Killington 11-15-2018

Date: 11/15/2018

Resort: Killington

Conditions: Filtered sunshine, machine groomed, packed powder

Report: First time back at Killington since April of 2017, using a 2/1 coupon I found online (split the difference with a random dude). Ended up only costing $34, which I think was a good deal.

Anyway, it was a great day to be out on the snow and conditions were really good for November 15th! Rime, Double Dipper, East Fall all skied really well. The TTB route was Great Northern to Bunny Buster. And conditions were pretty good for being open only for the second day for a route all the way down.

Overall, it felt and looked like mid winter up there. Here are the photos:

Top of Double Dipper:




Rime:


Killington Peak:


Snowmaking on Eastfall:

Wow, seriously looks more like winter than the middle of November. Great pics! I'm sure the snow last night into today will only help things along.

They are gonna have a real difficult time trying to stop people from poaching this weekend!

I was there yesterday. Not the 8"-12" forecasted but still a solid 6" on top of an already respectable natural base. Knowing it'd be busy I got to the hill at 8:30am. Still had to wait 20 minutes to pickup my pass. I got in the singles line for the gondi a few minutes before 9am and the line was already at the stairs. Super busy at opening bell. Wasn't till 9:15am that I loaded the gondi. Ridge Run and Powerline were both very nice. Small bumps on both. Mousetrap (which is no longer Mousetrap...I think they're calling it middle Bunny now?) had sizable bumps on the skiers right and was under the guns.

As far as the poaching game...I did Royal Flush and that was by far my best run. No rocks, caught lots of air on the waterbars. Very little traffic had been down it so it was chopped pow rather than bumps like the rest of the naturals, so I could really let it fly going down. Lapped it 5 times or so before getting caught in the Canyon by patrol. The patroller was respectful and strightforward and so was I. "Did you see the rope?" "Yes". He looked at my pass and let me go with a warning. Apparently they pull it for 2 weeks and you have to pay the price of a day ticket to get it back.

Crazy people poaching Ovation and Conclusion. Minimal 5-10 chair waits the rest of the day, sometimes ski-on. RFID gates work best I've seen at a mountain. They open quick and early letting you ski right through unlike other places where you have to come to a complete stop. The new cabins on the K1 seem slightly bigger, I think it's just an optical illusion given that there's more headroom on one side of the cabins.

The entrance to the tunnel under Bunny Buster is as dangerous as advertised if anyone's read reports on K-Zone. Steep gradient down into a tight 180 degree left turn before another 90 degree right turn into the tunnel. That area is gonna be a total cluster weekends and impossible to keep snow on it. The tunnel its self is better than I expected. It's 1.5 cattracks wide and the light change was no issue for my eyes.


All-in-all...great start to a loooong season at the big K. Gonna be a memorable one with all the new imporvemetns.