Gusty Winds were moving the clouds quickly past the summit. The temp was 26 degrees atop the peak with snow guns roaring . Dry, dangerous but doable were they had groomed the ice. Ungroomed trails were roped off. Today was not a pretty sight as we are on day one of the recovery effort. Best ski day of the weekend by far was yesterday. Lower East Fall was groomed fast track with not a lot turns required. Carpet seats in the gondolas were soaked so we sat on our poles to keep from getting wet. Superstar top to bottom was fairly pleasant. Did not take too long to tire of the ice skating and retire to the Summit Lodge. Those that decided to take the weekend off made a good choice.
Grade D+
Quote of the Day - What a difference from the ski conditions last Sunday.
Superstar is a survivor..jpg (50.51 KiB) Viewed 1790 times
Bunny Buster is sad.jpg (35.51 KiB) Viewed 1790 times
ROTD all to ourselves..jpg (54.48 KiB) Viewed 1790 times
I'm heading up to Killington tomorrow to ski midweek with my daughter and plan to buy the 3 out of 4 day lift ticket so need to make a decision by tomorrow. Would it be better to ski Tuesday-Wed and Thursday (as we originally planned) or, with the chance of r*in/snow showers Monday night into Tuesday, should I ski Wed, Thurs and Friday instead?
My thoughts are that the weather looks like it'll be improving as the week goes on and it (hopefully) will give the snow guns and groomers more time to repair the damage so putting it off one day will be the way to go. Basically I don't want to pay for an extra day and not use it and we have 'til Friday night before we have to leave so why not get the best we can?
We ski groomers, mostly blues and single diamond blacks like Superstar. Thanks for any input and we love Killington! :)
If you're going up there tomorrow, you can decide Tues am., based on the radar and your gut-feel criteria.
They have quite a bit of work to do. Right now WedThuFri look to be better.
Hope it goes well for you!
Wavewheeler wrote: I'm heading up to Killington tomorrow to ski midweek with my daughter and plan to buy the 3 out of 4 day lift ticket so need to make a decision by tomorrow. Would it be better to ski Tuesday-Wed and Thursday (as we originally planned) or, with the chance of r*in/snow showers Monday night into Tuesday, should I ski Wed, Thurs and Friday instead?
I can't imagine it won't be better to wait a day to give more recovery time. On the other hand, the forecast calls for a little snow (2-6" at altitude) on Monday night into Tuesday. That will tiller in nicely, but only half that will be on the ground Tuesday morning. Another consideration is you won't have a feel for the conditions prior to the new snow, and the snow will be hiding all the bad spots.
Watch the weather and make your best call. This is one of the forecasts that a lot of us watch:
PinnacleJim wrote:Don't know if this will make anyone here feel better, but Colorado's terrific snowfall so far this season is not without its problems.
Parking for Vail sucks! Definitely have to get there when it's still dark in the morning when it's a busy weekend and you're day tripping! The other option is parking in Avon and taking the shuttle to Vail. You have to go past Vail to get to Avon, but much less stressful than wasting 2 hours driving around trying to figure out where to park. There really isn't much parking there unless you're staying in town. I love Blue Sky Basin! Awesome terrain, especially when there's been a lot of snow. Problem with getting to those lifts and seeing that mob is that it took soooooooo long to ski/ride there and it's exhausting so it's brutal if you have to go elsewhere once you're there!
Hopefully we'll be out there sometime Feb or March. Not sure where yet. I should do what you guys do every season!
Wavewheeler wrote: I'm heading up to Killington tomorrow to ski midweek with my daughter and plan to buy the 3 out of 4 day lift ticket so need to make a decision by tomorrow. Would it be better to ski Tuesday-Wed and Thursday (as we originally planned) or, with the chance of r*in/snow showers Monday night into Tuesday, should I ski Wed, Thurs and Friday instead?
I can't imagine it won't be better to wait a day to give more recovery time. On the other hand, the forecast calls for a little snow (2-6" at altitude) on Monday night into Tuesday. That will tiller in nicely, but only half that will be on the ground Tuesday morning. Another consideration is you won't have a feel for the conditions prior to the new snow, and the snow will be hiding all the bad spots.
Watch the weather and make your best call. This is one of the forecasts that a lot of us watch:
The more snow Monday night, the better Tuesday will be. The less snow, the better waiting a day will be.
Welcome to the madness that is Kzone!
Thank you to everyone for the input. That must be the NOAA forecast for the peak. Seems the forecasts I've been looking at are for lower elevations and call for r*in and/or mixed precip rather than accumulating snow. And they've been all over the place in the past 24 hours going from plain r*in to mix to snow and nothing at all.
I'm going to purchase from Liftopia, which gives me a huge savings but in order to buy my tickets for Tuesday I'll have to make up my mind by tomorrow if I want to go with skiing on Tuesday. Right now I'm leaning towards skiing Wed-Thurs-Friday simply because it looks like there will be chances of some snow each day and the weather looks progressively better each day.
Plus I'm assuming the mountain will be doing it's best to get everything "fixed" the closer it gets to MLK weekend so by Friday it should be pretty good. I'm just hoping they don't shut down most of the mountain midweek in an effort to "preserve" it for the weekend crowds but there's little I can do about that in any case. It's the downside of skiing midweek in general.
Another downside is that it will be busier/more crowded on Friday than on Tuesday and we'll have to drive home that night (5 hour trip) but it's nothing I haven't done before.
I guess if I wake up on Tuesday and we've been dumped on I'll pony up the money and go ski 4 days. It's not like it would be a horrible thing..I'm already spending a small fortune to do this so what's another day of lift tickets?
PinnacleJim wrote:Don't know if this will make anyone here feel better, but Colorado's terrific snowfall so far this season is not without its problems.
Just got back - it was an awesome week of skiing - picked up about 30" of snow in the week I was there - by the end of the week, we were finding waist deep powder in Blue Sky Basin where the wind would deposit lots of snow. Drove back to the airport on Saturday AM, the line of cars on i-70 heading towards the mountains from Denver made the drive to the Cape look like a nice Sunday outing
Skis - Blizzard Brahma 88, Nordica Enforcer 104
Age - over 45 years @ Killington
PinnacleJim wrote:Don't know if this will make anyone here feel better, but Colorado's terrific snowfall so far this season is not without its problems.
those look like the longest lines in the history of skiing ...
reno, if you're parking in avon, why not ski/ride beaver creek. on a pow day, i'd rather be at da creek. plenty of great terrain and the rich texans stay on the blues & greens. when we're out out there, we pick our spots at vail. agree blue sky basin rocks.
PinnacleJim wrote:Don't know if this will make anyone here feel better, but Colorado's terrific snowfall so far this season is not without its problems.
those look like the longest lines in the history of skiing ...
reno, if you're parking in avon, why not ski/ride beaver creek. on a pow day, i'd rather be at da creek. plenty of great terrain and the rich texans stay on the blues & greens. when we're out out there, we pick our spots at vail. agree blue sky basin rocks.
I'm just pointing out options for parking for Vail. Parking sucks. Even if you get there early they rip you off with parking costs. Personally, I would definitely skip the Vail madness on the weekend and ski/ride BC instead of going through that hassle getting to Vail. Stayed in Avon many times. Cool town. Much better parking and shuttle system.
