Bumps for days. Photo: Killington Superstar Challenge
Spring skiing and riding is a great time. Gone are the days of hunting for fresh tracks and turns in waist-deep powder. The shells are gone too — all the Gore-Tex, high-tech outerwear of deep winter swapped out for short-sleeve floral button-ups or whatever else feels fun and ironic on a ski slope. The seriousness of winter has in a very literal sense melted away in springtime, and resorts make days on the hill more festive. There are pond skims and costume days and anything gimmicky you can think of. Vermont’s Killington Ski Resort is no exception, capitalizing on its “Beast of the East” moniker by inviting people out to endure a marathon day and potentially come away with a decent end-of-season prize.
The Superstar Showdown is going to crown “the most die-hard skier or rider in the East” in mid May, who will earn that title by skiing or riding from first chair to last and logging the most vertical feet along the way. That’s the whole concept. Be on the first chair at 8 a.m. and rip laps off the Superstar Six chair until the place closes down at 4:30 p.m. Most vert gets $1,000 at the end of it all and either a new pair of skis or new snowboard for next season.
The contest is pretty fitting for Killington. New York’s Whiteface is the only East Coast ski area with more vert (3,430 feet of vertical drop to Killington’s 3,050), but Killington is the largest of the region in overall size (more than 1,500 skiable acres and 70 miles of trails across seven peaks). Killington receives an average of 175 inches of snow per year, and this season they’ve topped that and are inching toward the 200 mark with a few weeks to go before closing down for the season.
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