Killllington 🎿🏂🏂🎿🎿🏂🏂🎿😀

[Newpylong]

If that were true, they would not consistently be first or close to first to open, or skiing T2B simultaneous to the World Cup or shortly thereafter. No question the public product takes a massive hit but I think abandoned is a little overkill. I would say deprioritized.

 

[bigbob]

I was thinking the same on not being able to blow on the rest of the terrain if they doubled the out put on superstar. Could be other upgrades in the future to make that happen however.

 

[drjeff]

As it said in the press release, early season, and during the Worldcup build, often it's the amount of air, not water that has limited them. Now, they should have more water for Superstar when the wet bulb allows. Plus a faster SS build in theory for the Worldcup might sooner free up the air and water that SS gets priority to over the North Ridge pod early season.

I doubt that any of these changes will affect their push to the base of Snowdon to get top to bottom if the conditions down low are marginal.

Plus, one also has to at times, get rid of their older snowmaking notions of what is possible, especially now that the new owners of K really seem committed to upgrading much of their system to more modern equipment. They've shown that they can still put the product down like very few, if any, can when they want to, and I doubt that that will change, even if how they do it may be a bit different

 

[letitsnow1]

I'm excited for the early season rollout with no world cup this year

 

[skiur]

All this water will be great for glacier building in February when it's 10 degrees out. Those cold outbreaks have been getting less common lately so being able to take advantage of the cold/low humidity conditions will be nice.

 

[urungus]

I'm excited for the early season rollout with no world cup this year

New Superstar lift isn’t scheduled to debut until early December. So I’m not expecting much (if any) early season skiing in that pod this fall. I’m also a little concerned about the loss of time to build up the glacier for the spring.

 

[mister moose]

New Superstar lift isn’t scheduled to debut until early December. So I’m not expecting much (if any) early season skiing in that pod this fall. I’m also a little concerned about the loss of time to build up the glacier for the spring.

I'm not worried.

They can still build Skyelark/Bittersweet while construction on the lift is finishing up. Possibly run Stage II to get there and open High Road. Then on the next cold snap in mid to late December hit Superstar with an 80-100 hour run.

The deep build on Superstar doesn't happen before MLK anyway. I'd bet a beer on Memorial day next spring.

 

[WoodCore]

Top terminal of the new lift is coming together nicely.

 

[IceEidolon]

"Previously, the water pipe system on Lower Superstar was slightly undersized for the demand placed on it during World Cup. The old pipe tapered from 6" to 4", starving the hill during peak use."

There's a bunch of other bits and pieces that really suggest Killington wants to feed more water to Superstar. New HKDs might be helping with the limited air supply, too.

 

[SkiingInABlueDream]

I'm excited for the early season rollout with no world cup this year

I'm excited for late season Superstar without the terrible WC ice base.

 

[Smellytele]

I'm excited for late season Superstar without the terrible WC ice base.

Without the "terrible" WC ice base it won't last as long.

 

[slatham]

I would take that claim with a heavy grain of salt. Even if they were able to double the water (which I am skeptical of), rarely are there adequate conditions prior to the World Cup to be able to use it. Also, being already water capacity starved, if they double the water to SS that means next to no water available for the public terrain.

I would argue that being able to “significantly “ increase water to SS would HELP open more public terrain early as they would quickly get the SS base down - or at least enough to be confident of making snow control - and then move to public terrain, even if they’re still doing work on SS.

 

[Newpylong]

Without the "terrible" WC ice base it won't last as long.

There is much data going back way before the World Cup to say this is not the case. By the time May comes along Superstar has seen enough thaw-freeze and full depth groom cycles that the WC base is nearly irrelevant to the longevity of the trail.

 

[skiur]

Without the "terrible" WC ice base it won't last as long.

This is not true.

 

[machski]

This is not true.

Absolutely, we skied into June quite a bit in the '90's and the thought of hosting WC races wasn't on anyone's radar back then.

 

[urungus]

Absolutely, we skied into June quite a bit in the '90's and the thought of hosting WC races wasn't on anyone's radar back then.

It was colder back then - Killington opened in October every year in the 90s

 

[machski]

It was colder back then - Killington opened in October every year in the 90s

It wasn't just that. Energy was much, much cheaper and they ran the guns on SS near contract nuous the n March right into the first few days of April. The snow depth on that trail routinely was higher than the lifting frames on the low set towers mid trail. I would venture to guess they put 6 feet or more over the current era max depth.

 

[mister moose]

SEASON	OPEN/CLOSE DATES
2024/25	November 14 - May, 11
2023/24	November 3- June 1
2022/23	November 17- June 1
2021/22	November 5 - June 4
2020/21	November 20 - May 16
2019/20	November 3 - March 14 (early closure due to COVID-19)
2018/19	October 19 - June 2
2017/18	November 8 - May 26
2016/17	October 25 - June 1 First WC Season
2015/16	October 18 - May 28
2014/15	November 3 - May 24
2013/14	October 23 - May 18
2012/13	Oct. 13-15; Nov. 5-May 26

Killington open close dates since Mike was hired and they went back to deep spring mode.
See the big difference pre world cup? Me neither.

 

[urungus]

See the big difference pre world cup? Me neither.

* Zero June openings pre-World Cup, but 5 out of 7 years post World Cup (excluding covid and superstar construction years)
* 75% of pre-World Cup years had October openings but only 22% (2 of 9) post WC

 

[machski]

* Zero June openings pre-World Cup, but 5 out of 7 years post World Cup (excluding covid and superstar construction years)
* 75% of pre-World Cup years had October openings but only 22% (2 of 9) post WC

So the second part of your post, they have pivoted a bit from pre-WC years and now will only open when they believe they can stay open. Before WC, they opened ASAP and some of those years had to close for a bit before reopening. K could have opened like SR did this past fall on Halloween but would have had to close up again just like SR had to.