Thursday 1/11

[RustyK]

Out at the bell with GIS and crew. K1 with hopes of Highline, but too late with the racers.

Mousetrap firm. If you ventured off the groomers, you fillings got loose. Race ski kinda day.

LEF frozen chadderoy. Could not let the skis run, as the flatness was not there.

802 meet up at the box and over to needles for a panic run which I passed on to cruise. The boys said it was not a do over under the guns. Saw skiadict and he was going to give it a try.

Finally got to hit skyburst and cascade. Not much to report on the frozen snow making. They groomed it wet and you could tell. At least it’s open now.

Some bitters to high road , sup runs not bad.
Did not hit Snowdon too much, but when it’s a groomer day, everything skis the same.

Hope to see you at liquid art at 6.

[skiadikt]

the classic grey, foggy k day w the usual viz issues on the upper elevations. temps were rather comfortable and wind not a factor. another light turnout. a short 9-11:30.

after "skiing" the softest mush possible yesterday, we did a 180 and not surprisingly had much firmer surfaces today. what was a surprise and maybe it shouldn't be at this point, the mtn did an excellent putting humpty back together. surfaces were variable but for the most part skied quite well.

did our usual beat kms to highline, which was in "mint" race condition. firm but eminently edgeable. followed by LEF which was actually pretty decent. at bear - claw good, the pit ok and lower burst was beautiful, carving snow when we hit it (gotd). upper burst under the guns was rotd. skied very well (guns not too wet) until the the top of the tunnel which was wet and then very firm to the merge. lower wildfire was a mixed bag w a little of everything. marbles, firm and "some" good snow.

saw the ben & jerry's truck pulling away after making a delivery on cruise which was the wrotd with copious amounts of chunky monkey. panic/needles under the guns was interesting. panic very challenging w lots of deep "damp" snow on huge whales w zero viz. needles on the other hand was quite good. smallish, nice soft bumps. just had to ride the lane between the guns on the left and not stray too far right. bitter was ok.

revisited a more skied off LEF but was still decent enough. finished out w the snowdon mainline w upper bunny skiing very well. stayed off the ungroomed and nowhere near where we were, but better than expected and should get better every day.

oops sorry rusty, was probably typing while you were posting. maybe admins can merge.

[rogman]

Good day out there, as long as you realized this was the first day after a r*in event, not the first day after a 10" snowfall. As such, there were death cookies here and there, but that usually takes another day to clear out. Arrived shortly after the open, and observed that Bearly had been groomed, but AFAIK, it has not seen any snow making yet. Good sign, but it would subsequently prove to still be closed since GE is still closed below Cruise. On my first run down saw the trail down to South Ridge was groomed and open, figured I'd investigate: no grooming on lower Pipe Dream [yet?], but Bear Cub was open to Sunrise, which had also been groomed, even the section from the Sunrise lift down, as well as Sundog. I imagine some reduction of speed through the tunnel is mandated.

Lower Wildfire was also open, groomed, and a bit slick, but it was nice change of pace from the ongoing Lower Skyeburst monotony. Upper Skyeburst was also open under guns that extended from the headwall as far as the bridge. Mostly noisy and dry Ratniks, except for a few K3000 which were quiet (but damp) by the bridge. Visibility made this not a do over for me, but it was pretty good. Upper Wildfire was ungroomed and probably open (no traffic) but didn't tempt me.

Cruise had the expected golf ball/chunky monkey, but was perfectly fine, as was Bittersweet. Superstar headwall sounded quiet so I decided to chance it. First 10 feet were a bit of a hair raising ice sheet, the rest was good, so it got a do over. Later disappointment followed when the mirror indicated the hair raising part was merely a metaphor. An accidental foray onto an ungroomed Lower Skyelark was a stark reminder to stay on the groomers. A lesson I ignored first by skiing Upper Royal Flush, and then in a momentary lapse of provably non-existent judgement, I chose to ski Lower Royal Flush which was about as bad as you can imagine. I fell 50 yards in, one ski clattered away, some guy comes along and asks "are you okay, mister?", and my Apple Watch is beeping away, linking up first with my phone, then cell towers, satellites, IDK, NORAD. I fish out my glasses, and its asking, "Are you hurt?" No. "Did you fall?". NO. (Okay, I lied, doesn't everyone?). I retrieved my ski, and briefly considered walking down. No. Apparently Pride doesn't goeth after a fall either. So there were some serious ruts in the trail due to yesterdays minimal traffic that were now just ski grabbers. I made it down without further mishap, but decided to avoid further mayhem by calling it a day.

[skiadikt]

oops sorry your post wasn't up when i began typing. maybe admins can merge.

[MrsG]

Think they are different enough;). Skiing was what was expected - glad to get out!

[newpylong1]

These trip reports crack me up.

[PinnacleJim]

I give the groomers a C- for today. Yes there was r*in at the end yesterday, but they had 10 inches of fresh stuff to work with. Snowdon had obviously been groomed when the new stuff was still not set up, and surfaces had lots of frozen corduroy. Afternoon was a bit better. Cruise, Bittersweet, High Road, Bear Claw, Lower Skyeburst all pretty decent. WROTD for me was Wildfire. Whatever loose stuff that was reported above in the morning was gone and only the glare ice base was left.

[spanky]

Merged

[GSKI]

Theoretically if we get a dump tomorrow night on top of this base it's game on!

[eagle628]

I give the groomers a C- for today. Yes there was r*in at the end yesterday, but they had 10 inches of fresh stuff to work with. Snowdon had obviously been groomed when the new stuff was still not set up, and surfaces had lots of frozen corduroy.

It wasn't really 10" of fresh by time cats hit the mountain. Anything that saw significant skier traffic on Wednesday had all that snow first saturated by r*in and second compressed before the moisture ever had a chance to drain. The result by night was 4-6" of very solid crust on top of the older snow. The only way to leave a good surface was to tear every single square inch of that ice up, and then work it to within an inch of its life to break down the chunks. Only then could you actually till it out. Unfortunately, the idea of spending half the shift tearing snow up before you ever drop the tiller doesn't really align with the length of the to-do list you're given for the night, so the groomers are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Secondarily, we saw temperatures drop more slowly than expected, so the afternoon shift would have been almost wasted by leaving the solid surface you saw. There was nothing they could do about it; Killington is too big mountain to just scrap first shift even under the best of circumstances.

At risk of sounding like I'm endorsing mediocrity, what would have been a "B" job on a normal night was an "A+" given the weather they were handed.

Anyway, it's possible that the conditions Killington was faced with were different than what I saw at my mountain, but I doubt substantially.

[skiadikt]

nice job eagle. take it your a groomer at another mtn ...

and yeah didn't expect much and thought conditions exceeded my expectations. fwiw, timing makes a huge difference as does a skiers level and expectations. i'm usually on "1st" chair and getting cord and whatever overnight dusting we received.

when we were skiing highline yesterday, i found it firm, working at it but holding my edge. good enough for me. the kms kids were whizzing by, literally made it look like child's play. talking w the capt'n last night at LA, he mentioned skiing some of the snowdon nats and seemingly enjoying them. i was going nowhere that stuff. in our group of 6 yesterday, i was the only who didn't think lower WF sucked. i remember earlier in the season skiing DD hw and glad i survived the whales & dropoffs. think it was one of 180's rotds. all diff, valid perspectives.

bummed i'm not skiing today (fri). bet it's pretty good.

[Captain Hafski]

Afternoon Report: Sorry for late report; a funeral got in the way today [Friday].

Warmup on Highline OK. Wanted to try a nat over there but after going down Upper Royal, decided to head across the ridge.

Like Rogman, riding up Supe lift, heading to Bear, something got in the way of common sense and I decided to try Old Supe. Can't call it trecherous, but not far from it. Lower Supe actually OK.

Over the back to Bear. Upper Wildfire was closed [was showing as Open earlier in the day on the App]. And quite disappointed at Lower WF with new blown snow and 10" on top of that. OK at first then porcelin for the entire run of Low E guns, and then "bearable" chunky monkey at the end. ROTD: Upper Skyeburst with same caveats as SA already posted about the narrow line to ski. If you went left of the ungroomed, good luck. Then, based on Ronzoni telling me Needle's Eye was pretty good with the guns on, I headed there. Not sure if RZ got to it via Panic, but that was trecherous ! From the SA description ["panic very challenging w lots of deep "damp" snow on huge whales w zero viz."], I gotta add that the viz was even worse than he protrayed and that the deep damp snow had frozen up and was NOT skiable. Almost walked back up. Rest of NE was decent but not a do-over with the Panic entrance.

Heading back to Snowdon, what happened to Skye Lark? Upper/Middle was fine but Lower was just frozen in "not quite groomed flat" ice. Made it easy to get across K1 lodge [which BTW the schlog is no different].

Saw a very good female skier and a male snowboarder coming down Conclusion so I caught up with them for a report. Said it was "good". Well, good might have been an overstatement but OK that I did it. Not as good as day before; seemed like not anymore broken up and the skied in turns were just firmer.

LEF fast.

Missing Friday [so no afternoon report from me on that] to attend funeral of one of our best friends, and K skier's Dad in CT. Can't wait to joing the MLK crowd on Saturday.

Thanx to all the other musicians, and ski friends, that came out to the Open Mic at Liquid Art Thursday ! Quite a showing on both sides of the fence. Fun night !!