Skivt2

Vermont went up as much as 400% - 500% in 3 years depending on the property type.

I expected flack so that’s fine. What was always super cool about Vermont was that the only people there, whether newcomer or local, were folks who really wanted to be there because they fell in love with it. But the recent influx of people seems to be more people who don’t love it per se but just wanted to escape from where they came from to a place someone said was cool and a good investment. Its disturbing to see the regulars and locals, who made the place a funky cool place for years, struggle while people who have never even been to the place move in, sight unseen, and then expect that there are tribes of people desperate for money and looking to “serve” them. Some of us, sounds like you included, love the place and have for years. But if you did not buy a place before the Covid shock then you are SOL. Some of us in the local community have been working hard, renting, going to school, with the goal of buying in the place we love. To get pushed out by people looking to escape somewhere else or who are looking to make a buck, opportunistically, off a place they don’t really care about, is pretty hard to swallow. I hate ratter winters. But I’m not going to apologize for hoping the supply of Airbnb’s outstrips demand, making the investments not worth retaining because of a few bad winters. Im not sorry for hoping some of the newcomers decide it’s not fun having to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries or that their kids school is two towns over or that no one local is willing to maintain their hot tub or come over to wash their Saturday dinner dishes for $15 a week. Maybe if they realize they gave up all their creature comforts to be in VT and that it’s a not as much fun as they thought it would be in a bad winter, some of them will move. And then maybe the prices will moderate to the point where normal people like nurses and teachers can afford to buy houses there again. sorry, not sorry.

I know I will get some flack for saying this but the run up in prices in resort real estate was driven by an insane sudden demand that seemed to be a perfect storm of people wanting to suddenly get outside, people wanting to go to resorts when they left the city and people wanting to capitalize on the folks who could only visit short term by buying up stuff and renting it for a profit. If demand falls for short term rentals due to this weather and the realization by the masses that ski season is fickle in New England, I won’t shed a tear. It might be worth a ratter or two just to burn it all down. Maybe some of the new people who don’t really fit in with the old ways will bail too. It’s getting harder for the mountain characters and hard partying seasonal ski houses and seasonal rental customers as well as the devoted locals and impossible for new recruits to that ski bum scene. Meanwhile I meet the “we just moved here where can I buy stuff? We don’t have a clue how to survive in VT and never visited before but we moved here becuae it’s the “in” thing to do, can someone come get paid $15 a night to do our dishes or $15 a week to clean our hot tub? crowd” a lot these days. Maybe they will get bored and march right back where they came from.

You might be surprised because as awesome as Killington is, so much of what has been open was natural snow. It’s remarkable the difference between Thursday and Friday in terms of how many trails are skiable. It’s going to be pretty bleak as far as trail count by later next week.

The real difference will be that now there will be an icy base as is typical for NE. Before the rain was a magical time because the majority of trails opened on the natural 2+ Foot snowfall with nothing underneath ie no snowmaking or hardened snow pack. The heavy wet snow easily survived the deluge and it seemed to me like a net gainer based on the house here that sits at about 1500’ in central VT. The good news is that we received squalls of heavy wet snow as the freeze started. I’d say at least 2”. If that can bond to the bottom layer then that will help the bottom layer to avoid the “pond ice” in many spots. We shall see. Fingers crossed. An all out rain storm with no snow on the front and back would have been much worse. Of course ultimately it did ruin a good thing though. No sugar coating that.

Landlord lives next door and they were also worried. We finally got power back Monday night just after dark. But we did figure out a solution Monday morning. The furnace is a propane wall heater which has a electric thermostat, blower and electric ignition but the heat source is propane. We have a Jackery 290 batter for camping and it was fully charged. We plugged that in and got four solid hours of heating. Brought the temp up to 58. The jackery charges in two hours. We had friends with power who were able to let us charge the battery. Ultimately we did not need it but we could have charged and ran that battery 2 times a day and saved the pipes.

We just got power back!

We live there but it’s a rental. No idea how to drain the pipes and really it’s not ours to do.

Green mountain power says Tuesday night or Wednesday. We have no alternative heat source. We f’d

Don’t own the house. Don’t know where the shut off is. Water heater is outside in an insulated shed.

Not going to help. The well pump is electric. There’s no water.

Anyone know how long we can go without power or water before our pipes freeze and burst? Power out since 11 PM Friday night. House was 47 when we left at 5pm. Outside temp 24. Forecast for 22 but we tend colder at our house. No estimate from power company. Forecast of 30 daytime tomorrow though we face south with big windows.

The crazy thing about the housing situation in Vermont us that it’s not just about resort employee housing. When you think about housing being too expensive for a restaurant employee making $70k, think about how much a teacher or a nurse makes. They don’t make much more than that. As a few of you know, my husband and I have been working on a VT move. But he has been in nursing school in CT for the past several years. We rent in VT full time and plan to sell our CT house and buy a VT house soon. I work 75% remote for a CT company and let’s just say I have a very good corporate job. As we begin to think about buying a house in VT it is painfully clear that it will be difficult to find anything suitable. And the house we buy will be about half as nice as the house we will be selling for the same amount of money. We are seeing house prices that in some cases tripled in 3 years. We are not just talking about lift operators and food services people having difficulty finding a place to live. What about nurses and teachers etc? The question really is where will any people with normal jobs live? I can’t imagine how this housing situation here in Vermont is sustainable.

Most intense thunderstorm I’ve experienced in years in East Granby CT just west of BDL. Husband took a video starting at 3:47. He ran in the house for safety from the trees starting to fall outside. By 3:50 there were several large trees down in about a 1 acre area including a few feet from where he was filming. The video is too big but I will post it if I can figure out how. I have a feeling if that rotation dropped to ground level we were in the bulls eye. These are two frames from the video he took.the video is worth sharing just for the sound alone as the wind started to take the trees down.

Looks like the company that owns Ragged in NH may be buying Jay Peak. Hopefully Ragged will end up on The Indie pass rather than Jay leaving.

It’s August 1st and that means it’s time to start thinking about the new ski season ahead.

Snowed hard on the mountain. Got weird when it covered up the bare patches on the trails and we were trying to remember where they were just a few hours earlier.

You may not care and that’s your choice but FYI….if you go to Killington you may not want to refer to it as K-mart if you want to get along with locals. It’s not well received here. Again, maybe you don’t care. And I doubt anyone would correct you or say anything to you if you say it. But it definitely defines you as an outsider here because none of us would ever call it that since it’s derogatory. If you really want to shorten it then K-town is OK or just K is fine. We jokingly call it Killingtime occasionally. Lol

Skiing in Vermont is great right now if you like boilerplate ice and frozen cat tracks

Grinch

It is totally annoying that Killington reports the same snow for Pico as for Killington. It’s true they vary a lot. But then from Bear to Rams head or the top of the peak are all different as well. Coastal storms don’t always work out as well for Pico as for Killington and I have seen the lower spots at Pico on the western side mix when the upper trails on the eastern side stay powder. In fact the summit quad at Pico is a cut off where it sometimes rains from the summit quad down and snows from summit quad up. But, as you said, in early season when the west/northwest wind brings moisture to the mountains it’s not uncommon to see Pico get a bigger dusting then Killington. Overall generally I’d say Killington gets more snow than Pico. When I lived there my friends down in Rutland would check in with me to see whether we were snowing when it was raining in town etc. Microclimates are fun to pay attention to when you live in the mountains.

Following the Killington vs Okemo discussion here. I was a weekly commuter to VT for 30 years driving through Ludlow to Killington. I have skied at both of those mountains plus Pico probably 1000 days combined. I would most certainly find no issue thinking Killington gets substantially more snow then Okemo. There are huge topography differences. Killington is farther north enough to be much more part of the snow cloud that hits the larger core green mountains after passing the Champlain basin. It’s not shadowed by Mt. Holly. It’s base is at high elevation of vs Okemo and it’s over 4000 feet. Try driving there from Okemo and you will notice you are headed uphill the whole way. The area is full of microclimates. Plymouth, where I live is a perfect example as it’s a huge snow belt. It’s not uncommon at all, for example, to drive north on 100 leaving Ludlow and have it flurrying lightly, only to have it be dumping in Plymouth, and then flurrying lightly at the rt 4 intersection then Pounding snow again at the bottom of the K access road and over Sherburne pass at Pico where I used to live. That’s a very very common occurrence midwinter where heavy dustings occur night after night without a storm.

Snowing in Plymouth, VT up on 100A. Tiny flakes starting to pile up.

Killington was ripping this afternoon. People getting stuck in the lot left and right. Very slippery driving up there. We have serious snow tires and all wheel drive, lots of winter driving experience and had the truck in low gear creeping down the access road. Up too just coming out of the lot we were sliding a bit trying follow slower cars and the anti locks were kicking in. Can’t image how the World Cup is going to go with killington having so many flatlander tourists who are unprepared and having to clear their lots/run a million shuttles etc. lots of winter appeal on TV though.

Firepower! A snow gun roughly every 9-10 feet.