Skivt2

On the Killington locals page they are talking about the outbreak they think they may have there. One person said that they have hear local people there say many times, “We don’t need to wear masks, we are all locals”. They think they are an island.

It’s ironic for us because our 2k sq ft house in CT is in a very rural area in the woods on a dead end with no neighbor behind us for maybe a quarter mile or more. In VT our 520 sq ft apartment is in a four story concrete building with common hallways and an elevator. We are about 100 steps from the lift at the base of the ski area. It’s so much harder to avoid people in VT. No question our house in CT is safer and more comfy.

Should be interesting in the next couple days as there is a rumor of a cluster due to a big house party at Killington with locals and part-time residents. Hearing 6 are positive, others have symptoms and contact tracing has begun. No one needs this for a variety of reasons but it’s sure to fan the flames.

Even if the winter is not normal we expect to be able to live in our place full time there and we plan to ski if the mountain is open. But my husband currently needs to be in CT all day one day a week for his RN clinicals. Since Vermonters are allowed to travel without quarantining for essential travel is that our loophole? Become a Vermonter and then that one day a week essential travel is not an issue? Cape Cod is chock full of Vermont plates and has been for the past 3-4 weeks. So the whining about out of staters in Vermont by so many Vermonters is super hypocritical. We have been on the Cape all summer which is not a quarantine county. I was tempted to contact VT and ask the following: if our zip code is in a quarantine county but we have been living in a non-quarantine county for 6 weeks can we come to VT without quarantining? Or.....if our legal zip code is in a quarantine county, but we live in Vermont from October 1st to January 20th (7 days a week), but one of us needs to go to CT to a quarantine county for work 1 day a week for essential travel does that one person needs to quarantine 100% of the time? Do we fall under the Vermont resident rule because we are living there or does our official zip code drive how the rules apply to us even if we are not living there. OMG What a cluster. These rules just don’t make sense for everyone. Not everyone lives a traditional lifestyle. Grrrrr

We have only slept at our place in VT one night since 4/1 when we left after living there 4+ days a week all last winter. A cool $5,000 down the drain in rent and utilities so far. Our official residence is in Hartford county which continues to be on the VT quarantine list. We plan to live in VT over this winter again and really don’t have a lot of reason to be in CT. We are going to have to switch our registration on our new truck in VT and change our address with Killington to a PO Box. There are calls to have VT mountains turn off season passes for those with quarantine county addresses. We bought $2400 in season passes. I’ll be damned if we can’t use it or the $950/a month apartment that we are paying for. Keeping us out is just F’ing unacceptable.

I have started this thread on August 1st for about 10 years. It’s tradition.

The internet is also out all over in CT and that means no landlines either so pretty much once the cell tower goes dark you can’t even report a fire or call an ambulance because all mode of communication are gone.

Well obviously then there are lots of groups not being asked to take a risk. Why should teachers have to take that risk? Not to get into it but my job requires communicating and teaching difficult concepts To adults that have to then take action on those concepts. It’s Skype meetings all day long sharing screens with prepared materials and then answering questions as folks being to work on the tasks. It’s not easy but with some effort I’m sure it could be successful. Being in a video zoom type setting is not live in person but it is close. We are probably only talking 4-6 months before we at least have a “rescue” type treatment if you contract a bad case. And maybe 6-8 until you could assume most get vaccinated. We are not taking forever here. Why not find a way to make true remote video teaching the short term solution to save lives? Why should teachers, students and their families take such an enormous risk when so many others are not asked to take a similar risk?

There are a ton of folks working from home until 2021. Pretty much the entire financial services industry. Everyone in back room office operations and IT. Lots of people not being asked to assume the risk of working in person.

The always beautiful sunset over the Champlain valley from the top of Pico just after last chair In late December....

I never engaged in the Facebook discussions as there is no point in getting into an argument like that. I was just lurking for local news which is also shared there. But I did see a lot of second homeowners and part time residents try to argue on the more public locals site. Threats of physical violence were made. No idea if they were carried out though. Because we can skin out our back door and had a stockpile of what we needed in March and early April we never got confronted face to face fortunately but knew several others who were.m I don’t know what it will be like next winter but I thought it was somewhat of a public service to bring this up since it could get ugly again if cases start to rise in VT as tourist season begins. If it comes to light that the clusters are due to tourism I would bet money that it will get ugly for folks with out of state plates. You are welcome not to believe me and think I am being alarmist. I hope I am wrong. But I have an inside seat to what has been said since March and what is still being said. Take from it what you will.

I think I’ve failed to communicate this properly. I do believe friends are glad to see me.. The issue is not all about me. It’s a systemic problem in Southern VT. It’s an ugly truth that this issue exists. And sure, you can go to K and have fun and not even perceive that there is an issue. But it’s there. And it’s ugly. I think people coming to VT should at least be aware.

My profile picture is looking down that chute when it was still untracked on a powder day. I’m about 150 feet down and past the “pucker zone” in this shot. It’s about 5 feet wide with a cable down through the top of it that can act like a rail. It’s gotten much narrower in the past few years since it’s growing in. It’s one of the steepest things I’ve ever skied and towards the top steepest part there is a boulder. Like star or goat at their steepest. The space between the boulder and the trees on either side is about 18 inches wide so pointing them is mandatory. It’s about 6 feet of straight lining you skis to pass the boulder. Getting your speed back under control at that steepness in a 5 foot wide chute with impenetrable trees on either side is the key to survival.

I think I have still failed to communicate this properly. I will try again. Killington has a rather large community of people who generally attend the same large parties and all know each other. LOTS of acquaintances and party buddies in that house party/tailgating scene. There are parties even in off season with hundreds of the same people hanging out together. They are locals, ski house people, and second home owners. That dynamic of all of us having this “thing” in common was what made the place special. The people who moved there as adults to live there full time and consider themselves “locals” damn well know that. Yet a vocal minority of them are still bitching up a storm about “out of staters”. I know who a bunch of these people are but I don’t know them well. But people I do know well are on the same FB pages. In some cases folks with second homes have tried to express how upset they are by this hostility and how they thought they were part of the community. They have even explained that they need to visit briefly to maintain their houses but will avoid contact. The response is always the same. We don’t want you here. Out of staters are a problem. None of the people I know well ever get in the mix and back these people up. None of them ever jump in and say “guys aren’t you being a little harsh”. All I hear is crickets. The few local friends I’ve talked to about this say, “They are not talking about you, everyone knows you belong here”. But the issue is that when people like me hear that “out of staters” and second home owners are horrible and ruin everything, we are getting pissed at all the locals. We are annoyed at the vocal ones but hurt by the silence of our friends. Sadly our local friends don’t even realize how this is effecting us. But knowing the general sense that the “out of stater” is so hated does not make driving around there comfortable. Sure, maybe I get out of my car and a local friend sees me and is “so glad to see me”. But when I’m driving or parked somewhere I’m just a damn out of stater. So something to think about if you are in SNE thinking about spending some time up north skiing this winter. The welcome mat is not out in SVT.

It’s a K locals page. Pico is really just another K mountain actually. Like sugarbush south and north without the slide brook lift

It may be packed but the complaints are flying. Back when I was on the “in” I got invited to a true K locals only Facebook page. It’s not public at all. They have to know you to let you in on it. There are about 400 people and 99% truly live there. It’s pretty intense how much most of them hate us and blame us for everything. One woman’s sandals got stolen while she paddle boarded yesterday at a lake. “Must be the out of staters” .

Yeah...I drive a Subaru, wear sandals and am a long term fan of the dead. Still not a Vermonter without the green plates though lol

Sarcasm does not translate well in written words. I actually said it that way to prove my point. But I’m being serious when I say that I don’t see people pushing back on the haters. That is a problem. In no way do I want to diminish the struggles of any minority population when I say this, but like racism, blaming everything bad that happens in VT on “Out of staters” is a form of discrimination. And those that do not openly push back on it are complicit. This forum is not a place where I have typically seen the issue. And it makes sense since there are so few VT’rs or even NNE people on this forum. Plus most VT’rs on this forum are in N.VT vs S.VT where I think this sentiment is significantly worse. On the other hand, as we begin to discuss next season, particularly with so many from SNE on this forum, I think it is important for those from SNE to understand the atmosphere they may encounter this winter in VT, particular southern VT. Worrying about being yelled at when going to the store to “go home” or having your car damaged by a tourist hater makes vacation a tad stressful I would think. Honestly by what you guys are saying maybe Stowe or Jay would be a better place for a vacation if you are from NY/CT/NJ/MA and are someone who only skis a few weekends or holidays every year. It may be a tad safer than S. VT

The problem is that some of us live in VT 50% of the time and thought we were part of the community. Apparently we are considered tourists because we have plates on our cars from other states. The horrible things I see people saying about out of staters ruining everything and littering and stealing things and spreading the virus may not be directed at me personally but I take them personally because no one I know in VT speaks up to discredit the notion that anyone from out of state is bad. No one speaks up to defend the community members that are “fixtures” in town but not there 100% of the time. Where are all my “friends” now? As MLK said....”It’s not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends that is the most painful.” The world is not as black and white as a lot of people make it. CT has a testing positivity rate of .9%. But we are expected to quarantine. I’ve already paid $8,000 since June 1st for an apartment I have spent one night in and I’m pissed off about it. I am as safety conscious and as anyone I know. I have not set foot in a store or any building, other than a doctors office, for that matter since March. I work from home full time. And I am not blind. I see all my friends in VT hanging out together on Facebook. I have a LOT more to fear from them vs them from me. Moving into the winter where I typically live in VT 4 days a week I will have to break the “rules”. I can live in VT full time, change my plates, change my legal address etc. But my husband is in college to become a nurse so he can get a job in VT in the summer of 2022. But he is going to a CT state school with in-state tuition. The semester is virtual except he has to be in class in person one day a week in CT. He worked hard to get in to this school that takes less than 25% of the qualified applicants and qualifying alone is very difficult. And the whole point was so that we could become full time residents in VT. But if VT folks really are not interested in welcoming us we will be in a good position to look for other more welcoming places in ski country to re-locate. Ironically, we had picked VT because we thought the community was great and had made so many “friends”. Well, at any rate, we bought our season passes for this year and hope to top our all time high of 113 days on the hill this year with or without being welcome in VT.

Yes. Bottom line is people in VT actually hate non-Vermonters. It does not matter if they grew up somewhere else. Once they have the magic green plate they are better than everyone else. This has brought that hate into the open. It won’t matter what the quarantine rules are. Out of staters simply are not welcome.

I agree. We switched our season tune to a shop that tunes into the summer and will tune before mid October because our season is usually October -June.

I normally ski on Lange SC 110’s which I think is a rough equivalent fairly stiff boot for me at 5’ 3”. I’m sized down two full sizes with appropriate hard core boot fitting, shell punching and grinding required because I want 100% responsiveness. But I have Dynafit Ones for my uphill boot with the full walk mode. I have a relatively heavy touring ski set up with old 168 Rossi S6’s and Fritschi freerides. I love the freerides because the ramp is so easy to adjust on the fly and the whole set up is awesome going uphill. But I miss my real boots on the way down something fierce. My last day (day 86) last year was spent in heavy deep powder on a sheet ice base the day K closed uphill. I floundered down an intermediate trail like a fish out of water and dared not climb higher because conditions were too dangerous. Ultimately it’s really important to be comfy going uphill if you are hiking since it really is all about the hike. The downhill is over in seconds. The journey is the destination as they say. For anyone reading this though, if you are considering trying uphill travel and skiing on unmaintained ski resort trails please realize that it’s a whole different ball game than you are used to. Grooming really does make a huge difference. It got really really icy last March and inexperienced folks got in way over their heads by hiking too high and then getting in trouble. One guy had to be rescued after sliding halfway down the steepest trail at Pico and ripping a fingernail off. I’m pretty sure that was the “nail” in the coffin for uphill travel last year.

We were psyched to have made the investment in my AT skis and my husband’s split board a few years back. Got some good uphill last year after the lifts closed and before uphill got shut down. I hear there is already a significant shortage of uphill stuff. If you are thinking of investing it makes sense to do so quickly while everyone else is focused on summer. That is always true of equipment purchases with May and June being the cheapest month to buy stuff normally. This year I expect there is an oversupply of most equipment still, but uphill stuff is a big exception. Folks on various forums have theorized that lifts could get restricted to locals only. That will backfire as many of us would just bite the bullet and change our legal primary residence to our ski houses/apartments. I plan to start the process in September.

I’ve been thinking that we will not have a lot of snowmaking this year. K sent out surveys to their instructors and we were talking about it. I just don’t see how anything beyond privates are feasible. My husband got his level 1 snowboarding and adaptive last year. But he’s thinking of sitting it out this year.