Kleetus
Member
Date(s) Skied: 1/25
Resort or Ski Area: Killington
Conditions: Mostly PP man-made in the morning. Boilerplate and piles of snow as the afternoon wore on.
Weather: Very windy (but no wind holds), cold, and snowy (although it didn't add up to much). I take issue with their snow report for today (Sunday) claiming they got 10 inches, but more on that below.
Trip Report:
Pulled into the Skyeship base around 8AM and after redeeming my Ski VT voucher was on the lift around 8:30. Started the day skiing Skye peak and lapping the Superstar Quad. Superstar was pretty icy, so moved over to Ovation and Skyelark which both skied extremely well. Skyelark had very little if any ice and Ovation had great snow on the far skiers left from snowmaking during the week, the center was all ice (as usual). Moved over to the Canyon area and took some laps on East Fall and Cascade which both had great snow on the sides of the trail and not too much ice in the center. After freezing on the Canyon Quad for a few runs due to the wind moved over to Snowdon and took a few runs down Chute and Mouse Trap/Bunny Buster/Mouse Run before heading into the lodge for a quick warmup.
In the afternoon I hit up Bear and Skye Peak again. In retrospect I should have stayed on the Killington side as pretty much everything over there was either skied off, really skied off, or just a sheet of ice. Outer Limits was completely groomed, which was expected, and was for all intensive purposes nothing but somewhat edgeable ice with boilerplate in-between. There was some snow on the far edges but very little compared to the other trails. Vertigo was even worse as there was literally nothing but boilerplate on the headwall but luckily that headwall is pretty short. I ended the day back over on Ovation and Skyelark which had been skiied off quite heavily before taking the long run back to the Skyeship base and departing for the Long Trail Brewery around 3 PM.
Overall was a good day of skiing considering the lack of snow the past week and ongoing recovery from the thaw. Killington did a great job with the snowmaking as everything was skiing nicely in the morning, unfortunately as is usually the case everything got skiied off pretty heavily by the time the afternoon rolled around. Crowds were very light until around noon, at which point it got pretty busy everywhere but I never waited more than 10-15 minutes for a chair even at the K1. There were signs all over the place saying the Stage II Skyeship had really long lines all day but I never saw them when I was skiing Needles Eye so not really sure if they diminished when I was there or what.
This morning I checked the snow report just to see how much they picked up expecting to see somewhere between 3-5 inches of new snow. When I saw 10 I was shocked. The entire time I was at the mountain it snowed maybe 2-3 inches and my car had only about 1/2 inch of fluff on it when I left around 3 PM. When I left the Long Trail Brewery which is about 5 miles down the road from the Skyeship Base at 6 PM after meeting a friend my car had about another 1/2 inch of fluff. I find it highly unlikely they picked up 10 inches of snow given the fact the snow was supposed to end around midnight and around 2:30 PM yesterday they only had 2-3 inches up top. I'm not saying it's not possible as anything is possible, but I am highly skeptical of that number given the fact most of the snow occurred during the day yesterday and they hadn't really picked up all that much. If anybody on here happens to be at Killington today I am curious to see if that is truly what they got.
Resort or Ski Area: Killington
Conditions: Mostly PP man-made in the morning. Boilerplate and piles of snow as the afternoon wore on.
Weather: Very windy (but no wind holds), cold, and snowy (although it didn't add up to much). I take issue with their snow report for today (Sunday) claiming they got 10 inches, but more on that below.
Trip Report:
Pulled into the Skyeship base around 8AM and after redeeming my Ski VT voucher was on the lift around 8:30. Started the day skiing Skye peak and lapping the Superstar Quad. Superstar was pretty icy, so moved over to Ovation and Skyelark which both skied extremely well. Skyelark had very little if any ice and Ovation had great snow on the far skiers left from snowmaking during the week, the center was all ice (as usual). Moved over to the Canyon area and took some laps on East Fall and Cascade which both had great snow on the sides of the trail and not too much ice in the center. After freezing on the Canyon Quad for a few runs due to the wind moved over to Snowdon and took a few runs down Chute and Mouse Trap/Bunny Buster/Mouse Run before heading into the lodge for a quick warmup.
In the afternoon I hit up Bear and Skye Peak again. In retrospect I should have stayed on the Killington side as pretty much everything over there was either skied off, really skied off, or just a sheet of ice. Outer Limits was completely groomed, which was expected, and was for all intensive purposes nothing but somewhat edgeable ice with boilerplate in-between. There was some snow on the far edges but very little compared to the other trails. Vertigo was even worse as there was literally nothing but boilerplate on the headwall but luckily that headwall is pretty short. I ended the day back over on Ovation and Skyelark which had been skiied off quite heavily before taking the long run back to the Skyeship base and departing for the Long Trail Brewery around 3 PM.
Overall was a good day of skiing considering the lack of snow the past week and ongoing recovery from the thaw. Killington did a great job with the snowmaking as everything was skiing nicely in the morning, unfortunately as is usually the case everything got skiied off pretty heavily by the time the afternoon rolled around. Crowds were very light until around noon, at which point it got pretty busy everywhere but I never waited more than 10-15 minutes for a chair even at the K1. There were signs all over the place saying the Stage II Skyeship had really long lines all day but I never saw them when I was skiing Needles Eye so not really sure if they diminished when I was there or what.
This morning I checked the snow report just to see how much they picked up expecting to see somewhere between 3-5 inches of new snow. When I saw 10 I was shocked. The entire time I was at the mountain it snowed maybe 2-3 inches and my car had only about 1/2 inch of fluff on it when I left around 3 PM. When I left the Long Trail Brewery which is about 5 miles down the road from the Skyeship Base at 6 PM after meeting a friend my car had about another 1/2 inch of fluff. I find it highly unlikely they picked up 10 inches of snow given the fact the snow was supposed to end around midnight and around 2:30 PM yesterday they only had 2-3 inches up top. I'm not saying it's not possible as anything is possible, but I am highly skeptical of that number given the fact most of the snow occurred during the day yesterday and they hadn't really picked up all that much. If anybody on here happens to be at Killington today I am curious to see if that is truly what they got.
