Speaking of KMS/KSC at Ramshead. . . .

[skixc2]

Good question, has KMS/KSC ever produced a World Class Skier??

Define world class -

I'd argue that NCAA D1 athlete > intermountain ski club athlete... but putting that aside, their website lists a handful of Olympians and national champions.

https://www.killingtonmountainschool.org/overview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No argument at all that an NCAA D1 athlete is better than an intermountain ski club athlete.

In the US for alpine D1 programs, there are currently 12 mens and 13 women's programs in the entire country. That's roughly 280 womens and 260 mens D1 alpine skiing scholarships across all 4 academic years in the country. When you factor in that on many D1 programs, a decent percentage of their scholarship athletes come from non US ski academies and/or intermountain club programs, the overall level of a D1 alpine program is better than an intermountain club program.

Not all athletes at a ski academy or intermountain club program will ski for a D1 school

And a few of those schools, Harvard and Dartmouth come to mind, don't offer athletic scholarships to either their Alpine or Nordic Ski racers. On the other hand Divisions I through III compete together, so there are really more than those 12 schools with programs. The likes of Middlebury, for example, can compete with the big boys at UVM and Dartmouth.

[Stache]

While at Whiteface ('88-'89) and in my current job as bus driver for many college and private school athletic teams, including Dartmouth, I have had exposure to many top level competitor teams. Amazing the differences between ones who are humble and appreciate being where they are at and doing an excellent job as ambassadors for their sport, their team, and their supporters versus the conceited entitled jerks who think they are it and nobody better get in their way. Oh, and bussing their own trash is beneath them so let somebody else clean their table they have a second run to make. Both leave folks thinking things about them, their training and their upbringing.

[Stache]

And a few of those schools, Harvard and Dartmouth come to mind, don't offer athletic scholarships to either their Alpine or Nordic Ski racers. On the other hand Divisions I through III compete together, so there are really more than those 12 schools with programs. The likes of Middlebury, for example, can compete with the big boys at UVM and Dartmouth.

IVY league does not allow for ANY sports scholarships. However, There may be some significant alumnae support.

[madhatter]

While at Whiteface ('88-'89) and in my current job as bus driver for many college and private school athletic teams, including Dartmouth, I have had exposure to many top level competitor teams. Amazing the differences between ones who are humble and appreciate being where they are at and doing an excellent job as ambassadors for their sport, their team, and their supporters versus the conceited entitled jerks who think they are it and nobody better get in their way. Oh, and bussing their own trash is beneath them so let somebody else clean their table they have a second run to make. Both leave folks thinking things about them, their training and their upbringing.

starts ( and ends) there...

[Highway Star]

I know someone who was at the Stowe ski academy in the 90's, it was located in a lodge that was a bit of a dump. These are typically not luxurious boarding schools. Bud Keene was the snowboard coach.

[da Pimp]

Let's look at how people ski in context of a "racer type" versus "others". A racer has skills and abilities that lets them carve ,turn, glide at significantly higher speeds than most customers. They like skiing like that, they are good at it, and it directly relates to their fun factor whether on a course or on a blue square trail.

When they leave a training area or finish doing a skills drill somewhere on the hill they have a target like a certain chair or a stopping point directed by a coach. So what happens is that they ski to that point in the manner in which they are accustomed, capable of, and provides their level of fun. This is no different than when a bunch of accomplished customers drop out of Low Rider after a great tree run, and now are going to go to a Snowdon chair to do it again. Do they travel down that green circle trail at the pace of the green circle customers, slowing and waiting for them to cross back and forth across the trail in the manner in which learners are able? No, they take it pretty quick and direct, passing anyone not as fast as them on any side that has the most space. The accomplished customer feels in control and is passing the learners in a manner they feel is not bothering anyone. Still pisses off the learners and makes them feel scared.

Both groups I described above can be said to be "doing their thing". They are accepting a higher level of risk in order to achieve a higher level of reward. What we all forget about is that we can accept higher risks for ourselves but should not apply those higher levels of risk to others around us. This is a basis for a designated Slow Zone. Lots of risk is being taken in those places, and the mountain is trying to reduce injuries and prevent unhappy customers by slowing everyone down in those critical zones.

What is happening is that we all feel differently about extending the risk taking out of a slow zone and on to the "general" trails. A flock of 8-10 racers darting down a blue square trail at higher speeds will piss off a blue square skier as much as an accomplished skier moving well through green circle traffic to the next chair.

None of us has the right to scare learners and then complain about another group who might be scaring you. About the only thing I can think of to mitigate the problem is not to slow down everyone, but to teach and enforce that individuals moving hard & fast down the trail are a lot easier to deal with versus a small or large group moving hard & fast. Spreading out in time and space will help reduce the bad feelings by all groups and it still gets you where you want to go in the manner in which you like to go.

This is something that I would like to see KMS/KSC athletes and coaches try for a week and see how it works out. Same applies to groups of accomplished customers who could also benefit from spreading out.

[ANGUS]

Good question, has KMS/KSC ever produced a World Class Skier??

Define world class -

Better than any of us?
On the US Ski Team?
Won a medal in the World Cup?
Won a medal in the Olympics?

On US Ski Team would be sufficient.
"As Seen on TV" might be another.
How about name recognized by folks from a different region or country?
Not to dis any NCAA Competitors, but skiing at a level above intermountain Ski Clubs.

I'd argue that NCAA D1 athlete > intermountain ski club athlete... but putting that aside, their website lists a handful of Olympians and national champions.

https://www.killingtonmountainschool.org/overview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No argument at all that an NCAA D1 athlete is better than an intermountain ski club athlete.

In the US for alpine D1 programs, there are currently 12 mens and 13 women's programs in the entire country. That's roughly 280 womens and 260 mens D1 alpine skiing scholarships across all 4 academic years in the country. When you factor in that on many D1 programs, a decent percentage of their scholarship athletes come from non US ski academies and/or intermountain club programs, the overall level of a D1 alpine program is better than an intermountain club program.

Not all athletes at a ski academy or intermountain club program will ski for a D1 school

Explain Bode for me? I came out of the same program as him. The FSC. He moved on but still spent the majority of his time in a " "crappy" inter mountain ski club ". He started with nothing. No electricity, no running water. His mother worked at the cafeteria at Cannon so he could ski.
He had respect. None of us ran over paying customers to ski fast. No sense of entitlement like I see at Killington. Maybe thats the difference between growing up in NH or VT versus CT or NY.
I expect KMS and KSC to get a handle on the sno flake generation.

[E O Eleven]

[Highway Star]

Let's look at how people ski in context of a "racer type" versus "others". A racer has skills and abilities that lets them carve ,turn, glide at significantly higher speeds than most customers. They like skiing like that, they are good at it, and it directly relates to their fun factor whether on a course or on a blue square trail.

When they leave a training area or finish doing a skills drill somewhere on the hill they have a target like a certain chair or a stopping point directed by a coach. So what happens is that they ski to that point in the manner in which they are accustomed, capable of, and provides their level of fun. This is no different than when a bunch of accomplished customers drop out of Low Rider after a great tree run, and now are going to go to a Snowdon chair to do it again. Do they travel down that green circle trail at the pace of the green circle customers, slowing and waiting for them to cross back and forth across the trail in the manner in which learners are able? No, they take it pretty quick and direct, passing anyone not as fast as them on any side that has the most space. The accomplished customer feels in control and is passing the learners in a manner they feel is not bothering anyone. Still pisses off the learners and makes them feel scared.

Both groups I described above can be said to be "doing their thing". They are accepting a higher level of risk in order to achieve a higher level of reward. What we all forget about is that we can accept higher risks for ourselves but should not apply those higher levels of risk to others around us. This is a basis for a designated Slow Zone. Lots of risk is being taken in those places, and the mountain is trying to reduce injuries and prevent unhappy customers by slowing everyone down in those critical zones.

What is happening is that we all feel differently about extending the risk taking out of a slow zone and on to the "general" trails. A flock of 8-10 racers darting down a blue square trail at higher speeds will piss off a blue square skier as much as an accomplished skier moving well through green circle traffic to the next chair.

None of us has the right to scare learners and then complain about another group who might be scaring you. About the only thing I can think of to mitigate the problem is not to slow down everyone, but to teach and enforce that individuals moving hard & fast down the trail are a lot easier to deal with versus a small or large group moving hard & fast. Spreading out in time and space will help reduce the bad feelings by all groups and it still gets you where you want to go in the manner in which you like to go.

This is something that I would like to see KMS/KSC athletes and coaches try for a week and see how it works out. Same applies to groups of accomplished customers who could also benefit from spreading out.

Wow, Killington has a problem with ability levels mixing on the major trails? I've never heard that before!

[rogman]

You don't drive a car 50 miles an hour in a parking lot, regardless of how good a driver you are; and you don't drive a car 30 miles an hour on the expressway, no matter how safe a driver you are. You see the equivalent of both on the slopes. Poor skiers on double blacks is mostly a self correcting problem: the victims learn real fast it was a dumb idea. Hopefully they don't do it again. However, excessive speed by good skiers in inappropriate places may not self correct, and the damage isn't always visible: skiers scaring noobs may drive them from Killington, or from the sport altogether. I'll additionally point out that driving posted limit isn't always safe either: extreme traffic or icing conditions may considerably lower the safe traveling speed. The same applies on the slopes.

I got a serious concussion in a collision on Superstar a few years back. I don't know what happened, I was run down from behind. I was way over on skiers left, just below the lip of Preston's Pitch and not skiing slowly. I believe I was hit in the head by one of a pair of teenage kids, probably racing each other. Must have been some epic air off a bump. That was who was with me when I came to. Or maybe they were just good Samaritans who stopped, I don't know. It took me a long time just to recover enough to get down to the bottom. I remember afterwards in the Ubar Rusty jokingly asking me who was president. I couldn't remember, but since no one pressed me on it, no one realized just how messed up I was. I felt the effects for weeks: couldn't remember lots of things, simple problems became much harder, and in retrospect, made more stupid decisions than my usual quota. In the aftermath I even managed to fall off the chair to nowhere while loading. How do you even do that? Obviously, one of my stupid decisions was not to stop skiing until I recovered.

Many people have similar stories: I was extremely lucky: no lasting injuries, other than the loss of a few brain cells I probably wasn't using anyway. However many others (including a number of people on this board) have suffered serious injuries. Others have fared worse. So yeah, I applaud Killington's attempts to do something about excessive speed. Long overdue in my opinion.

[Bubba]

You don't drive a car 50 miles an hour in a parking lot, regardless of how good a driver you are; and you don't drive a car 30 miles an hour on the expressway, no matter how safe a driver you are. You see the equivalent of both on the slopes. Poor skiers on double blacks is mostly a self correcting problem: the victims learn real fast it was a dumb idea. Hopefully they don't do it again. However, excessive speed by good skiers in inappropriate places may not self correct, and the damage isn't always visible: skiers scaring noobs may drive them from Killington, or from the sport altogether. I'll additionally point out that driving posted limit isn't always safe either: extreme traffic or icing conditions may considerably lower the safe traveling speed. The same applies on the slopes.

I got a serious concussion in a collision on Superstar a few years back. I don't know what happened, I was run down from behind. I was way over on skiers left, just below the lip of Preston's Pitch and not skiing slowly. I believe I was hit in the head by one of a pair of teenage kids, probably racing each other. Must have been some epic air off a bump. That was who was with me when I came to. Or maybe they were just good Samaritans who stopped, I don't know. It took me a long time just to recover enough to get down to the bottom. I remember afterwards in the Ubar Rusty jokingly asking me who was president. I couldn't remember, but since no one pressed me on it, no one realized just how messed up I was. I felt the effects for weeks: couldn't remember lots of things, simple problems became much harder, and in retrospect, made more stupid decisions than my usual quota. In the aftermath I even managed to fall off the chair to nowhere while loading. How do you even do that? Obviously, one of my stupid decisions was not to stop skiing until I recovered.

Many people have similar stories: I was extremely lucky: no lasting injuries, other than the loss of a few brain cells I probably wasn't using anyway. However many others (including a number of people on this board) have suffered serious injuries. Others have fared worse. So yeah, I applaud Killington's attempts to do something about excessive speed. Long overdue in my opinion.

"There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been just one of them."

I've never been hit in the head but I have been knocked down by both skiers and riders going too fast for conditions or simply following too close behind to react to something I did unexpectedly. Thankfully, I've never been injured on the slopes except those resulting from my own mistakes.

[PinnacleJim]

Last season I was slammed from behind by a young female snowboader. Her comment after we untangled ourselves was "You cut me off". This is what we are dealing with.

I am fine with anything that slows people down in congested areas.

[Big Bob]

Rogman, I hope you replaced your helmet after that incident. Most are only good for one good hit.

[rogman]

Rogman, I hope you replaced your helmet after that incident. Most are only good for one good hit.

I did. Thanks for watching out for me. Probably time for another one, actually. When's Killington's "buy a helmet get a free lift ticket" happening?

[Bubba]

Last season I was slammed from behind by a young female snowboader. Her comment after we untangled ourselves was "You cut me off". This is what we are dealing with.

I am fine with anything that slows people down in congested areas.

I got hit by a rider a number of years ago just below the top is Skye Lark. After he stopped and apologized, he said I surprised him when I turned. It never occurred to him that he might have been too close behind.