Skivt2

5 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I grew up night skiing too.  It’s a big part of my childhood skiing experiences.  Memories from turning under the lights and riding the chairlift in the dark still dominate from that time in life.

Stowe used to do night skiing off the Gondola when I was in college.  It was always empty and cold, but there’s a different feel on the mountain in the evening.  Stopped offering it due to lack of participation, among other reasons.  Folks on ski vacations like to ski during the day; they are tired at night or want to go out to dinner/socialize.

Bolton Valley still offers night skiing and is only 25 min from the Burlington area.  That market keeps the night light dream alive.

We have always tried to ski as many days as possible. We started buying season passes the year I graduated college.  Our first passes were at Mt. Tom.  We would get 50 days in a year, mostly nights after work.  After 3 years we went back to where we learned to ski and got Sundown season passes for 3 more years but still skied at night.  We always had to have clear goggle lens.  Lol.  By 6 years out of college we could finally start skiing VT 50+ days a year and rarely skied nights after that.  It definitely has a different feel.  I find the frenzy of getting to the mountain for first chair sort of annoying and too high strung. Ironically weekdays seem the worst with the same daily crowd punching the clock.  I like the last hours of the day.  Much Mellower.  I have found the clear goggles again though.  In mid to late December last chair is almost after dark only without lights.

On 11/9/2021 at 3:45 PM, powderfreak said:

I’m not sure the specific depth requirements but it’s pretty significant I believe…. like an even 30” wall-to-wall top-to-bottom.  Possibly even more?

It has to be enough depth to sustain winch cat grooming operations, drilling holes to set gates, and most importantly it has to be deep enough to sufficiently anchor layers of safety netting.  Those anchors go pretty deep to be able to stop a skier moving at a high rate of speed and not just rip out of the snowpack.  That’s where the wall-to-wall coverage is needed… can’t skimp on the side of the trails where safety netting gets drilled in and anchored.

Everyone at the big K is betting they pull it off.  Can’t underestimate Killington’s ability to make snow on Superstar.  And of course that glacier is the same snow we will be skiing on for Memorial Day.  As a 100 Club member the mountain gifted me with grandstand seats.  I have not missed a World Cup race at K yet.  I feel pretty confident I will get to see the fastest women in the world ski on my local hill again this year.  Looking forward to the G love concert on Sunday too.

Yeah.  It is very very difficult in Vermont.  It’s not just that ski bums looking for seasonal winter housing that are scared.  People with large incomes from professional jobs who can pay a pretty decent amount for rent can’t find anything available.  The people pleading for help daily are heartbreaking.  There was one woman who had gotten a job teaching at the public school and had not realized that there would be no where to live. Sad.

On 10/29/2021 at 7:48 PM, NECT said:

PF or anyone with experience in the ski world...

My 18 yo son has decided that after his first semester of college that it's not for him. He's dreaming of heading out west to find a job at a ski area. I'm not excited, but I get it. Is there a NNE resort that would be a good place for a young kid to try this?

Housing is a HUGE problem.  Make sure he has a solid place to sleep before he goes.  In Vermont housing is in an EXTREME crisis.  People with decent paying full time year round jobs like teachers and nurses can’t find housing.  Every day people are begging for help finding something on the local FB pages.  Families having to move out of the area because they can’t find anything for any amount of money. 

1 minute ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Start drinking because we’re exhausting our qpf now.

Exactly. Wam wet summer. Cold dry winter

1 minute ago, powderfreak said:

I still regardless of actual wind speed, damage and power out is still just as impactful.  Seems enough without power in CT that it was an impactful system.

It’s only our street.  We had a tree come down three weeks ago and took out our little dead end street.  The power company had to restring the wire on the street. Left the old cable in a pile in our neighbors yard and never came back.  Now the same neighbors are out again and we keep hearing power arcing. So I wonder if it was a bad repair.  

52 minutes ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Sorry, that sucks.   CT definitely creeping up with the outages, 

No power in East Granby.  Must have been that 20mph gust.

8 hours ago, sheahunter said:

Snowed yesterday, top of Skye Peak, Superstar, Killington, VT

https://photos.app.goo.gl/d6NYVQB3DWazAtwi8

Yes it did!  I was there and saw it too.  I was on the superstar chair and it was raining at the bottom and snowing at the top even though it was about 50 degrees.  More like sleet though.

Killington was a lot of fun this weekend.  We start the week with no lift swerved skiing until Friday now that K is three days a week only. But I’m sure there are 2-3 weeks left at least.

Killington still skiing for the next few weeks at least.   Had a few good runs today in the afternoon once it softened.

Fun skiing the April powder day at killington!  Very tricky conditions since what is underneath is so suspect in many places.  But good to get that floaty feeling again.

7 hours ago, Supernovice said:

Gotta love that the people complaining about the media manipulating the population with negative news are the very same people predicting certain societal breakdowns in our lifetimes. Ironic much?  Negativity sells, always has and always will-  shocking development I know.

Maybe as part of our all but certain dystopian future we don’t allow people born in say 1980 or before access to the internet. Boomers just can’t handle it. The people telling me as a young boy: don’t believe everything you read are the same people now saying you get Alzheimer’s from a vaccine, or that Trump is a Russian agent.

Its like those people that throw around the word snowflake. You just know they are the most thin skinned people out there.  It’s a tell...would love to play liars poker with some of you. Maybe at the next gtg, only if we all get our vaccine passports that the future Orwellian government will mandate of course.

 

 

 

Typical millennial.  You do know the youngest boomer was born in 1963.

5 hours ago, hypatia said:

Report of damage near Painter Rd.  Not far from my folks, but as CoastalWx said it's probably a small area of interest.

 

Yickes.  Out for lunch turns at Pico from 12:30-1:45.  It looked really threatening and the wind picked up just as we were headed in.  By the time I logged in to my 2pm meeting it was pouring and dark.  We joked a little about it being too dangerous on the last lift ride.  Maybe it was.

40 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

I was more talking about seasonal snowfall and depth rather than experience on the slopes.

What would a D or F season look like in your experience? My very newbie take is that this season is probably closer to the bottom of the pile than the middle for the peaks at least in terms of snowfall, open terrain, and depth, but perhaps I am off base there. The next couple weeks are not looking good either to make up any of the delta.

I think a lot of this depends on what you are looking for in a season. I skied 4-5 days a week all season, so I was out there a lot. I had very, very few bad days and the conditions at BW are still good by spring standards for what I like (firm and fast). I would rate this season a B, probably. It would have been nice if it got rolling earlier, but otherwise it gave me many great days.

On the flip side, there were very few powder days here in NNH. The vast majority of the events came at night and/or were in the 1-2 inch range. IMO, the conditions in the glades around here never got above "adequate" level except for a brief period in early Feb after the last big synoptic event. I can tell from the posts on the forum that there were many more powder days in the Northern Greens. That may be causing some of the disconnect in perceptions.

A bad season in Vermontvis one where the glades and natural snow trails are not skiable at all during the season.  We have seen that. In 15-16 Pico opened on 1/6 and closed on 3/14. We never got in the woods nor on our favorite natural snow trails.   Never the less Killington skied superstar until Memorial Day.  So a bad winter is low snowfall interspersed with rain events that wash away the snow every time it falls.  That is what a ratter looks around here.

5 hours ago, GCWarrior said:

Killington mid may on a Friday or Monday is pretty awesome.  Big soft bumps and limited crowds usually.  Saturday and Sunday I'd bet is a little crazy. 

Killington always goes to 3 days a week starting the first weekend in May.  It’s Friday-Sunday.  And as you know it’s important to understand that it’s certainly not consistent with the normal resort skiing culture.  It becomes sort a study in deviant behavior by a core group of obsessive skiers.  Mostly the same people gather there in May each year from all over New England.  It’s sort of an oddball tribe often referred to by the participants as “Land of the misfit toys” etc. Many folks will show up at 8 and ski until 10 on the groomed strip of snow then tailgate or go home to do yard work.  Others wait until the snow softens and the bumps are “ready” before they start skiing.  The lifts run until 5.

1 hour ago, J.Spin said:

They do get the notoriety/publicity from typically staying open into June, which is longer than any other resort around here, but their late season skiing isn’t some sort of stunt or gimmick.  It’s actually great skiing as GC said.  If you enjoy skiing moguls in spring snow on black diamond terrain with sun and warm temperatures, it can often be the crème de la crème of that experience.  I’ve been many, many times, and even on weekends, there aren’t any issues with lift queues or overcrowding.  There just aren’t enough people skiing at that time of year to really reach capacity (at least normal lift capacity), and when you’re bump skiing, it’s not as if you’re flying down the hill at 60 MPH and have to look out for someone 200 yards in front of you.  You don’t need 200 trails open for the spring bump skiing experience, and in fact, you want a solid amount of skier traffic on the trails you’re using to set and develop the bump lines.  If they groom anything at that time of year, it’s generally infrequent because it wrecks the bump lines.

 

Here are a few shots from one of our Killington trips with the boys when they were younger – this one happened to be at the end of April, but it’s typically like that right through May:

 

It’s no gimmick.  It’s one of the highlights of the season. They used to go into June but now tend to try for June 1st.

Here is the group picture from the top after last chair.  Lots of good peeps in this photo.

2 hours ago, PhineasC said:

I guess they have blown a shit ton of manmade snow on a couple of key runs to stretch that far?

There’s 30’ of snow on superstar as usual.

21 minutes ago, PhineasC said:

Yeah, it kinda sucks. I am having a hard time imagining any ski places having runs until May at this rate, but we’ll see. The snow is rapidly melting down now and some big rains coming. 

Killington always stays open until Memorial Day.  Generally until June 1st.

10 hours ago, PhineasC said:

The models are starting to paint a rather ugly scenario of back-to-back big rainers starting Friday...

Seems hard to see how many of the ski places survive that with much of anything aside from a couple of key runs intact.

It’s a shame this is your first winter here and it’s so unseasonably warm and snowless in March. The other folks here are right.  You will soon adjust your expectations of how long mid ski season length should be.  This is not typical.   I ski the week of st Patrick’s day every year and I have plenty of pictures to prove that we often get massive amounts of snow here in March.  In 2017 and 2018 we had 40”+  weeks that week.  I think 1993, 2001 and 2011 as well.  March is usually a pretty solid winter month.  What you are experiencing is typical mid-late April skiing here.  It happens every few years but it’s not typical to have spring skiing like this so early here.  Fortunately The man made snow holds up very well.  Even with this crazy stretch of warm dry weather Followed by snow killing rain, there will be skiing well into May here.

Day 71 today and it was beautiful.  Skied in a long sleeve T-shirt, sunglasses and spring ski pants and it was still warm sitting on the chair in the late afternoon sun.  It really does feel like late April though and that has me worried about terrain loss early.  Thursday into Friday could really take out the natural snow trails and woods for the season.  It’s been remarkable with the dry air how the pack is holding up.  It’s still a bit icy under the corn with some angles and shady spots refusing to corn much at all.  Hopefully we get through the end of the week and get a restorative storm and some cold nights in the next few weeks.  I’d really like to hit 100 days again this year.  Superstar does have a pretty good pile.  Hopefully enough to make it to mid May at least.  That would make it easy to reach the goal.

Beautiful day.  Bumps and trees in sunny spots.  Still pretty firm in others.

All so true.  Everything was perfect today and it’s just the beginning of some of the best skiing of the year.  The FB memories of this week in 2017 and 2018 reminded me of what it can also be like this time of the year with the giant snowstorms. I think we got 47” in a 4 day period or something in 2018.  But I will take soft bumps with all the usual suspects.  Glory days are here.  What we missed last year.

Today was phenomenal. Softened just enough to make things fun.  Looking forward to a bunch of great spring skiing days over the next couple months.

Killington blew a bunch of snow all over the mountain this past week. There are mini piles of snow like the big superstar piles on other trails.  I’ve never seen them do that before.  It seems like they must have a goal of keeping more terrain open longer.  It’s hard to say but as big as superstar is, it might be slightly smaller then past years.