First snow hits Killington as the World Cup clock ticks
The K-1 Express Gondola at Killington. Photo: EgorovaSvetlana, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The first flakes of the season fell on Killington on Thursday, slicking Route 4 by afternoon and giving the resort’s snowmaking crews the cold they have been waiting on for most of a warm fall.
“Snow up here is a different kind of animal,” Dillon Notte of Killington Public Works told WCAX. Many of the town’s plow trucks were not fully set up Thursday morning. By evening they were, and crews planned to be out early Friday treating slick spots.
On the mountain, the snow matters less for what it adds than for what it does to the ground. “Even if it is an inch or two, what it does for us in snowmaking is it cools the ground down, which we desperately need,” said Greg Gleason, Killington’s snowmaking manager. Crews planned to start spraying more snow Thursday night.
A slow start, and a hard deadline
Killington has not announced an opening day. Last season, trails first opened on Nov. 12, so this year is already running behind. The resort made snow for the first time in mid-October, but it has not stayed cold long enough to run the guns for long stretches. A spell of warm weather early this month, including temperatures near 70 degrees, set things back further.
“Typically, we like to see 25, 26 degrees sustained for 12 to 24 hours to make it worthwhile,” Gleason told WPTZ earlier this week. “The drier the better, the colder the better.”
The real deadline is Thanksgiving weekend. The FIS Alpine World Cup returns to Killington with races starting Saturday, Nov. 28, and the Superstar trail has to be fully covered for the women’s slalom and giant slalom. Construction of the race venue began Monday. Gleason said crews expected to focus first on the K-1 Peak and North Ridge areas, and possibly terrain near Superstar.
He said he is not worried yet. “We have done this before; we’ve been in this same boat, so we’re not concerned. We’ll do all we can with the cold that’s incoming,” he said.
The World Cup weekend typically draws about 40,000 spectators, according to Gleason, one of the biggest crowds of the year for the Rutland County economy.
New guns, fewer compressors
Killington is going into the season with new equipment meant to cover more ground in short cold windows. Over the summer it installed two SMI Super Puma fan guns on Mouse Trap and Lower Skyeburst, wide spots where trails merge that have been hard to cover. Both are on automated hydraulic swing arms more than 15 feet long, so crews can adjust the throw when the wind shifts, the resort said in an October announcement. That first big test, on Oct. 6, ran six fan guns in three spots, including four at the bottom of Superstar.
Gleason said the resort’s newer energy-efficient guns use about an eighth of the air of older models. “What that allows us to do is run more guns at once and make snow on more trails at once,” he said.
If you’re planning a first run
The resort says updates leading up to opening day will be posted on its conditions page at killington.com. Early-season terrain is usually limited to a handful of trails with snowmaking, so first-day skiers should expect a short menu.
For drivers, Route 4 over Sherburne Pass is where the first storms of the year tend to catch people out, as Thursday showed. Winter tires and extra time help for the next few weeks, especially on early-morning trips before the plows and sand trucks have made a pass.
For more on how winter shapes the state’s economy, see our earlier look at Vermont’s ski industry.
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