Killington, VT, 2/11/06 - 2/12/06

[kcyanks1]

Date(s) Skied: Saturday, 2/11/06 - Sunday, 2/12/06

Resort or Ski Area: Killington, VT

Conditions: Very different depending on the trail, ranging from HP/FG to man-made PP with some man-made powery bumps

Trip Report:

Far better than when I was here two weeks ago, but unfortunately natural snow trails were basically closed.

Conditions varied greatly. Trails that probably did not get much snowmaking treatment were hard-packed/frozen granular. Better than a couple weeks back, but still difficult to edge on many trails.

Other trails (those that I assume had some snow-making in the last week or so) which better, include Cruise Control for cruising, Lower Bittersweet for bumps (on Saturday), and some of the trails in the Canyon. Cascade was great both days, with large man-made bumps, though they were awkwardly arranged. While I'm generally a huge fan of natural snow and not into the manmade stuff, I was again impressed by the quality of man-made snow. They had the guns going on Double Dipper an Downdraft all day Saturday. Downdraft snowmaking continued all day Sunday, while snowmaking on Dipper stopped during the day, so I took a couple runs on that, which also had some nice man-made bumps.

During the day Sunday they opened up Big Dipper, so I took that for a run in the afternoon. I stayed toward skier's left in the glades. Coverage was actually pretty good. I had to avoid some rocks, and at one point a little stream or some sort of gap, but I think I managed not to hit anything. Definitely was fun.

I finally rode the South Ridge Triple which was an adventure ... if it weren't brutally cold at the time I did it on Sunday morning, I would've been tempted to take another ride

 

[andyzee]

I finally rode the South Ridge Triple which was an adventure ... if it weren't brutally cold at the time I did it on Sunday morning, I would've been tempted to take another ride

That would be the South Fridge Triple.

 

[kcyanks1]

I finally rode the South Ridge Triple which was an adventure ... if it weren't brutally cold at the time I did it on Sunday morning, I would've been tempted to take another ride

That would be the South Fridge Triple.

My fingers and toes were ready to fall off by the time we were off it. We quickly skied down to the Bear base for a hot chocolate and warm-up break (and ended up skipping lunch ).

 

[easterntreeskier]

Some trees were in okay shape 2/12

Adding to the above report, I skied Patsy's off the Snowdon quad and found it firm with 4-6" fresh in spots between tighter trees. Very nice. Over by the South Fridge Triple, East Glade (not really on the map, skier's left between lower East Fall and The Throne) was almost untouched and had a couple of nice lines. Poached Anarchy, the main line was firm, packed but not iced up. However, the tempting powder on either side was a death trap: your skis sunk into a bizarre crust 2-4" under the powder that was unturnable. You had to hop out every turn. Steeper stuff was okay but in flat mid-section it was unbearable!

 

[kcyanks1]

Re: Some trees were in okay shape 2/12

Adding to the above report, I skied Patsy's off the Snowdon quad and found it firm with 4-6" fresh in spots between tighter trees. Very nice. Over by the South Fridge Triple, East Glade (not really on the map, skier's left between lower East Fall and The Throne) was almost untouched and had a couple of nice lines. Poached Anarchy, the main line was firm, packed but not iced up. However, the tempting powder on either side was a death trap: your skis sunk into a bizarre crust 2-4" under the powder that was unturnable. You had to hop out every turn. Steeper stuff was okay but in flat mid-section it was unbearable!

Maybe it would've been worth trying out some of those glades .. I actually poached a trail for the first time ever last run on Sunday (and intentionally omitted it from my first post, but I figure nothing will happen to me at this point ). We were coming from the Canyon quad and wanted to do a cruiser and decided to take Upper East Fall formerly known as East Glade and then go over to Highline, but didn't want to do that walk at the bottom of the North Ridge/Glades chair, so we took Racer's Edge.. The snow was actually very nice on it. There was one gap in the coverage (perhaps a little stream bed, I'm not sure), but avoidable. As much as I was impressed by the quality of Killington's manmade snow, there is nothing like real snow.

While I'm normally too neurotic to take such "risks" (even though I only had a 1-day pass), there were some tempting closed trails. The glades off of Racer's Edge, which it seems that you sampled, looked nice. Roundabout was tempting too, and perhaps if we weren't frozen at the time we were in that area of the mountain we would've given it a shot.