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Trip report - Killington, Vermont - 22 Dec 2003
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 |
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