Killington's trails.....

[skiNEwhere]

Not sure if this has been discussed before, but i couldn't find it if it has

I think everyone knows that killington boasts they have 200 trails. Whistler/BC also says they have 200 trails, which i find a lot more believable, and which also makes it seems the killington is exagerrating, alot. If I am not mistaken, they are including pico as well, but it still seems high.

Has anyone actually counted the trails up?

 

[TwinTips21]

The count is not including pico and yes they do have the 200 trails. The thing is a place like whistler has so much more acreage which shows that a trail count isn't the proper way of measuring the amount of terrain a resort offers.

 

[rjc1976]

That 200 count does include Pico. And yes, trail count is a horrible way of measuring a mountain. That'd be like saying Hunter and Stowe are about the same in size, which is obviously not true. Trail counts don't mean anything since there is no standard for it.

 

[rjc1976]

I forgot to mention...I believe Kmart has about 150 trails.

 

[SkiDork]

Killington does stuff like:

count one trail as 3 by naming it "upper" "middle" and "lower"

 

[shneedemon]

Whatever, you couldn't ski all the trails at Killington in one day.

 

[Paul]

Killington does stuff like:

count one trail as 3 by naming it "upper" "middle" and "lower"

Bingo.

 

[RISkier]

Killington does stuff like:

count one trail as 3 by naming it "upper" "middle" and "lower"

There's a lot of that at places. For example, compare trail counts at Sunapee and Stowe (I happen to like both places, BTW). Sunapee claims 60+ trails, Stowe claims 48. Who has more terrain? Having trails named "upper" "middle" and "lower" might be useful for mountain operations and ski patrol, but trail counts are not very informative in describing the extent of available terrain.

 

[AdironRider]

I dont think I know how many trails my home mt Whiteface has, let alone care. Its about vert, acerage, and terrain for this guy.

 

[skiNEwhere]

I dont think I know how many trails my home mt Whiteface has, let alone care. Its about vert, acerage, and terrain for this guy.

I couldn't agree with you more. Personally I think Killington is a great ski resort, they have a lot of variety of terrain. But this is a matter of them being deceitful. The average skiier, boarder, doesn't look at how many acres of trails they have, they look at the trail numbers

 

[SkiDork]

llamborghini -let us know when you're coming to K. We'll definitely show you some hospitality

 

[shpride]

I remember about 10-15 years ago, Killington over the course of the summer went up like 40 trails without actually cutting any. They just renamed a bunch of the trails to up the count.

 

[andyzee]

One of my favorite Killington "trails" is Lower Great Northern. That goes from the K1 Gondola to Ramshead.

 

[SIKSKIER]

I think K-mart kind of started the dividing up of trails to increase trail counts but to its defense it was to more realistically compare that number to other smaller areas with similar trail counts.To be fair,it seems all ski areas have followed suit and the counts have grown without cutting any new terrain.Skiable acreage would be a better comparison.Don't bother using trail counts to compare western resorts.There is no comparison as far as siable terrain.

 

[KevinF]

The upper / middle / lower designations are definitely how Killington achieve's their massive trail count. Sometimes using upper / middle / etc. is a valid trail designation. Take for example Cannon. Upper Cannon and Middle Cannon are two distinct trails -- one just happens to begin where the other one ends. Upper / Middle / Lower Hardscrabble -- how those came to be upper / middle / lower I'll never know, as you can't get to "lower" from "middle".

Killington though -- My God. You'd be hard pressed to find a trail that doesn't have upper / middle / lower desginations. Superstar, for instance. I'm sorry, but that's one trail that just happens to have cat-tracks crossing over it.

As for western trail counts. If you started naming every slot through the trees and rocks at a place like Snowbird, you'd be running out of names before you were half way down the mountain. The size of the stuff considered a "trail" at a western resort is not comparable to the Eastern idea of a "trail".

 

[Marc]

We're missing some facts here. Even skiable acreage can be a lousy way to judge a ski resort, as can total vert.

The only way to know how a mountain skis for sure is to ski it. Case closed.

 

[roark]

One of my favorite Killington "trails" is Lower Great Northern. That goes from the K1 Gondola to Ramshead.

With a lunch break at the car on the way!

 

[thebigo]

Skiable acreage would be a better comparison.

Skiable acreage can also be misleading. Some areas list trails and glades, others list boundary to boundary.

If you just look at skiable acreage you would think sugarloaf is larger than k/pico. Although a great mountain sugarloaf is not bigger than killington/pico.

 

[andyzee]

With a lunch break at the car on the way!

Sssshhhh... don't be giving away my secrets

 

[Jay's Dip Powcher]

I like to measure a mountain by the glades and private skiable woods sections available.