Killington 11-11-19

[Ride Delaware ?]

As always, I started off the morning with grand expectations of getting to the mountain at opening, which is currently 9 AM. Unfortunately, I slept like garbage, so I slept in until about 8 AM. I wasn’t too concerned, because I knew that it would be busy due to the holiday, that lines would decrease throughout the day, and that the storm would begin around noon, so conditions would ultimately be refreshed. I may be in the minority with this statement, but I would rather have slightly worse conditions than wait in a lift line to get fresh cord first thing in the morning.

 

After snagging a coffee at our local market, I drove down to Killington and arrived in the parking lot at 10:30. Flurries were in the air and the temperature hovered around 28 degrees. All early season base operations are still out of the K-1 base lodge, but due to the construction of the new base lodge in front of the old one, a good chunk of the parking lot there is inaccessible and you can’t drive up the main road. I parked just off the access road on Vale road where there were shuttles waiting to shuttle us up to the base.

 

Since the ticket booth is in the front of the old lodge, which is currently blocked by new construction, Killington setup a temporary ticket booth and stairs just below the new gondola cabin storage garage with a very nicely paved walkway all the way around it to the now heated K-1 Gondola lift corral. They really went above and beyond to make the temporary experience enjoyable. Since I already had a One Pass (Killington’s RFID card), I reloaded it online the night before and went straight to the lift. The K-1 lift corral was about halfway full, but I hopped in the singles line, and there were only about 15 people in front of me. Unfortunately, this happened to coincide with the same time they decided to remove a cabin from the haul cable, so the gondola was stopped, and the entire corral filled up behind me. After a ten minute wait, the gondola started back up and I was finally able to get through the gate. I was a little wary since it was the first time I had ever reloaded a lift ticket online, but I went right through without any issues.

 

After unloading the gondola, I checked the thermometer at the peak, and it also registered 28 degrees. There was snowmaking ongoing at elevation, but it must have been about as marginal as it gets. There were intermittent snow showers and some freezing fog, so humidity had to be close to 100%. Killington was advertising 10 open trails today, but it is really only 5 distinctive trails at the top along with the Great Northern/Bunny Buster runout to the bottom. Downdraft was open, but since I didn’t walk around the unload at the top of the gondola, I missed it. Double Dipper was also open, but coverage was very shoddy and I didn’t want to beat my gear up unnecessarily. I mostly stuck to a combination of Rime, Reason, Upper East Fall, and Great Northern. I was pleasantly surprised that coverage was decent enough that they didn’t need guns on open terrain, which really helped visibility, since I’m sure the guns were running quite wet.

 

Rime and Upper East fall had very similar conditions. Slick down the middle, but tons of packed powder on the side with some small bumps. Reason is the new Woodward park and looked to have a great setup. There were tons of jibhonks. I usually don’t mind, but the bottom feature is basically at the intersection of Great Northern/Upper East Fall/Reason, so there were tons of jibhonks blocking the trail off the gondola so they could watch their buddies hit the last feature. Great Northern/Bunny Buster was probably the best run of the day. It’s the widest trail, is slightly flatter, and it has the freshest snow, so it had the best conditions by far. I was pleasantly surprised that Killington made the unprecedented decision (since the World Cup started) to suspend snowmaking on Superstar to get t2b. They knew they could finish the course with the cold weather coming this week, and they have an extra week for course prep, so they went for it. Kudos to them.

 

Overall, I mostly stayed at the top of the mountain off the brand spanking new North Ridge Quad. The singles line was basically ski on all day. I think I had to wait twice. Once was a line of 7 and once was a line of 3. I made the mistake around 1 PM of switching it up and going t2b, and despite the NRQ being ski on, the gondola was mayhem. The entire corral was full and the singles line was about 15 minutes long. After 6 more runs at the top, I asked a skier how the line was down at the bottom. He told me that it was only 5 minutes long, so I decided to go down again. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was no lift line and I was able to walk right on. I took two more runs up top and finished my day with another run to the bottom. Overall, I finished my day with 14 runs. 10 off the NRQ and 4 t2b. It was a great first day and my entire body is exhausted. My legs were really starting to feel it at the end. I really wanted run #15, but my turns weren’t crisp and I knew I was on the verge of pushing it too far. It started snowing in earnest around 1, but it only amounted to about an inch by the time I left. I would grade today as an overall B+. I have yet to have a bad early season day at Killington, and I’m glad that continued. I still think the North Ridge pod of trails is one of the best early season offerings in New England, especially if it’s not t2b. There is solid tree skiing, some good bump runs, and a good cruiser. I’m looking forward to getting back out there tomorrow.

 

As usual, pictures are below (I’m sure GSS skipped right to them):

 

 

 

 

[toast21602]

Definitely looks like winter up there! 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Nice report.  Long long drive home back to DE.  

[Shadows]

Nice.

[RidgeRacer]

WTGAI

[Ride Delaware ?]

I’m pretty impressed with Mike Solimano. The previous GM just about ran the place into the ground and decreased skier visits from 1 million to 750k. Mike took over, extended the late season again, won back the pass holders, and re-established the reputation as the Beast. He has spearheaded the mountain bike expansion, the ropes course, and the mountain coaster to make the resort more year round. That money has been generously applied to the ski area in the form of two new lodges (peak and K-1), two new lifts (Snowdown 6 Pack and NRQ), the relocated Snowdon Quad to South Ridge, and a litany of traffic flow fixes (tunnels). I’ve been impressed with my experiences.