Skivt2

Actually the Beast 365 early price was a little more than $400 more than an unlimited Killington pass. The Icon comes with the beast 365 but Icon does not come with the unlimited Killington pass. We have had Beast 365 passes the past 3 or 4 years and really have not gotten the extra $800 in value out of it for various reasons. My 81 year old Dad is all about Okemo these days and we live 15 minutes from the Jackson Gore parking lot. So we opted to spend that extra $800 on Epic midweek northeast value passes instead of the 365 pass. We still have unlimited Killington passes because Pico is our true home mountain mid season and we are all about Superstar in spring. Plus we are 13 minutes from the Skyship . I’ve been known to do a couple runs on my lunch hour there. I’ve gotten 100 days on my Killington pass 5 of the past 6 years and it’s always a goal of mine. While I enjoy Sugarbush, we did not get up there enough the past few years. In the old days we used to take a week off and ski Stowe, Jay and Bolton with a Smuggs and a MRG or Sugarbush thrown in. With the passes we have this year we could do something like that if we wanted. But I have not skied Stowe in 10 years and I’d like to get there this year. I’ve never skied Wildcat and it’s on a list of things I would like to do. So we mixed it up a bit this year. If nothing else I’m sure I’ll get my money’s worth on the Epic pass even if I only get 4 half days in with my dad because, at this point, getting a few turns in with him is pretty priceless. All together the three passes worked out to $2,010.20 each. It’s a good chunk of change but we may get about half of the money back from my husbands unlimited Killington pass because he works for a local company that gets $700 merchants passes. We are not sure if he qualifies as he shifts from full time to part time in September. Killington is a nice company and they will adjust his final pass price if he qualifies. Had we bought 365 passes that would not be an option since that is a year round pass typically paid in installments including mt biking and golf.

It’s August 1st and that means it’s time to start thinking about the new ski season ahead. Our Epic Northeast value pass came in the mail today. We paid the second of the three installments on our Killington passes today. I went ahead and paid the final three installments on our Indy passes today. So most of the lift tickets are paid for. Time to start training for ski season and hoping for an early snowfall. Here is shot of our back door in central Vermont last March 4th. Let’s hope the back door looks like this in December.

Great. Narrowly missed losing property in Vermont Monday. Now hanging at our house in Central CT. Unintentional storm chasing. And we have a dead oak tree hanging over the house we have been trying to get removed for weeks. Hello

It’s going to have a huge impact on lots of things in Vermont. It’s going to be interesting to see if isome of the investors leave or if it impacts Airbnb proceeds enough to result in eventually an unwinding of some of the Covid driven housing demand. It has seemed for the past year or two like everyone in the country wanted to either move to VT or own investment property in Vermont. For us we were terrified that our rental would flood and we would have to leave VT because we would have no where to live. Seriously was thinking my husband would have to quit his job in Vermont. He is a healthcare worker at the hospital so he is needed in Vermont but housing is so challenging that people who want to live in Vermont and who have jobs in Vermont have to leave because there nothing to live in. In the short run this storm will make the situation which is already dire, much worse.

My guess is the mountain is ok. The building flooded but the town is where the problem is.

That was from Friday

Check out the Plymouth VT and Okemo locals + Facebook pages. It’s startling

Yes. To whomever told me my house would be fine…it’s in Plymouth and is currently completely cut off. We have no idea if it is flooded or not. The power is out and the area has no cell service so our neighbors are both physically cut off and also have no means to communicate with the outside world. It’s bad.

The road near my house is already compromised. The governor was in my town today surveying the damage. This road used to lead to my house.

Hoping not to learn some of the lessons this could teach. Ugh. One house at elevation in the green mountains and one in north central Connecticut. 5-6 am looks very rainy

If it were a weekday and an emergency id be fine with it especially if I knew. Heck….. In a true emergency any time is fine. But this was a routine weekly mowing of 1/2 an acre. The only person out of the huge group being mean that backed me was the guy who lives two door down. He, ironically, owns a very large landscaping company and he made it clear that he felt it was very unprofessional for the guy to mow at 6:30. But he was the only one. I got called a Karen. I was told (as if I don’t work) that people need to work for a living. I was told I was being childish. I was told I was not a good community member because I was intolerant. It went on and on. I finally reported the whole group for harassment and threatening and left the group.

Here is the road that goes from the main base area at Killington to bear mountain. This is a key road in town. Route 100 north from 100a to rt 4 is closed and washed away. All this is from Friday. I live on rt 100A in relatively steep terrain with a small stream in the side yard that comes off the top of coolidge state forest. It runs into pinney brook which runs along the length of rt 100a. I’m nervous about tonight.

Thanks. I’m glad to hear that. I was really shocked. I did not say anything to the guy mowing or the neighbor either. I honestly just wanted to know what the rule was. I did sort of expect people to say something like, “the ordinance says 7am. They should not be doing that.” To me that would have made sense. And it would have been something I could casually mention to the single woman that lives in the house where the mowing was occurring next time I happen to see her. Like “your landscaper was here mowing last Saturday at 6:30am and woke us up. The town ordinance is 7am at the earliest. Could you please speak to him about that?”

Our neighbor’s landscaper has the loudest mower I have ever heard. It’s disturbing any time of day. It’s not the annoying drone of a mower. It sounds like an outboard. We have a well insulated house and are used to sleeping through noise because we live under the flight line for BdL about 2-3 miles away. We had a window air conditioner and two large fans (one a box fan and one an industrial size round fan) all on high at the time They fired up the mower about 35 feet from our bedroom window Saturday morning at 6:30am. It woke us up from a sound sleep when we went to bed at 1am. All my life I have waited until at least 9am to mow out of consideration to neighbors. So I asked on the “locals” town Fb page if there was an ordinance on when you could mow and explained why I was asking. I did find out the ordinance is that you can’t start before 7am. But I truly HATE CT. About 30+ people in my town gave me an earful about how I was a jerk for asking. Apparently instead of being mad I was supposed to bring the poor Ass landscaper water because poor working guys have to make a living and it’s hot (yes, get out of bed in my pj’s at 6 am and run over there ‘cause that’s what they would do) Never mind I have a difficult job and work a lot too and really needed sleep after a hard work week myself. I was told that I should be wearing ear plugs (preemptively? - makes no sense) or that I should have been running a sound machine (again preemptively?) and then I was made fun of and threatened. A guy on my street told everyone that it was too bad I was upset they were breathing my air. They stole a picture from my fb page and cut it on to a mower and posted it and made fun of me. They claimed to be organizing a “dad” lawn mower parade to go by my house next Saturday at 6:30 am. These people are supposed to be adults. They all have little children and look to be around 35 years old as per their FB pages. There were no less them 30-40 people pig piling on. I literally hate these people in CT, on this street and in this town. Why would any community treat a fellow community member that way? I have never interacted with any of these people. I did not know any of them by name or by face and they certainly don’t know me. I’ve done nothing to provoke them other than ask a question. I basically don’t even live here. I asked a simple question about a town ordinance and got threatened. It’s just mind boggling. I finally just tried to play it off and said that my husband would enjoy the parade and would be there to greet them and their parade just so they would perceive me as less vulnerable and less of a victim (because yes he exists and yes he won’t put up with their crap). They accused me of threatening them!? Seriously WTF. As a couple of you guys know, I am a VT resident, I’m pretty close to retirement age and in reality I am only in CT getting the house ready to sell. But when I contrast the way people are in VT with the way people treat each other in CT it’s a pretty sad stark difference. I grew up in CT but people are just plain mean here now. It’s very good incentive to hurry and GTF out of here quickly. Whatever happened to being neighborly and community minded? Apparently that is gone. At least from reading this thread I know that I am not the only one who thinks mowing at 6:30 am is rude. Totally unbelievable. People need to do better.

Installed today

Vermont went up as much as 400% - 500% in 3 years depending on the property type.

I expected flack so that’s fine. What was always super cool about Vermont was that the only people there, whether newcomer or local, were folks who really wanted to be there because they fell in love with it. But the recent influx of people seems to be more people who don’t love it per se but just wanted to escape from where they came from to a place someone said was cool and a good investment. Its disturbing to see the regulars and locals, who made the place a funky cool place for years, struggle while people who have never even been to the place move in, sight unseen, and then expect that there are tribes of people desperate for money and looking to “serve” them. Some of us, sounds like you included, love the place and have for years. But if you did not buy a place before the Covid shock then you are SOL. Some of us in the local community have been working hard, renting, going to school, with the goal of buying in the place we love. To get pushed out by people looking to escape somewhere else or who are looking to make a buck, opportunistically, off a place they don’t really care about, is pretty hard to swallow. I hate ratter winters. But I’m not going to apologize for hoping the supply of Airbnb’s outstrips demand, making the investments not worth retaining because of a few bad winters. Im not sorry for hoping some of the newcomers decide it’s not fun having to drive 40 minutes to buy groceries or that their kids school is two towns over or that no one local is willing to maintain their hot tub or come over to wash their Saturday dinner dishes for $15 a week. Maybe if they realize they gave up all their creature comforts to be in VT and that it’s a not as much fun as they thought it would be in a bad winter, some of them will move. And then maybe the prices will moderate to the point where normal people like nurses and teachers can afford to buy houses there again. sorry, not sorry.

I know I will get some flack for saying this but the run up in prices in resort real estate was driven by an insane sudden demand that seemed to be a perfect storm of people wanting to suddenly get outside, people wanting to go to resorts when they left the city and people wanting to capitalize on the folks who could only visit short term by buying up stuff and renting it for a profit. If demand falls for short term rentals due to this weather and the realization by the masses that ski season is fickle in New England, I won’t shed a tear. It might be worth a ratter or two just to burn it all down. Maybe some of the new people who don’t really fit in with the old ways will bail too. It’s getting harder for the mountain characters and hard partying seasonal ski houses and seasonal rental customers as well as the devoted locals and impossible for new recruits to that ski bum scene. Meanwhile I meet the “we just moved here where can I buy stuff? We don’t have a clue how to survive in VT and never visited before but we moved here becuae it’s the “in” thing to do, can someone come get paid $15 a night to do our dishes or $15 a week to clean our hot tub? crowd” a lot these days. Maybe they will get bored and march right back where they came from.

You might be surprised because as awesome as Killington is, so much of what has been open was natural snow. It’s remarkable the difference between Thursday and Friday in terms of how many trails are skiable. It’s going to be pretty bleak as far as trail count by later next week.

The real difference will be that now there will be an icy base as is typical for NE. Before the rain was a magical time because the majority of trails opened on the natural 2+ Foot snowfall with nothing underneath ie no snowmaking or hardened snow pack. The heavy wet snow easily survived the deluge and it seemed to me like a net gainer based on the house here that sits at about 1500’ in central VT. The good news is that we received squalls of heavy wet snow as the freeze started. I’d say at least 2”. If that can bond to the bottom layer then that will help the bottom layer to avoid the “pond ice” in many spots. We shall see. Fingers crossed. An all out rain storm with no snow on the front and back would have been much worse. Of course ultimately it did ruin a good thing though. No sugar coating that.

Landlord lives next door and they were also worried. We finally got power back Monday night just after dark. But we did figure out a solution Monday morning. The furnace is a propane wall heater which has a electric thermostat, blower and electric ignition but the heat source is propane. We have a Jackery 290 batter for camping and it was fully charged. We plugged that in and got four solid hours of heating. Brought the temp up to 58. The jackery charges in two hours. We had friends with power who were able to let us charge the battery. Ultimately we did not need it but we could have charged and ran that battery 2 times a day and saved the pipes.

We just got power back!

We live there but it’s a rental. No idea how to drain the pipes and really it’s not ours to do.

Green mountain power says Tuesday night or Wednesday. We have no alternative heat source. We f’d

Don’t own the house. Don’t know where the shut off is. Water heater is outside in an insulated shed.