Killington, VT 1/6/00

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/6/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>With yesterday's freeze and return to snowmaking after the rain of Monday/Tuesday, the open terrain has all been groomed at least twice. Mostly a coarse sugar surface with very few death cookies flying around. <BR> <BR>There were snow guns running all over Snowdon and Rams Head, and in the upper 1/3 of Skyelark off the Superstar quad. They were starting up guns on East Glade and on the part of Great Eastern leading from Skyelark past Bittersweet/Vertigo/top of Needles Eye chair. <BR> <BR>It was all groomed fast cruising, with a line of ice bumps on either edge of the bottom pitch of Superstar, if you were so inclined to punish yourself. <BR> <BR>The second stage of the SkyeShip gondola was running, but it was all easy blue cruisers down to the Snowshed Crossover where the Needles Eye trail was open below it. <BR> <BR>The fast route off of K1 was to do GreatNorthern/EastGlade/EastFall. <BR> <BR>The Skyelark chair on the Bear side was open with one fast way down (under the lift line upper half, then veer to the left to the bottom). <BR> <BR>Outer Limits is closed with scary looking ice bumps and kinda bare on the far side away from the chair. <BR> <BR>Riding up the Canyon chair was depressing to see only the strip of manmade on East Fall with both Cascade and Dipper both almost bare. <BR> <BR>It was fairly crowded on what was open; it mostly seemed to be from the college promo week they are running, although I saw some usual VT day locals. <BR> <BR>So, this weekend I expect it will be fast machine snow and crowded on the major trails - you should be able find some quiet trails - the Bear side was pretty quiet today. <BR> <BR>The sad thing about way the ski consumers act, is that there will probably be more people at New England ski areas this weekend than there will be 10 weeks from now in mid March, when there will probably be more snow, more trails open, more woods to explore, and nicer weather.