Skivt2

37 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Jen, I would truly stay away from that toxic social media environment and just believe your friends when they say they are so glad to see you.  

I just feel so bad that the online Facebook stuff has gotten to you so much that even in person you have friends that say they are so glad to see you when you arrive...but you still feel you aren’t welcomed because of FB posts in a group.

Just concentrate on the real life interactions and push the rest out.  Don’t let the vocal minority internet bullies ruin your winter.

I think I’ve failed to communicate this properly.  I do believe friends are glad to see me.. The issue is not all about me.  It’s a systemic problem in Southern VT.  It’s an ugly truth that this issue exists.  And sure, you can go to K and have fun and not even perceive that there is an issue.  But it’s there.  And it’s ugly.  I think people coming to VT should at least be aware. 

1 hour ago, radarman said:

Pico has what looks like a powerline cut lookers right from the summit down the fall line.  I've always thought it looked appealing although seemed like a no no to try it.  Maybe if it were uphill only...

Anyone know what I am talking about?  

My profile picture is looking down that chute when it was still untracked on a powder day.  I’m about 150 feet down and past the “pucker zone” in this shot.  It’s about 5 feet wide with a cable down through the top of it that can act like a rail.  It’s gotten much narrower in the past few years since it’s growing in.  It’s one of the steepest things I’ve ever skied and towards the top steepest part there is a boulder.  Like star or goat at their steepest.  The space between the boulder and the trees on either side is about 18 inches wide so pointing them is mandatory.  It’s about 6 feet of straight lining you skis to pass the boulder.  Getting your speed back under control at that steepness in a 5 foot wide chute with impenetrable trees on either side is the key to survival.

1 hour ago, J.Spin said:

As I was reading this, it seemed appropriate that you were frequently putting “friends” in quotes, because I’m not sure who these people are that you’re talking about.  Are we talking about born Vermonters, 7^th generation types, transplants from out of state to a resort area, 2^nd home owners, or something else?  Everyone’s definition of “friend” is different I guess, but my actual friends would already know every detail of everything you poured out so thoughtfully in that paragraph.  There would actually be no need to discuss any of it or even make it known to them – just from years of knowing me, they would already know my opinion on just about all of that and could easily assume that I was taking all those actions.  People that don’t already have a feel for all that stuff, or would turn a blind eye to the issue are probably more in the realm of “acquaintances” or maybe “neighbors”, but they’re definitely something else.  Yeah, it’s probably semantics, but the overall concept might be one of the confounding factors related to this issue.

I think I have still failed to communicate this properly.  I will try again.  Killington has a rather large community of people who generally attend the same large parties and all know each other.  LOTS of acquaintances and party buddies in that house party/tailgating scene.  There are parties even in off season with hundreds of the same people hanging out together.  They are locals, ski house people, and second home owners.  That dynamic of all of us having this “thing” in common was what made the place special.  The people who moved there as adults to live there full time and consider themselves “locals” damn well know that.  Yet a vocal minority of them are still bitching up a storm about “out of staters”.  I know who a bunch of these people are but I don’t know them well.  But people I do know well are on the same FB pages. In some cases folks with second homes have tried to express how upset they are by this hostility and how they thought they were part of the community.  They have even explained that they need to visit briefly to maintain their houses but will avoid contact.  The response is always the same.  We don’t want you here.  Out of staters are a problem. None of the people I know well ever get in the mix and back these people up.  None of them ever jump in and say “guys aren’t you being a little harsh”.  All I hear is crickets.  The few local friends I’ve talked to about this say, “They are not talking about you, everyone knows you belong here”.  But the issue is that when people like me hear that “out of staters” and second home owners are horrible and ruin everything, we are getting pissed at all the locals.  We are annoyed at the vocal ones but hurt by the silence of our friends.  Sadly our local friends don’t even realize how this is effecting us.  But knowing the general sense that the “out of stater” is so hated does not make driving around there comfortable.  Sure, maybe I get out of my car and a local friend sees me and is “so glad to see me”.  But when I’m driving or parked somewhere I’m just a damn out of stater.  So something to think about if you are in SNE thinking about spending some time up north skiing this winter.  The welcome mat is not out in SVT.

1 hour ago, PowderBeard said:

I always found Pico to be much more friendly and lax lol

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

5 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah I could see that, there's always seemed to be more local vs. non-local stuff in SVT when I grew up skiing there.  They are much closer to the significant day trip traffic, maybe they feel they need to fight more for their identity?  Who knows.  I just don't see it up here so that's why I'm always so shocked.  But up here we are in touristy areas but also have Burlington, Montpelier, etc and it is a different vibe.  I live in a series of townhomes and we get a ton of families from out-of-state renting people's units, no one cares and we've had some good ones to hang out with this summer grilling and chillin.  They love the bear here that's like a stray dog, ha.

As I've said before, my buddy lives in VT but has NY company plates on his car, and he mountain bikes at Killington weekly and hasn't heard a peep about out of state plates since April.  I'm sure the experience varies, its extremely unfortunate if you had friends who treated you like that.  I've heard the Killington access road has been packed this summer, the patios, restaurants, etc... the vibe must not be that bad?

Also, best of luck to your husband on his nursing classes.  My mom and two sisters are in the nursing field.  I have a ton of respect for that and wish him well!

 

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

31 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

I think most of us from Vermont would respectfully disagree, just like I think you would disagree people blanketing all with different license plates as irresponsible.  Honestly, blanketing ALL Vermonters as people who hate non-Vermonters doesn't further the conversation.  I know this has been a time that has really hurt for you and your husband around your Killington area, but blanketing all Vermonters as these people is no different than when a Killington local blankets ALL out-of-staters as sh*tty careless people. 

There are obviously going to be people on both sides of it... there are more than plenty of very welcoming Vermonters out there.  There are also more than plenty of assh*le tourists who leave trash at picnic spots and fit every tourist stereotype you can get.  Likewise you'll also find jaded locals lurking.  

But continuing to group everyone as either one or the other groups does nothing to help the situation.  Also in the time of the internet and on news stories and facebook posts, there is usually a vocal minority that makes one thing all of humanity is racist, terrible people. 

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

1 hour ago, PowderBeard said:

And Vermonters at MRG just hate everyone lol

I think some if it can be justified due to some problematic characters (e.g., swimming in quarries this summer, empty Bud Lite bottles thrown off chairlifts, etc.). I have the same knee-jerk reaction coming from RI when so many folks at URI and the beaches are not from RI. I completely agree with the quarantine policy though and would adhere to it. 

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.

53 minutes ago, PowderBeard said:

At this point I'm not even sure we will be buying passes this year given VT's quarantine guidelines. I have several ski friends were stopped by country sheriffs in southern VT and questioned (even after quarantining) since they had out of state plates. Hopefully the Berks get some decent snow for back country adventures.

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.

18 minutes ago, J.Spin said:

Hehe, LOL, you’re right in that we aren’t your typical ski family.  But, we’re certainly less unique if you compare us to other ski families around here in NVT or probably even other parts of NNE.

I actually brought up the season ski rental time limitation issue though because it happened to a colleague of mine at work – he was renting for the season from Bolton for his kids, and had planned to continue using the skis to ski at places like Stowe, Smugg’s, Sugarbush, Jay Peak, etc. at the end of the season.  But, he unfortunately had to return the skis when Bolton closed down at the beginning of April, so that was pretty inconvenient.  I’d never even thought of that sort of limitation on season rentals until he pointed that out.

Also, I wasn’t sure how serious Phin was going to get with the family’s skiing now that they’d be living so deep in NNE ski country.  I see now that he mentioned a couple dozen days as a rough number, and that’s actually a pretty solid season.

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.

2 hours ago, radarman said:

Yeah I did the same.  Lange XT 130s and AT bindings without tech fittings are what I've been using.  But since there's at least a chance this could be our primary mode of skiing this year I invested in Scarpa Maestrales and Salomon Shifts.  The Maestrales are pretty darn stiff so they should perform well going down.  Also quite light.  Can't wait to test em out.

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.

14 minutes ago, radarman said:

FWIW I just bought my wife a splitboard in the the last few weeks and the inventory for women's splitboard bindings (especially) is pretty low right now.  I think a lot of folks are thinking what J Spin is thinking.

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.

Just now, mreaves said:

Let’s do that with all of 2020 not just the school year. Just wipe the slate clean and start over. In history books 2020 will be skipped over like some buildings skip having a 13th floor. 

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. 

7 hours ago, tamarack said:

It's a "least harm" type of dilemma and I'm glad not to involved in making those decisions.  We've seen that a significant minority of students are poorly served (or in some cases not served at all) by distance teaching, and it's often extremely hard on teachers as well.  Finding the right balance between an inevitable spread of COVID-19, whether minor or huge, and tens of millions of kids getting a year (including last spring) of crappy education is incredibly difficult, since whatever decisions are made some people will be harmed by them.

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.  

8 minutes ago, 8611Blizz said:

It's a big story in Boston now.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/17/business/its-boom-season-cape-rentals-because-covid-19-pandemic/

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.

1 hour ago, 8611Blizz said:

FWIW the cape is now packed even during the week.  Traffic is tough on most major roads and house rentals are through the roof. I've had two rental agents call me about our place in Falmouth and we are nowhere near the water. Does make me concerned for future cases in that area. Boston will have it's trouble when the students get back.

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.

1 hour ago, klw said:

My favorite one is the person who moved here to get away from people from out of state.  Kettle meet pot.

In all seriousness, why do you check those pages?  It just seems depressing and angering.  Every now and then I would read the WCAX comments and quickly be reminded at how nasty the world can be.  They shut down the comment eventually and those folks moved to VT Digger who have now shut their comments.   It is brutal but is sometimes just the same ten names over and over.  Enjoy your summer and enjoy Killington and stay off Facebook.

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.

On 7/20/2020 at 9:14 PM, powderfreak said:

Vermont has had only 2 COVID related deaths since May 15th.... and is the only state in the Nation with 0 deaths in the past 30 days.

The only two deaths in the past two months were on May 24th and June 15th.

 

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

4 hours ago, powderfreak said:

Superstar still looks stupid deep. No skier traffic or grooming, that thing will last a while.

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.