K-Mart January 28, 2009

[yak]

My buddy Al and I drove up on Tuesday night for a one-day stand at Kmart. Woke up to light snow falling, with a 1/2 inch on the deck. We had a hangover helper burrito at Blackies and then headed up to Bear Mtn. At 8:35 there were about 10 cars in the lot, and about 2 inches on the ground. A quick run down Dreammaker found abut 3 inches of fresh. Next, over to Bear for a rip down Wildfire and more of the same. Needles Eye has some nice snow-covered bumps up top, and some sketchy in places but good snow below that. From there, Superstar to K1 and then it became kind of a blur. We rode K1 10 times, with 3 canyon chairs mixed in. Sat on that chair for about 5 minutes totally exposed to a ripping wind - not pleasant. Some of the better snow was on Ovation, East Fall, and Royal Flush. By afternoon the wind was filling in most of the tracks after each run and what little crowd there was started to thin. The woods looked good, and I ventured off the edges here and there. I wanted to do more woods, but Al wasn't up to it so I played the good wingman and stayed on the trails. Ended up with 17 quality runs and 29.6K vertical. By the end of the day there were stashes of up to a foot in some places, and about 5 inches on the truck in the parking lot.

Thursday must have been fantabulous, definitely the pick of the week.

The drive home sucked!!! We grabbed a burger at the Potbelley in Ludlow and slogged down to E Longmeadow to drop Al off, then another 2 hours home for me. I pulled through a 2 foot slushbank from the plow and 2 inches of wet slush in the driveway - my wife said it poured on 4 inches of fresh. I had every intention of clearing it before I went to bed but I was so beat I say fark it. Today I spent 3 separate half-hour sessions chopping away at the snowbank then letting the sun work on it a bit before attacking again - arghh.

I had the Garmin in my pocket just for giggles and loaded it up here

I also tried out the wide-angle camera head for the first time on the ski helmet. Video here. Not much light, and the wide-angle makes every slope look flat, but it has potential. I'm thinking I need to move the mount back just a tad to pick up more sky and less ski tips.

 

[joegm]

thanks for putting that up....not a lot of reports here on K and it is nearly impossible to get any accurate info on K from the K zone web site.... mostly a bunch of K cheerleaders and lackeys in terms of actual snow conditions

 

[yak]

Know what you mean. I'm a bit surprised they were reporting 20+ on Thursday, cuz the flakes were tiny all day long. But who knows. At one point going home on 91 it was raging big fat flakes - that kind of stuff would have piled up quick.

 

[Geoff]

Know what you mean. I'm a bit surprised they were reporting 20+ on Thursday, cuz the flakes were tiny all day long. But who knows. At one point going home on 91 it was raging big fat flakes - that kind of stuff would have piled up quick.

The 20"+ report was accurate. 10" by last chair on Wednesday and another 10" overnight. The wind got at it and even the trees were pretty wind packed.

I'm at 2000'. Here's a shot of my front walkway on Thursday morning. The first 10" had been shoveled the previous afternoon. I had a 3' drift on my front porch.

 

[Geoff]

thanks for putting that up....not a lot of reports here on K and it is nearly impossible to get any accurate info on K from the K zone web site.... mostly a bunch of K cheerleaders and lackeys in terms of actual snow conditions

You think that maybe the reason there are no Killington reports here is because people like you sneer at them?

Killington is having a very good year. The 200"+ snowfall Killington is reporting for the year is accurate. The entire month of January was below freezing. The usual spots still have rocks... Devil's Fiddle, the first part of Catwalk, the last part of Julio. There are wind scoured spots. Flume is probably the worst of the things I ski. I'm sure you can find hardpack if you are skiing the groomed snowmaking trails but nobody I know is doing that at the moment.

They blew more snow on Superstar over the last 3 days. I took a run on it Sunday afternoon and they blew wet base snow, not chalky talcum powder. It was the worst surface I'd been on since last Tuesday. There's no announcement of an extended season but Superstar now has enough base to make mid-May.

 

[sszycher]

Figured I'd add a quick TR on Pico from Saturday, 1/13/09, since this thread is already discussing that resort next door

The mountains along Rt 4 def. got a good shot of snow, 20" is likely the high end of it, but certainly feasible. But that's a 2ndary point; as Geoff mentioned the snow was fairly dense and wind-loaded in spots. While there some good spots to hit the off-trail stuff, including upper Birch Glade and the trees in between Bronco & Wrangler, I found that the steeper ungroomed stuff was a bit difficult to ski in because of the heavyness of the snow - you really wanted to stay on top of it, rather than get deep in it.

Of course, the dense snow made for great pp skiing, you could really fly around on the groomed trails knowing you could lay down a fat carve anywhere. And wouldn't you know it, the Outpost chair was running! 1st time I'd seen it running all year, although I was away or stuck down in MA for parts of December.

Anyway, it was fun, and the wife & I got in some runs at Quechee Lakes in the afternoon while my son was taking his 1st lesson. It was a crisp but beautiful day, and some x-country skiing the next morning capped off an absolutely fabulous Winter wknd. Good feelings all around! \/

The Xmas thaw not withstanding, central VT is having an excellent year - just far enough North to avoid the majority of sleet & freezing rain that has popped up in area to the South & East, but also far enough South to significantly benefit from the coastal systems that have come through. I have close friends at both Bolton & Stowe, but I have not had to do the extra driving & ski North of I-89 so far this year (at least since Thxgvg wknd). I'm sure I will at some point this season, when a storm hits the Northern Greens but misses most everybody else, but so far it's been pretty much uneccessary.

 

[Pfunkride]

I was at Killington on that Thursday the 29th. I got 2nd Gondola. I headed straight for double dipper woods. I found my line and stuck the 1st half, then ......
uh, ya, nailed a tree doing mach50. Luckily my pals at DHMC got me into the ortho-clinic at 1pm for xrays. I dodged some serious bullets. NO torn MCL or ACL, nothing broken. Just badly bruised! Decommisioned for 1-2 weeks!
Oh back to the report.
I'll attempt at posting pics of just before the tree, but it rode like it was only a 3-4in. storm. It wasn't very deep. Maybe a few sections were but mostly the wind made it so there wasn't the typical blower face shots i normally find in my fav. section. The top of Downdraft was pretty wind scoured and was actually pretty icy until you got below that tree line., but certainly was not riding like the 20 they said. It was just too dense. However, this snow was really great for the base that already existed.

I do try to post k'ton when i can, but i did't get pass this year so i'm onl riding when my buddy,who works there, is going. Mostly been doing back country riding around pomfret and barnard, you know the low budget lift systems... = car.

 

[yak]

I was at Killington on that Thursday the 29th. I got 2nd Gondola. I headed straight for double dipper woods. I found my line and stuck the 1st half, then ......
uh, ya, nailed a tree doing mach50. Luckily my pals at DHMC got me into the ortho-clinic at 1pm for xrays. I dodged some serious bullets. NO torn MCL or ACL, nothing broken. Just badly bruised! Decommisioned for 1-2 weeks!
Oh back to the report.
I'll attempt at posting pics of just before the tree, but it rode like it was only a 3-4in. storm. It wasn't very deep. Maybe a few sections were but mostly the wind made it so there wasn't the typical blower face shots i normally find in my fav. section. The top of Downdraft was pretty wind scoured and was actually pretty icy until you got below that tree line., but certainly was not riding like the 20 they said. It was just too dense. However, this snow was really great for the base that already existed.

I do try to post k'ton when i can, but i did't get pass this year so i'm onl riding when my buddy,who works there, is going. Mostly been doing back country riding around pomfret and barnard, you know the low budget lift systems... = car.

Dude that sucks. I hope you heal quickly. I also hope the first half run was killer!

I'm not surprised about the density reports. The snow was very fine-grained and the wind was really pushing it around on Wed.

 

[Pfunkride]

well finally figured out the pictue thing. I'll try to post a few more from my earlier trips.
THis is a pic I took first thing in the morning, and it doesn't look like 20 inches.

 

[Tony Crocker]

We get a lot of 20-inch storms like that in California.

 

[rfarren]

We get a lot of 20-inch storms like that in California.

Isn't that what they call sierra cement?

 

[Geoff]

We get a lot of 20-inch storms like that in California.

Isn't that what they call sierra cement?

I thought Sierra Cement(tm) was really wet coastal snow. "Mashed Potatoes". What I experienced on Thursday morning was wind packed snow. It's very dense because the wind reshapes the crystals and takes all the air out of the snow. I've hit that condition frequently in South America where you'd get many feet of snow but it skied like a stiff 6". On the downwind side of all the ridge lines, you'd get cornices and a ton of wind loading with wind slab.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I'm referring exactly to what Geoff describes. It's very common at Mammoth with wind. The Sierra and Andes (at least the high altitude skiing part from Portillo to Las Lenas) have much in common.