I normally reserve my two Killington vouchers for either early or late season. But despite this only being the second week of March, it IS already the late season. Saturday was the pick up the weekend with projected low 50s but with a slight breeze. I gave Stowe and Sugarbush some consideration but ultimately I thought further south would be best for any possibility of good corn snow. In hindsight, there wasn’t going to be good snow anywhere this weekend, let alone good corn snow.

I arrived at Killington surprised by what I found: a resort still busy with guests (probably due to advanced booking and not being able to cancel). I was dumbfounded to see Snowshed and Ramshead bustling with activity and skiers. Given the conditions I skied today, it would be a safe assumption that those skiers did not have a good time.

I assumed lower elevation and southern facing Bear Mountain would be the best place to start so I ascended via Superstar and made my way south. Conditions were dismal and atrocious everywhere. Soft slush piles of pushed around snow alternated with frozen, scraped, and icy slides for life. I quickly got in the rhythm of skiing into the piles and making turns on top of the slushy mounds. But most beginner and intermediate skiers fought for dear life. These conditions were found on all trails including main beginner thoroughfares such as Great Eastern.

At last, I made it to Bear Mountain where I found horrendous bumps on Outer Limits. The large bumps were interspersed with slide for life scraped and icy flats. The lines were generally horrific with large gaping stretches of frozen hard pack between the bumps. I found some better lines skiers’ far left next to the lift but those lines also had tons of rocks showing through. Being the only option off the lift, traffic was significant and inexperienced skiers were everywhere. It was a shitty experience, I bailed and headed back via the Skye Peak Express Quad.

Next I sampled Needles Eye where I found more stretches of icy hard pack and soft mushy bumps. The icy hard pack was the more predominent of the two. The skiing sucked here as well so I took the Skyeship back up and tried Skyelark. More atrocious skiing but I was starting to get the hang of how to best ski it. The same couldn’t be said for most other skiers that thought they were getting a relatively easy blue square. It was horrid.

From the run out of Skyelark, I spotted Highline in the distance. Highline sported a pair of bump courses and an active competition. It looked like skier’s left was open. So in hopes of finding some nice bumps, I took the Snowdon Triple via the new mid-station. No luck. Highline was getting a lot of sun and the bumps were thin coverage and sloppy loose snow. I realized that corn snow would not be found today.

Finally, I gave Superstar a try and the massive whales were impressive. One whale was taller than one of the lift towers. The wall of snow created a clean separation between the ski lift and skiers’ right on Superstar. You could ski more than half of Superstar without being able to see the lift that runs parallel to the trail. Despite the horrible meltdown, Superstar looks like it will be skiable until at least mid-April even given the current weather pattern.

But as impressive as the snow wall was, the skiing was less than spectacular. I gave up after just a few hours. Before I started skiing, I optimistically applied sunscreen to my arms but my jacket never came off due to a stiff breeze and just slightly less than ideal spring skiing temperatures. Adding insult to injury, we not only can’t have cold or snow but we also can’t quite get good corn snow and spring skiing temperatures. I suspect the primary reason is the angle of the sun isn’t conducive to ideal corn snow and spring skiing during early March.

I suspect by next weekend, all lifts and trails south of Skyelark will be closed. The coverage is very thin and connection trails will almost certainly not last through the week. There is enough snow on Needle’s Eye and Outer Limits to last through next weekend. But what is the point? As I was leaving, I noticed that there were more people in the bars and lodges than actually skiing. When conditions are that bad during what is being pitched as a great spring skiing weekend, I can’t blame them. When the drinking is better than the skiing, something has gone terribly wrong.