In spite of inconsistent weather throughout most of New England’s ski season, many resorts stayed open until April, and some even made it to May. No one could keep up with Killington Resort in Vermont though, as they have now made it past Memorial Day Weekend thanks to impressive efforts by their snowmaking and grooming teams. Last Sunday, I decided to wake up early and make the trip up to Killington to get some late-season skiing in.
The crew at Killington deserves a lot of credit for their excellent snowmaking efforts throughout the year. They didn’t have a lot of windows to get snow on Superstar for the World Cup race in November, but they found a way to pull it off. For Superstar, they found days to make snow beginning in the middle of October and then continued to make snow until late March, creating a massive “glacier” that was able to withstand two recent weekends with temperatures in the eighties.
Conditions were excellent thanks to thorough work by their grooming team. I got to the mountain around 8 am, and conditions were generally soft, with some firm ice leftover from their World Cup efforts back in November. There were quite a few people there in late May, with people going at varying speeds. Bumps showed up pretty early, but it was really dependent on the section. The headwall was practically bumped up from the start, while Middle Superstar remained without many obstacles for a couple of hours. Lower Superstar was bumped up within an hour of the lift running.
There were some portions that became thin, as the sides of the upper Headwall gave my skis some nice scratches, and the portion between the crossover between the Superstar lift and the trail also had minimal snow on the sides. Other than that, the depth was great for late May, and it’s awesome that Killington was able to pull off top-to-bottom skiing.
While Killington will see some rain this week, it will likely not be enough to stop the mountain from another weekend of shredding. On Monday, the resort announced that they will be open this Saturday and Sunday if the weather abides. This will be Killington’s latest closing date since 1997, a remarkable accomplishment based on how unpredictable this past winter was. Based on this recent webcam image from Superstar though, you should expect to do some walking to shred the remaining patches of snow.
Image Credits: Killington Resort, Ian Wood
