Skivt2

It’s a K locals page. Pico is really just another K mountain actually. Like sugarbush south and north without the slide brook lift

It may be packed but the complaints are flying. Back when I was on the “in” I got invited to a true K locals only Facebook page. It’s not public at all. They have to know you to let you in on it. There are about 400 people and 99% truly live there. It’s pretty intense how much most of them hate us and blame us for everything. One woman’s sandals got stolen while she paddle boarded yesterday at a lake. “Must be the out of staters” .

Yeah...I drive a Subaru, wear sandals and am a long term fan of the dead. Still not a Vermonter without the green plates though lol

Sarcasm does not translate well in written words. I actually said it that way to prove my point. But I’m being serious when I say that I don’t see people pushing back on the haters. That is a problem. In no way do I want to diminish the struggles of any minority population when I say this, but like racism, blaming everything bad that happens in VT on “Out of staters” is a form of discrimination. And those that do not openly push back on it are complicit. This forum is not a place where I have typically seen the issue. And it makes sense since there are so few VT’rs or even NNE people on this forum. Plus most VT’rs on this forum are in N.VT vs S.VT where I think this sentiment is significantly worse. On the other hand, as we begin to discuss next season, particularly with so many from SNE on this forum, I think it is important for those from SNE to understand the atmosphere they may encounter this winter in VT, particular southern VT. Worrying about being yelled at when going to the store to “go home” or having your car damaged by a tourist hater makes vacation a tad stressful I would think. Honestly by what you guys are saying maybe Stowe or Jay would be a better place for a vacation if you are from NY/CT/NJ/MA and are someone who only skis a few weekends or holidays every year. It may be a tad safer than S. VT

The problem is that some of us live in VT 50% of the time and thought we were part of the community. Apparently we are considered tourists because we have plates on our cars from other states. The horrible things I see people saying about out of staters ruining everything and littering and stealing things and spreading the virus may not be directed at me personally but I take them personally because no one I know in VT speaks up to discredit the notion that anyone from out of state is bad. No one speaks up to defend the community members that are “fixtures” in town but not there 100% of the time. Where are all my “friends” now? As MLK said....”It’s not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends that is the most painful.” The world is not as black and white as a lot of people make it. CT has a testing positivity rate of .9%. But we are expected to quarantine. I’ve already paid $8,000 since June 1st for an apartment I have spent one night in and I’m pissed off about it. I am as safety conscious and as anyone I know. I have not set foot in a store or any building, other than a doctors office, for that matter since March. I work from home full time. And I am not blind. I see all my friends in VT hanging out together on Facebook. I have a LOT more to fear from them vs them from me. Moving into the winter where I typically live in VT 4 days a week I will have to break the “rules”. I can live in VT full time, change my plates, change my legal address etc. But my husband is in college to become a nurse so he can get a job in VT in the summer of 2022. But he is going to a CT state school with in-state tuition. The semester is virtual except he has to be in class in person one day a week in CT. He worked hard to get in to this school that takes less than 25% of the qualified applicants and qualifying alone is very difficult. And the whole point was so that we could become full time residents in VT. But if VT folks really are not interested in welcoming us we will be in a good position to look for other more welcoming places in ski country to re-locate. Ironically, we had picked VT because we thought the community was great and had made so many “friends”. Well, at any rate, we bought our season passes for this year and hope to top our all time high of 113 days on the hill this year with or without being welcome in VT.

Yes. Bottom line is people in VT actually hate non-Vermonters. It does not matter if they grew up somewhere else. Once they have the magic green plate they are better than everyone else. This has brought that hate into the open. It won’t matter what the quarantine rules are. Out of staters simply are not welcome.

I agree. We switched our season tune to a shop that tunes into the summer and will tune before mid October because our season is usually October -June.

I normally ski on Lange SC 110’s which I think is a rough equivalent fairly stiff boot for me at 5’ 3”. I’m sized down two full sizes with appropriate hard core boot fitting, shell punching and grinding required because I want 100% responsiveness. But I have Dynafit Ones for my uphill boot with the full walk mode. I have a relatively heavy touring ski set up with old 168 Rossi S6’s and Fritschi freerides. I love the freerides because the ramp is so easy to adjust on the fly and the whole set up is awesome going uphill. But I miss my real boots on the way down something fierce. My last day (day 86) last year was spent in heavy deep powder on a sheet ice base the day K closed uphill. I floundered down an intermediate trail like a fish out of water and dared not climb higher because conditions were too dangerous. Ultimately it’s really important to be comfy going uphill if you are hiking since it really is all about the hike. The downhill is over in seconds. The journey is the destination as they say. For anyone reading this though, if you are considering trying uphill travel and skiing on unmaintained ski resort trails please realize that it’s a whole different ball game than you are used to. Grooming really does make a huge difference. It got really really icy last March and inexperienced folks got in way over their heads by hiking too high and then getting in trouble. One guy had to be rescued after sliding halfway down the steepest trail at Pico and ripping a fingernail off. I’m pretty sure that was the “nail” in the coffin for uphill travel last year.

We were psyched to have made the investment in my AT skis and my husband’s split board a few years back. Got some good uphill last year after the lifts closed and before uphill got shut down. I hear there is already a significant shortage of uphill stuff. If you are thinking of investing it makes sense to do so quickly while everyone else is focused on summer. That is always true of equipment purchases with May and June being the cheapest month to buy stuff normally. This year I expect there is an oversupply of most equipment still, but uphill stuff is a big exception. Folks on various forums have theorized that lifts could get restricted to locals only. That will backfire as many of us would just bite the bullet and change our legal primary residence to our ski houses/apartments. I plan to start the process in September.

I’ve been thinking that we will not have a lot of snowmaking this year. K sent out surveys to their instructors and we were talking about it. I just don’t see how anything beyond privates are feasible. My husband got his level 1 snowboarding and adaptive last year. But he’s thinking of sitting it out this year.

I heard some of the swaps have been cancelled. Renting kids stuff for the whole season is sometimes a good option.

Amazing day fishing today out in the rips a few miles off Monomoy towards Nantucket today. Limited out on large Black Sea bass.

Here’s to hoping for a chance to make some powder turns one way or another this year.

That’s an awesome idea. It’s been a terrible year in so many ways. The best pet I ever had in my 53 years died on January 5th of a heart attack right in front of us and there was nothing we could do. I’d give a lot to have her back. Personally the rest of the year has sucked but that sucked the most. I still cry about it.

I can’t help but wonder if it would just make more sense to call it a day and start school March 1st in the same class rooms and same grades as we left off. Just hold everyone back. If you were in 5th grade in March 2020 guess what. You will finish 5th grade in the spring of 2021.

I could see that with private house rentals but the house across the street from us is a rental and it’s been empty. It looked to us via an unscientific survey driving that the hotels in eastham and wellfleet on 6 were completely empty. But more importantly there was no traffic from Brewster north. My 78 year old mom raved about how she drove from Brewster to the wellfleet Audubon in 18 minutes last week. Normally she won’t even attempt that trip during tourist season. So I don’t know.

Interesting that so much tourism is happening in VT and parts of the Cape while infection rates stay low. They say people in New England are “standoffish”. Maybe we are just really good at social distancing. Lol. Seriously though, given the low infection rates despite the tourists, I don’t get all the bitching in certain places about how horrible out of staters are going to infect everyone. If it was going to happen you would think it would have already.

Interesting. That was not my experience at all in the mid to lower Cape. We spent June 15-July 12th in Brewster. We found it easy to make left hand turns. When we first got there it was all MA plates. It seemed semi-busy the weekend of the 4th of July but then it died again. The big salt water parking at boat launches in Truro, Harwichport, Dennis, and Long Pond in Harwich all has easy parking. We went to Race Point, Herring cove beach and Nauset beach in Orleans. The national seashore beach lots were maybe 20% full. Nauset beach was maybe 1/3rd full with easy social distancing. We drove off the cape on Sunday July 12th at 2pm like it was an off season weekday. Going back from July 29th-August 17. Interesting to see if it’s changed since 10 days ago.

It’s a community page so sometimes there is helpful information there. My husband actually works for the Mountain and volunteers for a big volunteer organization in town and obviously we have an apartment there that we are paying rent and utilities on so we try to stay on top of what is going on when we are not there. I think that’s partly why the comments are so annoying. The idea that we are not part of the community and are considered tourists in an area literally full of people who recently moved to VT themselves just pisses me off.

But Facebook is still brutal with people saying they hate out of staters and how all the people from the horribly infected areas like CT and NY (?!) are littering, acting irresponsible, not wearing masks and trashing the place so the locals can’t enjoy it. At this point the Killington region should just be ashamed of themselves. I hope the winter bankrupts a bunch of people up there when people don’t show up. The Cape is certainly waaayy off as most people don’t want to do short term rentals/hotels. It would serve them all right if the same thing happened at K this. Just a few examples from yesterday. I could come up with literally 1000 similar screen shots from the killington pages.

Installed

Yes. And no one is allowed on it. I can’t even imagine what today would have been like. It’s 9:10 pm. No doubt the party would still be raging.

Lucky Dog literally. The thing I live for went *poof* on 3/23 went uphill travel became a no no.

Holy mother of god. I have never heard thunder sound like that!!! It was the biggest explosion I have ever heard.

11 weeks early?? No thanks