More information - Killington - USA

It seems that when you try to describe Killington you end up talking numbers - the resort is one of the most impressive in the world in some respects and in the US market in many more. It seems unfair not to tryto describe the place a little before giving vent to those figures. Killington is very much a ski area rather than a resort (although that is changing), hotels, restaurants and other facilities are spread out for several miles on the three lane road up to the resort's main base at Snowshed. Ownership passed to the American Skiing Company in 1996 who for over a decade had been the resort's original owners, The Sherburne Corporation, arch rivals with the expanding Sunday River in Maine eating into Killington's status. American Skiing Company chairman Leslie B Otten began his career as a Killington employee and took over running Sunday River and then ownership of the area from the Sherburne Corporation. The American skiing company invested $50 million up to 1999 in its 'Revolution' which included doubling snow-making capacity and constructing the Killington Grand Resort Hotel at the resort's base - the start of a change in emphasis to a slopeside village for 'The Big K'. The ski area itself extends for a massive 18km (11 miles) over seven mountains from Sunrise to Pico, the last was once a small ski area in its own right but now plans are afoot to lift-link it to the rest of Killington's terrain, all of the rest of which is fully lift linked. It's difficult to resist the temptation to quote the figures, so here goes. Killington is the largest ski resort in the Eastern United States and it seems it always has been. Recently celebrating its 40th birthday it now boasts more than 2,000 snow cannons and is famous for having one of the world's most powerful snow making systems which has enabled it to open trails in early October and keep them open through to late June in cold years (the record is June 22nd). It averages six metres of natural snow anyway. Killington is one of only a dozen resorts in the United States to have a vertical drop greater than 950 metres (and of only two in the East that do, the other being Whiteface) - tantalisingly close to the 1000m mark that means much to the European market. The resort is keen to point out that, because of the number of its trails and lifts (with 33, second only to Aspen in the US, which has its lifts on several unconnected mountains), it is in every way a comparable resort to the big centres out West - with as much trail length if not the acreage. Indeed Killington is one of the few US resorts to measure trail length as well as resort acres, knowing that if a lot of the 'big acre' Western ski areas dared to publish their prepared trail length stats they wouldn't look much by comparison. Killington's 150km (95 miles) plus of trails also compares favourably with most ski areas in the Alps - the largest single resort there, La Plagne, having 210km of trails. It's therefore an increasingly popular destination resort for skiers from Europe and further afield who recognise that Killington is the exception for those who dismiss East Coast skiing as low-hill small-area weekend retreats for the residents of the local big cities. A few final fascinating facts - Killington has the longest trail in the East (Juggernaut, 16km/10 miles in length) and Outer Limits is the steepest mogul slope in the region also. Although the 12 quads, half of them high speed detachables, is not a record it's still a pretty impressive uplift, with six triples on hand also.