Killington: Squeeze the Juice

I love Killington and whenever I can get a day there I feel privileged. Last Saturday was one of those days and it was as good as any spring skiing I’ve experienced in years.

There are still two Indy Pass hills open in the east; Jay Peak in Vermont and Black Mountain of New Hampshire. And Camelback, in Pennsylvania, is very near to me, and making a heroic effort to stay open until May in spite of its southerly location. So I did have options.

I just had Saturday to ski and I just couldn’t justify a six hour back-and-forth to Jay or Black Mountain. I drove to Killington, which is still four hours, in each direction, for me.

What I like to do when I’m day tripping Killington is to drive up the night before, crash in my vehicle and get up early to be first(ish) in line to ski the next day. Friday night I parked my the usual spot. I had a comfortable night’s sleep on a cot in the back of my minivan.

I was awake and repositioned on the access road, mere feet away from the Superstar lift by 6:30 AM. It left me a lot of time to get ready in a leisurely way. The temperature was 30°F but the forecast called for it to warm up considerably as the day progressed.

I didn’t get first chair, and that was fine. There was no hurry. I knew I had a full day ahead of me and there was plenty of freshly groomed corduroy for all. Killington had piled up a lot of snow at the top; that’s why they call it the Superstar glacier. I herringboned up to the top of the whale and took in the view for a minute before attacking the snow.

The first couple runs were pure groomer zoomer goodness. The snow was was firm but not icy. I sampled every combination I could put together with the seven open trails. It really amounted to three main routes down. They had a small terrain park set up on High Road. I’m not a rail guy myself, but I did sneak through there to hit the jumps a couple of times.

It didn’t take long for the sun to start warming up the surface. We had corn snow by my fourth or fifth run, it was developing into a really great day. I took a break to head into the lodge for a Cliff Bar and some coffee went back to my car to shed a layer. It’s fun to watch the trails evolve as the day goes by in the morning. We actually had a little bit of corny slough following us down the superstar head wall almost sloping small bumps, began to develop early on, but with the snow being as far as it was, they were a little bit more spread out and irregularly spaced then would ideally be the case.

Superstar in late April is a gathering point for hard-core skiers on the East Coast; you feel the energy all around you, squeezing that last bit of juice out of our season. We all know that this would be over soon but thanks to Killington, we at least had this one day. I kept at it as the air warmed up and the sun shown down.

Skylark developed moguls before superstar did, probably because it was shielded from the wind. I went back and forth, skiing Superstar, Skylark and High Road. I skied the bumps. I hit some jumps. I occasionally stopped just to look around and let my burning leg muscles cool off. It was great. At some point late morning I made another stop went back to my car for a drink of water and 10 minutes. I shed another layer and got back on the lift.

Now the bumps were starting to fill in. There was still a nice wide section in the middle of Superstar that was more or less carve-able but the steep sections were plumping up. I’m not a champion bump skier by any means but I felt like I had a pretty good rhythm going. I don’t know how my mogul technique looked good but it felt good.

As the day progressed, more and more people showed up. Sometime after 11 the food service people brought out some grills to start making food. The deck scene started to come alive. There were a lot of people hanging out drinking beers, watching from below. I wasn’t there to sit on the deck and drink beer so I stuck to skiing. A lot of big soft bumps, a lot of corn snow maybe a little sunburn.

I eventually had to take another break and just sat by my car a while, rehydrating, trying to decide if I was done or not. I looked at my phone and it was about 2 o’clock already. I had no idea it was that late. My thighs and calves were screaming. My knees registered every bump. I’m not as young as I used to be so I decided, discretion being the better part of valor, that I’d had enough. I took my time de-booting while I gawked at the vibrant tailgate scene on the access road. What a great day. I’m hoping to get some more before all of the snow finally melts away, but if that was my last day of the year, it was a good one.