep pitch comes the flatter section toward the bottom and things get narrower again, probably 6-8 bumps wide and on the skiers left of the trail. The coverage here is again great through, and you can follow right down to where the trail flattens out and then you take off your skis and it's about 30-40 yards to the lift (all flat though). The Mayflies are certainly out. The only time they were a problem was when you were skiing and stopped for more than a few moments, then they would start to buzz around you (although they did not seem to be biting). One of my friends was hiking Camel's Hump that day and he said it was miserable there with the number of flies, and the buzzing, and the biting, and the hey hey it hurts me etc. We skied until a little after 3:00 and called it a day. The snow was nice and soft in most spots and it was good bump skiing. Crowds were light, but that may be because it's not ski on / ski off. That may have been my last day this season, but if it was, it was a good one.

Killington, VT 5/22/99

JSpin

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