I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend. I KNOW that the OvR crew did. We had a weekend trip up to Killington, and back to back day trips on Saturday and Sunday, making it an excellent weekend with a big crew on the hill.
I took two days off after turkey day to recover and headed up to the slopes at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning. Upon arrival I realized that the fair weather we’ve been having here in NYC is not still Lingering up in VT. While it was a beautiful clear day, the bite is back and the temps were in the 30’s allowing Killi to dump a ton of snow, opening a bunch of trails and making it feel like the season has truly started (because it has).
I met up with the crew that had been staying up for the weekend trip, we geared up and headed to the gondola, except that we were rolling 12 deep so actually needed 2 gondola’s. After the traditional first beers on the way up (we even poured some out for our turkey brethren) we took a couple of long winding runs down Great Northern, a mellow trail that switch-backs down the mountain making it one of the longest on the mountain.
The best snow on the trail was usually pushed to the sides which was fine with me. It effectively created a series of bumps, hips and rollers that allowed everyone to throw a couple of backside/frontside airs in and were an all around blast to mess around with. We would all just follow each others lines, hoping the person you’re trailing doesn’t fall (this only happened once). I tried to take a selfie of the crew behind me but I failed miserably, here it is!
After the warm up runs we all agreed to take some laps thru the park and see what happens. I’m still holding back and only got in some boardslides and 50’s on the mellow rails, but was super hyped to land my first ever tailslide. Even though it was on the smallest feature in the park I am still proud of my self (and you should be too).
Brother Shredmond went in headstrong to conquer the rail that felled him last week. I’d like to say that he threw down every trick in the book but that would be lying. He approached trying to 50-50, and im not sure exactly what happened except that it was a full rack. There was not enough board on the rail, causing him to slip and basically chest bump the rail and do a belly slide down its remainder. Amazingly enough he was completely unfazed, rode away, and 50-50’d the next rail within five seconds.
The conditions held up, but at around 2 PM the sky became overcast and the temp dropped a little. What changed it for me was that once the temp dropped the snow guns were turned on full blast making some of the runs feel a bit… blizzardish. The snow was swarming and sometimes the guns were as close as a couple feet away. I actually got down low and went under the blast of snow shooting out on several occasions. While fun it made my face very cold (think ice beard), and was hard to see.
Brennan on the mountain between two Hill’s
Satisfied with the day, the crew retired to the bar where we threw a couple more beers back and laughed about the highlights of the day and all the crazy people you meet on the mountain. Wish you could’ve joined us! We’ve got more trips coming up this weekend so #DontBeAChickenBeATurkey and get your self up on a trip.
This is Jeremy Mountain!