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ss20's 7 Day Northern/Central VT Adventure!

ss20

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 13, 2013
Messages
3,919
Points
113
Location
A minute from the Alta exit off the I-15!
Day 6- Killington

My plans got a little screwy as I was hoping to ski Pico Saturday to avoid crowds thinking K would be a madhouse. That didn't work out so it was off to the big K on Saturday! At 7:40am I parked 5th row in the Bear lot...5 rows further back than a normal Saturday at 7:40am in mid-March. Lodge and racks were packed and I was fearing the worst. I was 20th chair up or so and carved the crap out of Dreamaker park. My first groomer of the whole trip! Then I skied Bear till 11am...I love Bear and the Bear Quad...my favorite "pod" in the ski world. Outer Limits was pretty good, not a real good bump rythem but manageable. The Fiddle was covered fantastically but I still hate playing Dodgerock on that trail so it was one-and-done. The real gems were Centerpiece and Growler. Growler in particular, usually one of the most-traveled glades at K, was skiing amazingly. Everyone I talked to on the Quad that had come from the "other side" told me it was bleeping cold...meanwhile...I actually took off my gloves and skied with just my liners I was so warm in the March sun.

I did a short lunch and got back out at 11:15am, crowds were very minimal, 2 minute wait on the singles line to get up the Skye Peak Quad and out of Bear. Vertigo and the Stairs were good in Needle's. Sitchline (a favorite of mine) was so well-covered it actually lacked its usual "technical" character.

Superstar ravine trees are nicely filled in with the snow guns roaring. We'll be skiing the glades in there in May hopefully. Ovation was the best I've ever seen it. Did several re-runs. All the bushes and vines skier's right were totally covered. Julio/Juanita also had the best coverage I'd seen. I couldn't get out of the Superstar pod til 2:30 it was so good.

Canyon was amazing...too bad I only got 3 runs in there till it was time to go back to Bear. Again...just incomprehensible coverage there. The rocks at the Downdraft/Dipper intersection are completely covered and I couldn't locate them on the hill...somewhere in that deep snowpack there's those massive rocks but they're buried!

Lifts don't spin past 4...wish I could've kept going. It's a long spring though!

Okemo traffic going south on Route 100 is something I will NOT miss and reminded me why I don't ski VT weekends! Killington overall was not crowded at all, surprisingly.
 

ss20

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 13, 2013
Messages
3,919
Points
113
Location
A minute from the Alta exit off the I-15!
Day 7- Pico

This was the end...10 days straight of skiing.

It was cold. I was unmotivated. I made it to the hill at 9am and was proud of me for that. A-slope warmup revealed the cold had really firmed up the snow. Outpost pod skied nicely till I saw Upper Giant Killer in the sun, then I headed to the upper mountain. Summit glades had high traffic but snow was good. Upper Giant Killer was nice. I saw a family hike out of the entrance to the Poma lift line. They said it was sketchy, but covered. I skied it and it was gnarly. Crazy steep. There's a massive ice flow at the top of the trail with 2-3ft wide stretches of snow on either side. The cable also isn't covered...that'll wake you up when your skis find that! Was it "good" skiing? No, but it was technical and it's something that you don't get to go down too often.

At 2pm I had to go back down to the Flatlands. My crazy ski trip of 2018 was finished! Of course, this is only the "skiing" portion of the trip...the most fun is remembering all the characters and crazy things that happen along the way.
 
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