I skied today at the Mountain Meadows cross-country ski area in
Killington, Vermont. Conditions were generally good, with the exception
of the trail on the pond, where the 2-3" of snow was getting blown away.
At least I didn't fall through the ice. Elsewhere the grooming was
pretty good, with just an occasional water feature or other obstacle
here and there. All the trails were open except the "brown trail."

I have to take issue with the system of trail measurement at Mountain
Meadows. They claim a total of over 55 km of trails. (More
specifically, they claim 55.75 km, a degree of overreaching in precision
exceeded only by the Blueberry Lake ski area in Warren, Vermont, which
gives trail measurements in meters.) The problem is that they mark
their trails in loops, not segments, and then add up all the loop
distances, even though many of the designated loops overlap. Mountain
Meadows isn't the only cross-country ski area that does this.
Mt-Ste-Anne in Québec does this, big time.

Today Mountain Meadows is claiming over 30 km of trails open, but my
GPS-odometer is showing 10.1 miles, which, at today's exchange rate, is
close to only half of what they're claiming, considering that I did some
backtracking to ski all the open trails.

Now that I have that off my chest, Mountain Meadows is a very pleasant
place to ski. The trails are mostly intermediate, with only a few flat
sections of trail aside from the pond. The trails were intelligently
laid out, and offered a nice variety of scenery: deciduous forest,
coniferous forest, some mountain views, a little bit of river, and, as I
said before, pond. One unusual detriment, though, is the unusually loud
road noise from nearby U.S. route 4. Mountain Meadows does snowmaking
on the 1.5 km "white trail", which is also slightly wider than the other
trails, having two tracks plus a skating lane.

One unusual practice at Mountain Meadows is that they list the trail
difficulties only at the touring center, on the theory that the
difficulties may change as does the weather. It's an interesting
theory, but I'm not sure that I buy it.

Their map is accurate and shows 20' contour lines, which is unusually
good. It takes a little while to get used to their convention of using
letters both for trails and trail junctions, e.g., the W (white) and Y
(yellow) trails intersect at junction C. At least, I think they do.
One very useful practice is that the trail signs indicate the distance
back to the touring center. Craftsbury does this, too, but their
overlapping loops are indicated by numbers, so that Craftsbury is like
skiing the IRT, whereas Mountain Meadows is like skiing Candyland.

The town of Killington ("Heart of the Green Mountains", although I
noticed on the drive home that Rochester, Vermont also thought up the
same slogan) was renamed Sherburne (not to be confused with Shelburne,
which is a suburb of Burlington) in 1800, after Colonel Benjamin
Sherburne, one of the original grantees. But, after almost 200 years as
Sherburne, the town renamed itself back to Killington, not so much in
respect of history as for the convenience of tourists seeking the town's
most prominent feature, the Killington (alpine) ski area, formerly known
as "Killington Basin Ski Area", and now popularly known by Vermont
skiers as "Kmart". As I said recently, cross-country skiing in Vermont
subsists in the shadow of alpine skiing, and this is especially true
with respect to Killington, the largest alpine ski area in eastern North
America. Mountain Meadows (you remember Mountain Meadows?) benefits,
presumably, by using the Killington alpine for its Telemark lessons.
Also, there are lots of restaurants and nightlife in the area, so this
is a good area if you like that sort of thing.

Lew Lasher
Stowe, Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts