Thursday

[skiingsnow]

Spectacular! Powder Day!

Killington’s great grooming and the several inches of fresh snow made for an awesome day!!!

Out from 9 till 12:25.

Things like Great Eastern, Bearly, Bear Trax and some others were groomed late which allowed you to move on these flatter trails.

Dream Maker Headwall, The Northway, and Valley Plunge the runs of the day!! All Awesome, Uncrowded, tons of fresh snow!

Everything skied very nice today though. Wont even go into much detail, everything fresh snow. Thimble some ice underneath, great though.

Windy to start the day and somewhat warm. Winds calmed down by 9:45 or so... Snowing heavily to start, then it clamed down, then some more heavy snow for 1/2 hour+, then it calmed down again but winds picking up here and there on the mountain too. Getting cold getting into late morning and the afternoon.

Skye Peak Express, Skyeship Stage 1, Northbrook Quad, and the Snowdon Quad all open at 9am. I am sure Snowshed and Ramshead were open too, I wasn't there though... K1 opened about 9:45 or so. They were preparing Snowdon Triple to run too. Don’t know how late North Ridge Triple opened, prolly not long after K1... Only thing not running right now is Skyeship stage 2, but they were out pounding ice up at the top of the towers, haul rope ran later, and they had gondolas ready to be attached...

Some snowmakers/mountain ops heading up Bear Mountain Quad, snowmaking may be starting on Outer Limits...

Bear Claw


Dream Maker Headwall


Fresh lines at 11:09am


Upper Ovation


Thimble


Needles Eye


Valley Plunge

[rockon]

Spectacular! Power Day!

i love "Power" days!
hahaha

[4-mile]

Skye Peak Express, Skyeship Stage 1, Northbrook Quad, and the Snowdon Quad all open at 9am. I am sure Snowshed and Ramshead were open too, I wasn't there though... K1 opened about 9:45 or so. They were preparing Snowdon Triple to run too. Don’t know how late North Ridge Triple opened, prolly not long after K1... Only thing not running right now is Skyeship stage 2, but they were out pounding ice up at the top of the towers, haul rope ran later, and they had gondolas ready to be attached...

So they still don't run the NE Quad when Stage 2 is down? Just Northbrook?

[skiingsnow]

Skye Peak Express, Skyeship Stage 1, Northbrook Quad, and the Snowdon Quad all open at 9am. I am sure Snowshed and Ramshead were open too, I wasn't there though... K1 opened about 9:45 or so. They were preparing Snowdon Triple to run too. Don’t know how late North Ridge Triple opened, prolly not long after K1... Only thing not running right now is Skyeship stage 2, but they were out pounding ice up at the top of the towers, haul rope ran later, and they had gondolas ready to be attached...

So they still don't run the NE Quad when Stage 2 is down? Just Northbrook?

Windhold, but they were in the process of getting Stage 2 going... The Northbrook Quad runs 7 days a week.

Sugarbush only has 6 lifts running now.....
Mount Snow has a lift still on wind hold.....

Killington has at least 16 lifts running right now.

They ran the Canyon Quad yesterday when the K1 got busy. They were readying the Snowdon Triple to run today, although it was not scheduled. They also got the Snowdon Poma running although also unscheduled. They have the ability to see when/where a lift needs to run and they do it. Despite only a few days ago someone saying they have no ability to change their plans... The Skyeship Midstation terrain has become the most empty spot on the mountain this season (don’t know about weekends).

[4-mile]

Although I was asking about the situation right now I was trying to get a feel for their overall lift management. It seems like a repeated problem with the SS Stage 2 and the NE Quad. The NE Quad doesn't go as high and is not exposed to as much wind as SS Stage 2, therefore it could run frequently when SS2 is down for wind or maintenance issues. But it never is thereby requiring people to have to take the (ultra slow) Northbrook Quad AND one other lift to take another run. This is the kind of issue that continues to get under people's skin. Once in a while on severe days wind and ice will affect both lifts, but I've seen many instances where the NE Quad could run but wasn't.

[Highway Star]

Although I was asking about the situation right now I was trying to get a feel for their overall lift management. It seems like a repeated problem with the SS Stage 2 and the NE Quad. The NE Quad doesn't go as high and is not exposed to as much wind as SS Stage 2, therefore it could run frequently when SS2 is down for wind or maintenance issues. But it never is thereby requiring people to have to take the (ultra slow) Northbrook Quad AND one other lift to take another run. This is the kind of issue that continues to get under people's skin. Once in a while on severe days wind and ice will affect both lifts, but I've seen many instances where the NE Quad could run but wasn't.

Wind is a problem at the top of the NE quad too....

[johnny the jibber]

today was awesome. rode trees most of the time i was out. not too bad to get a pow day for my 1st day back on the hill...

eastfall and cascade were nice too...

[sLoPeS]

today was awesome. rode trees most of the time i was out. not too bad to get a pow day for my 1st day back on the hill...

eastfall and cascade were nice too...

sounds like its about that time for some bombs.

so is just about everything game now, as far as woods go?

[johnny the jibber]

we are back in business here, for sure...

[Geoff]

I got East Fall early. I was trying to get to the Glades triple but it was closed. It's the best run I can ever remember having on it since that's never a direction I head on a powder day.

I got to middle Ovation right after they started spinning the Superstar quad. That was extremely nice. I got to Dream Maker headwall early. The first few turns weren't anything special but the bottom 2/3 of it was at least knee deep. That forced me onto Cruise Control which had been groomed recently so there was only 3" or 4" of untracked on it. Skyelark was the same way.

I did 5 runs down Needles Eye with the Tall People. The only lift running was the crap Northbrook quad so nobody was skiing Needles and it refused to track out. Old Needles Eye to Panic-Eye held up until well after noon. I did the Needles Eye entrance instead of Panic Button once because a sled dog was dropping the rope. Panic Button was better.

I hit my SUV in Bay 1 to grab my day pack, drank a beer riding up the Snowdon quad, and cranked out a Northstar run. There was chewed up crust or some kind of groomer ice chunk stuff all mixed in with the powder. I likely won't be skiing that for a while with everything else in such good shape. I ran into the G's and Skidogg in Mahogany Ridge at 12:30. We somehow lost skidogg when we headed out to feast on more fresh snow.

We did 3 or 4 Squeeze Plays and a Scarecrow and wimpered to the parking lot.

[Apres Ski Allstar]

Solid day out there today, great snow conditions. Though I'd say the 12" they are reporting on the website is somewhat exaggerated, it had to be at least 8".

We skied all over today but our favorite runs had to be in Patsy's and Low Rider. Royal Flush and Ovation were up there as well. Though there certainly isn't much to complain about with great snow and no crowds, it would have been nice to get into the Needles area. Stage II never came on today and they didn't start up the Needles quad. We vetoed going down Needles and having to deal with the Northbrook crawl and the traverse to Superstar.

That being our only complaint, it was an awesome day.

On a side note, as of 330, no snowmaking had begun on OL.

[MrsG]

I guess we're tree-people now . . . woods are ready . . . and the rest was great too . . .

Just shoveled the deck again . . . at least a foot in some areas - maybe wind blown, but definitely a foot . . . sorry to report, it just stopped snowing . . . thank you Mother Nature - you brought what we needed!!!

[newpylong]

The Skyeship Midstation terrain has become the most empty spot on the mountain this season (don’t know about weekends).

How about you start calling the "Skyeship Midstation" the Needle's Eye area. That's its real name and doesn't sound as silly.

[Gladiskie]

Skiingsnow, Thanks for the great pics and thanks to the others for your reports. Wind chill be damned. I'm sold. I'm coming tomorrow.

[Keithus]

I guess we're tree-people now . . . woods are ready . . . and the rest was great too . . .

Amen MrsG!

I was out bell to bell and didn't come out of the woods except to get back to more.
It's all good with fairly dry and light newness. There was over the boot deep in plenty of spots.
Squeeze Play, #11, Low Rider, Patsy's, SC, the D's, TL, and some other areas I don't know the names for were magic on my Salomon 1080 Guns (2 years old - the baby blue ones).
Turns like an angel's kiss.

By lunchtime the trails were getting a bit chopped up, which the Guns aren't the best at.
I switched to Volkl Bridges (2009 and no, not mine) and used their friendly power to blast through the chop to enjoy SkyeBits, Somewhere, TL and some other stuff.
I even enjoyed a brief trail run on a certain highly reserved headwall near the Nowhere trees.
I was still finding untouched fresh on my last run even as the trails got used up.

Later in the day a wicked wind kicked up from the North.
If stage 2 ever ran it was stopped by 2:30, but probably with reason.
I rode Stage 1 from Rt 4 and the car was rocking pretty hard.
Visability up top dropped off to next to nothing.
Ice started popping up on the North facing high traffic trails, so I was glad to have the Bridges.
They don't love ice (but maybe with wider bindings...), but the Guns won't tolerate the hard stuff at all.
I wonder where the wind put all of that pow...
I can't wait for tomorrow.