The season started off strong with some early snowfall that allowed Killington to open the weekend of November 7, 2009, but that didn’t last as rain and warmer temperatures forced them to close over the Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in their history. They managed to re-open the mountain on December 2, 2009, but snowfall was much less than expected and it pretty much remained that way throughout the season, even as the rest of the Northeast experienced record snowfalls.

In fact, the 2009/2010 total snowfall of 203″ was the worst the mountain has seen since the 2005/2006 season. And, the 18″ of snow from March 1 onward is a record low.

Combine the low snowfall with the unseasonably warm temperatures over the past 3 weeks and you’ll see why the mountain has been decimated. In fact, the K1 gondola closed on April 2, and temperatures that following weekend reached 78 degrees. It was fun skiing in shorts, but no amount of snowmaking could make up for the rate at which the snow was melting.

All these factors combined to only give us 153 ski days. And yes, that is also another worst on record.

There’s always next year!

(Source: Killington Historical Snowfall and Statistics)

Today’s opening will see the K-1 Gondola and North Ridge Triple serving 13 runs.  190 snowmaking guns will continue blowing in the hopes of opening more terrain this weekend.  You can check out an overview of the mountain that they posted on YouTube yesterday:

The entire Northeast ski industry has been struggling with the warmer temperatures, but Killington has been one of the few mountains to open already.  With their extensive snowmaking, they were open November 7-8, 11, 13-15, and the 21-22. Hopefully with today’s opening, they’ll be open continuously through the rest of the season.

From today’s press release:

Intrawest and Powdr Corp Announce a Definitive Purchase Agreement for Copper Mountain in Colorado

Popular Rocky Mountain Super Pass Suite of Products will be Honored at Copper Mountain, Steamboat Resort and Winter Park Resort for the 2009-2010 Winter Season

VANCOUVER and PARK CITY, UT, Nov. 17 /PRNewswire/ – Intrawest and Powdr Corp today announced they have entered into a definitive purchase agreement to sell Intrawest’s interests in Copper Mountain to Powdr Corp. The transaction is anticipated to close in December 2009 and the agreement is subject to regulatory approvals including the issuance of a U.S. Forest Service special-use permit to Powdr Corp.

This winter season it is business as usual at Copper Mountain. Once the transaction is finalized Intrawest and Powdr Corp have committed to work together to ensure that all of the multi-mountain season pass products, vacation reservations and joint marketing initiatives will be honored for the 2009-2010 winter season. This includes the Rocky Mountain Super Pass suite of products that provide skiers and riders with access to Copper Mountain, Steamboat Resort and Winter Park Resort. In addition, vacation packages, season passes and lift tickets for all three mountains will continue to be available online at www.skicolorado.com.

About Powdr Corp
Powdr Corp is one of the leading mountain resort owners and operators in the United States. Headquartered in Park City, Utah, Powdr Corp currently owns and operates seven ski and snowboard resorts including Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah, Killington Resort and Pico Resort in Killington, Vermont, Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Oregon, Boreal Resort and Soda Springs Resort, both in Donner Summit, California, and Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard Resort outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. Powdr Corp also operates Gorgoza Park, a lift-served tubing park, in Park City, Utah.

About Intrawest
Intrawest is a leader in the development and management of experiential destination resorts. The Company has a network of resorts at North America’s most popular mountain destinations including Whistler Blackcomb, a host venue for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and Canadian Mountain Holidays, the largest heli-skiing operation in the world. In addition, Intrawest markets and sells real estate at its resorts in North America. Intrawest is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Brand New, a blog that focuses on providing opinions on corporate and brand identity work, is giving the new Killington look a glowing review:

… While other ski resorts in the region have gained ground on the market, Killington is going with a new marketing campaign, and identity, created by Factory Design Labs to cement back its position as the leader, and with this vintage tag line revived, “The Beast of the East,” their work has been cut out for them.

Ski resort identity is not something that gets me pumped up every morning when I think about what to write for Brand New, but I have to say that this new logo is pretty darn cool. The new icon comes in the shape of a traditional shield but is executed in a contemporary way with simple, bold lines that make a “K” on its side. The black triangle is a mountain, the white space above it is snow, then green and blue for trees and sky. Simple and, well, badass if you ask me. The script logo could be seen as an odd choice, but I think it has enough of a wink to make it an ironically conscious choice. I would have personally looked for a less generic script but, for matters of concept, this works. So there you have it, our first review of a ski resort.

Check out the comments on their site too – they all seem to be very positive.  Just as we thought…

(Oh yeah, the Factory Designs Lab site is pretty slick too. We’re sure Killington spent a good amount for this work.)

UPDATE: And yet another design blog weighs in on the redesign.

Thanks to their extensive snowmaking system and recent upgrades, they have four open trails (Rime Reason, Upper East Fall and a combination of Great Northern Upper/Middle/Middle Chute/Lower Bunny Buster trails) served by two lifts – K-1 Express Gondola and the Northridge Triple.  And all of this is despite record high temperatures in Vermont this week.

If you missed opening weekend, Killington has also posted some new videos on YouTube:

Check out the videos and  photos from Killington below:

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More photos are available on the Killington Facebook page.

Like the new logo, the new web site is a tremendous improvement over the old, dated site.  The new site design is clean, crisp and much more Web-2.0 like.  It’s also a lot easier to navigate and they have fairly successfully integrated all their social media components into the new design.  And yes, THE BEAST tagline is also well integrated into the site. (We’ve heard rumors that the new branding and marketing campaign cost in the area of $250,000. For that price, we hope it included everything!)

The home page features a number of “witty” lines for THE BEAST, which include:

• THE BEAST just updated your Facebook status.
• THE BEAST just spoke with your spouse. You can buy an express card.
• THE BEAST invites you to a wicked awesome sleepover.
• THE BEAST has been schooling people for over 40 years.

We’ll see if more get added over time.

Of course, while we like the new site, we also have a few suggestions because we like to see things perfect:

• Search works pretty poorly.  A search for “stash” returns “Demos” as the first result. A search for “k1″ tells me that the search must be three characters.  This is probably not that important as the navigation is pretty well laid-out and we doubt a lot of people are searching.
• While we’re on the subject of search, we’d replace that nearly unreadable search image with something more readable.
• What happened to the ski share listings? (Ok, we admit we’re a little biased about this one.)
• Got a few page not found errors mostly from this page. *Hint: Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a great, free link checker.
• We’re glad that the Insider Blog was moved to be a part of the site. I’d make sure the titles of the posts were clickable, since I tried to click them several times before realizing there was an unreadable “read more” button. Also, don’t forget to redirect http://insider.killington.com here. And finally, I’d still recommend going with WordPress as it has tremendous support and plugins.
• Where are the RSS feeds?  They should be included in the meta tags.
• Try to add some 301 redirects instead of 404 pages for pages that Google has indexed.
• Line up the bottom footer so that it is vertically aligned across the page. Get rid of the | in front of Privacy Policy.

Ok, yes,  a little anal and we’re not sure our suggestions will be taken, but we figured we’d put our two cents in.

Unfortunately, they did not replace their ecommerce solution which is almost impossible to actually use to place an order.  Maybe that can be next on the list?

Be sure to check out the site and let us know what you think.

So, the question is, when will the web site be updated?

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For just $50 each, you may purchase up to four lift tickets valid on all but 17 blackout days. This is a $27 savings off the Sunday – Friday rate and a $32 savings off the Saturday rate.  Ticket sales are online only and end at 11:59pm tonight.

Today is also your last chance to purchase your season pass before the next round of price increases go into effect. After today, the following prices take effect:

• Blackout Pass increases from $699 to $799
• Unlimited Pass increases by $100 for juniors, and by $150 for everyone else
• Midweek Pass increases from $449 to $549
• College Pass stays the same

So, with the snow guns at Killington already blowing, what are you waiting for? We also still have a few spaces left in our Killington Ski Share house for the upcoming season. It’s a great way to spend the season!

It’s official! Snowmaking is underway for the 2009-2001 ski season at Killington.

According to Killington’s press release, crews reported to the mountain at 1am this morning and began making snow with a number of guns going on the Reason trail in the Northridge area.  Later today, they expect to have a number of low energy guns going on both Rime and Upper Great Northern trails. They were helped out with 4 inches of new snow at Killington Peak and 1.5 inches at K-1 Lodge.  The snowmaking is expected to continue for the next four to six days based on the current weather forecasts.

You can view more pics of the start of snowmaking on Killington’s Flickr page and also check their video below: