After all the excitement of the World Cup events over Thanksgiving, Killington was high on our list for a visit. So we loaded up the car and headed over to the Green Mountain State early Sunday morning.
Killington's snowmaking power was on full display as we pulled into the K-1 lot just after 9, with guns going all-out on Cascade, Bittersweet, Ovation and Ramshead. Killington, Mount Snow and Okemo had gone back and forth since mid-November in the battle for the most open terrain in the east, with Killington taking the lead most recently thanks to redeployment of their World Cup snowmaking firepower.
We somehow scuttled our plan to ski around a bit before hitting the World Cup trails and jumped right into Superstar on our first run. Conditions were decidedly firm, despite a week's worth of grooming and preparing the surface for the general public. Even without the World Cup cachet Superstar's a great trail, but knowing that Mikaela Shiffrin had won the slalom there just a week earlier definitely revved the excitement up a notch. We did 3 laps on Superstar and 1 on Skyelark before moving on.
Snow conditions were actually much better elsewhere on the mountain. We really enjoyed East Fall and Highline, two black diamonds in the Canyon and Snowdon areas. There was quite a bit of intermediate terrain open as well, with some really enjoyable runs off the Snowdon quad. Even though all chairlifts were ski-on all day, the trails seemed a bit crowded at times, especially the Great Northern - Rime - Reason corridor.
We could have skied Killington on Sunday for "free" on our MaxPasses, but decided to bank our 5 days and use some early season 2-for-1 vouchers. We're definitely jazzed to get in some more days when the mountain is fully open. And since Killington's season lasted until June 1 last year, we should have plenty of opportunity.
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