Cloudy 36 degrees.

Well, I never got a chance to sample the cream cheese frosting I spoke of in yesterday’s post. The Beast’s mighty bull wheels never turned today. It sounds like they had good reason, as outlined in their own conditions report:

Due to icing from freezing rain, intermittent power outages and lightning…

I checked out Pico’s report and it said the same exact thing. I’m willing to make a few turns in just about any conditions for y’all but even I have to draw the line at earning turns in that kind of weather.

I’m sure by tomorrow morning they will have it all sorted out. The weather actually looks quite promising, sunny and 30s for Saturday, and a strong chance of a few inches on Saturday night. Perhaps winter will come to stay now?

Incidentally, I see in the above quote from Killington Resort’s conditions report that the Beast eschews the Oxford comma. I guess the Beast has not seen the very descriptive infographic floating around facebook lately that so clearly demonstrates the benefits of the Oxford comma. Either that or the Beast just hates commas.

Dave Young is a former ski tuner from the Midwest. In fact, he was once assistant to the assistant manager at the biggest tuning shop in the mall. These days he mostly skis, photographs other people skiing, or hangs out in coffee shops pretending to write about skiing. Shop Our Online Store

Mostly sunny, 28 degrees.

Greetings snow sports enthusiasts. Something pretty awesome happened today, I hope you had a chance to check it out. What happened was the sun was visible in the sky, with no clouds obscuring it. Consequently, you could see definition in the snow. Which was nice, I was starting to think the world had gone gray and nondescript. The air was warm too and it was just plain nice out. Other than that, the conditions were much the same as yesterday. Fast. My two favorite trails were Highline and Outer Limits. Highline has been under the guns for two days now, so that was an obvious choice, although today the lower part was getting a little wet, so the upper pitch was where the best turns could be found. Outer Limits was good in an unconventional sort of way. It had obviously been heavily groomed and was carpeted in deep, nearly bottomless in fact, sugar. Plus there were fist sized floaters of hard material. I know that doesn’t sound great, but it really was pretty nice. I think bottomless death cookies could be the new powder. Every once in a while one of the cookies would come up and whack you on the kneecap though, and that kinda hurt. Still, it was good fun to ski such a steep trail and have no concern with purchase.

What about tomorrow? Well, forecasters seem to be having trouble reaching a consensus again. Precipitation will happen, that seems certain. Personally, I wouldn’t be disappointed with any solid precipitation. In fact, my forecast is for 2-4 inches of cream cheese frosting and I’ll be out there first thing because I love cream cheese frosting. On carrot cake or on the slopes.

Dave Young is a former ski tuner from the Midwest. In fact, he was once assistant to the assistant manager at the biggest tuning shop in the mall. These days he mostly skis, photographs other people skiing, or hangs out in coffee shops pretending to write about skiing. Shop Our Online Store

Cloudy, 23 degrees.

By keeping my expectations low I lay the groundwork to be blown away by the conditions. Not that it happened today, I’m just saying, hypothetically. But seriously, I did have low expectations today and I was somewhat pleasantly surprised. We were facing one of those all too common thaw-freeze cycles today, where yesterday’s warm temperature and water hazards become today’s cooler temperature and impact resistant surface. These are the days when I’m glad I have my pass at Killington. I’ve seen what happens at other resorts under similar conditions and it’s not pretty. The Beast knows grooming. One look at the closed Superstar Headwall is all you need to see what the conditions could have been like, if the Beast had not been so diligent in grooming. For those of you who did not get a look at it, let’s just say it was pretty shiny. But that was not the case on most of the mountain where skillful grooming and snow making created a surface that, while definitely firm, was surprisingly receptive to edging. And fun. Superstar, excluding the aforementioned headwall, was quite nice. So were Bunny, Mouse Trap and Lower Chute on Snowdon. East Fall was a little chunky, covered with rattly balls of doom, and I never made it over to Cascade because the Canyon and Northridge chairs were not running today. I didn’t get over to Bear either but rumor has it that Dream Maker is under the guns right now, and so is High Line. Bottom line: better conditions than I expected today, and good prospects for even better conditions tomorrow after another cycle of grooming. To alliterate, The Beast bounces back.

Dave Young is a former ski tuner from the Midwest. In fact, he was once assistant to the assistant manager at the biggest tuning shop in the mall. These days he mostly skis, photographs other people skiing, or hangs out in coffee shops pretending to write about skiing. Shop Our Online Store

Kevin, rehabbing his separated shoulder

Cloudy,34 degrees.

I just love spring skiing, don’t you? I like it better when it happens in the spring, but, you know how it is in Vermont, you gotta take what you can get when you can get it. So today I stripped down to my ultra short denim cut-offs and skied bare-chested. Like I always do in the spring. That’s not entirely true, sometimes I wear a really tight tank top. Actually, the snow was pretty spring-like today but the air still retained a bit of winter’s bite and the wind was brisk, so I didn’t really bare it all out there. The snow was nice, especially on the lower mountain. Evidently some places were still a little frozen because Superstar Headwall was closed and so was Bear Mountain, from what I could tell. I couldn’t figure out how to get there, anyway. I was thinking that Outer Limits would have been nice, since it’s usually a few degrees warmer on that side, but maybe not. Lower Superstar was good and so was Mouse trap and lower Chute. Even East Fall was pretty good. You could definitely feel a change in the snow consistency as you gained or lost altitude. Visibility was better than I expected too, and at times the sun even peeked out. All in all a solidly good day of skiing and riding at Mt. Killington.

I tried all morning to get on the NOAA website, my default weather check Site, to no avail. Whenever I can’t log on to NOAA I think, oh dear, our government has finally gone belly up. But no, it’s back up now. Probably just maintenance or something. Anyway, I found and interesting bit of information. On this date last year the high in Killington was 1 degree and the low was -20. That’s quite a change. I’m not sure which is worse, warm and melty or eyelash-freezingly cold. What do you think?

Dave Young is a former ski tuner from the Midwest. In fact, he was once assistant to the assistant manager at the biggest tuning shop in the mall. These days he mostly skis, photographs other people skiing, or hangs out in coffee shops pretending to write about skiing. Shop Our Online Store

Cloudy, 32 degrees.

An incoming warm front made for comfortable temperatures and soft snow today. Visibility was variable but Kevin and I found Snowdon to be most enjoyable. We even poked around in some low-angle trees and no one got hurt. Or, I should say, no one got any more hurt. Kevin already has a bum shoulder but, as long as he doesn’t move his right arm too fast, he’s okay. It was nice that my extremely dull and neglected skis had plenty of purchase today and I could take photos with my gloves off indefinitely. Always looking at the bright side, right? So far there has been no precipitation but the weather man is talking smack. I’m hoping that if it does get wet the temp stays just high enough to give us one more day of soft snow. It’s going to set up eventually, I know that, but I’ll take one more day of comfortable mushiness, won’t you?

Dave Young is a former ski tuner from the Midwest. In fact, he was once assistant to the assistant manager at the biggest tuning shop in the mall. These days he mostly skis, photographs other people skiing, or hangs out in coffee shops pretending to write about skiing. Shop Our Online Store