Skivt2

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.  

We still have the pack. Everything is mostly covered on the hill but we need a storm or some upslope every day for a bit to fix this.  Skied some woods Thursday but a tad spongy.  Today the summit never softened with the wind blowing across the face.  The bottom stiffened right up this afternoon.  Still have full coverage but it’s going to be crunchy and loud unless we get something to create a cushion.  

3 hours ago, PhineasC said:

I can see the second half of March being active. I hope it delivers. Skiing is still wonderful so not ready to pack in winter just yet!

March and April are actually two of my favorite months to ski.  Often we are really just getting started with glory days. Generally we are looking at snow or sun and warmth.  The pack is deep.  Lots for groomers to work with so even the cold dry period are fun fast days with lots of terrain.  

Funny I did not think it was that cold today either.  But I skied 2-4. And I am at Pico.  Maybe just completely different here.  There is some nice snow in the low angle woods if you are careful of anything that looks crunchy.

5 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah my buddy’s parents live at 2,100ft at Pico and he says they seem to think it’s been one of the best snow years in a long time.  Every event has seemed to over-perform in that area.  I do think that plays a lot into the overall vibe of winter even regardless of totals.  If every event ends up snowier than expected (whether it’s a 6-12” forecast that ends up 24-30” in Dec or a 1-2” forecast that ends up 5”), it has to leave a better taste in the end.  

5 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

They must be my neighbors. Yesterday it rained from 2-2:30 pretty hard.  Then froze last night.  It’s really the first time things did not exactly go our way.  But then again I think we dodged a bullet because it looked like it was going to rain for longer when looking at it earlier in the day.

14 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah it would’ve been a top tier winter for CVT/SVT.  Killington has had a very solid snow season, I bet they are near tops relative to normal of NE ski resorts.  They were pacing with Jay for most of the winter.

Yes. It’s one of the deepest packs I’ve seen in my decades of hanging out here at Killington.  The woods are Very deep for here.  I actually started worrying about the lack of freeze thaw because I’ve seen spring bring spongy unskiable woods.  But it’s starting to solidify which should help with retention and spring conditions.  Although it would be great to avoid the eastern hardpack we have going on now, we could have the opportunity for keeping this pack, getting it to a slightly more solid long lasting condition, and then getting a big dump on top of that.  I think most folks here would be looking at a very highly ranked winter here with that scenario. 

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

Nice, I measured 2.5" at 8:30pm.  Another snowy evening.  Nothing earth shattering but it really seems to snow often around here the past 4-6 weeks.

-SN at probably a couple mile visibility at this point.

It is not just snowing often in VT.  Occasionally it is not snowing but most of the time it is.  Once you have this much snow it’s nice to just have it constantly snowing. Lol

7 hours ago, radarman said:

I think he meant he only tunes his skis every 5 years because he only skis powder.  Not that there's a lack of powder days.

Ahhh. My apologies. Yes.  No need for a sharp ski right now.  lol 

On 2/3/2021 at 1:05 PM, Brewbeer said:

I only ski when it's powder, so about once every 5 years. 

I don’t know where you ski but there have been a lot of powder days this year.  We have had no freeze thaw cycle and the only place you will find any loud snow at all is the groomers with man made where the wind or skiers have blown or scraped the natural snow off.

3 hours ago, mreaves said:

Mud season everywhere away from the slopes. 

Yup. When you are skiing in a mesh bug proof jacket and head net and you need a nice sunscreen/bug dope combo to protect your skin you park a gallon of water at the bottom of the lift and make sure you have something salty in your pocket for a snack. It could be 80 and sunny or snowing and it could also thunder and pour rain at any minute.  I don’t miss a day once Killington goes to 3 days a week in May.  Nothing like carrying your skis on and off a moving lift and having to hike to get to the snow.  Protip.....the black flys are worst where the mud meets the snow and you have to stop hiking and put your skis on.  And those F’rs will bite through the vents in your helmet.  I know mud season skiing well.  I’m a slush specialist lol.

1 hour ago, mreaves said:

When I retire, if I leave VT, it will be from March 15 — May 15. Those 2 months suck. 

My favorite time in VT but I’m a bump skier.