Killington Resort is about a three hour drive from Boston. It is situated on Vermont's second tallest summit, Killington Peak. Skiers and snowboarders have 3,050 vertical feet to traverse when all the trails and lifts are open. It being early December following a warm fall, hardly everything was open last weekend.
One benefit of the early season is cheaper lodging. My friends and I crashed in a nice secluded cabin, about 20 minutes from the resort, off of a dirt road. We had plenty of sleeping space, a big snowy yard and a fiery wood burning stove. The house cost each of us about the cost of a lift ticket and a half, plus we had to bring our own food.
Later in the season, Killington can get expensive but anyone who knows they'll be going to Killington at some time during the winter should look for lift tickets at the reduced price offered online in the fall. I bought my tickets in September or October and they were only 50 dollars and are good for anytime during the season. Lift tickets can get up to 80 dollars or so later in the year.
The conditions were mixed at best. We did get a good snowfall on Saturday midday, so that put a thicker cover on the slopes for a few hours. By midday Sunday, however, we were riding primarily on ice and falling hurt, a lot. I took a good fall onto my wrist at one point, ensuring a week's worth of discomfort.
Killington can get crowded, even at this early time in the year. I would recommend getting there early or staying late to avoid the biggest swaths of skiers and snowboarders. The lift lines moved along quite nicely the whole time, even if the trails were getting Tokyo-dense at times.
Some overcrowding may be to blame for my back pain. That was caused by a rogue snowboarder who crashed into me as a I sat on the edge of the trail waiting for my friends. On a mountain, peak time for crowds is peak time for injury. My armpit pain is explained below.
One winter extravagance that vacationers often enjoy is sitting in the hot tub. Any good mountain home rental should have one: a little steaming pool, not too far from the house, surrounded by snow with beautiful views of the mountainous horizon. Our house had one and it was a delight, for a time. We got two nights of use out of the hot tub, just off the mud room, accessible by a short walk over a wooden walkway leading from the house.
After our second, and final, day on the mountain, we returned back to the house to pick up our belongings and turn off the water, lights, etc. The jets on the hot tub needed to be turned off also and the temperature should be set to 100 degrees. When I lifted the lid to make sure everything was in order, my senses were bombarded by a bubbling cesspool. Fortunately, the phrase "bubbling cesspool" can so rarely be employed to describe something we actually experience but no other words could could as succinctly depict what the hot tub had become.
It stank of a swamp or garbage or some other scent I would never bottle into a cologne to douse even my worse enemy in. The jets had been left on inadvertently, on a low calm setting. They churned the fluid around that was somewhere between Nickelodeon Slime Green and the artificially blued water of a mini golf course. Had Kermit the Frog been hiding at the bottom, no one would find him.
We laughed about the hot tub and feared we might have messed something up, causing this domestic chemical reaction. What if the owner keeps our security deposit to pay for hot tub repairs? The only thing we could do was head back to Boston and wait for the deposit to be returned, or hear from the owner.
No more than two days later, rashes and other skin ailments had broken out on all those who had been in the hot tub. Pseudomonas folliculitis it's called. Commonly known as hot tub rash. Somehow, bacteria borne in the hot tub colonized on us and caused unpleasant things to occur.
One side effect of hot tub rash is the painful swelling of the underarm lymph nodes. Wonderful.
In any case, you can view my attempt at creating a video document of the trip below:
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