Features
Tackling the Beast of the East: Hamilton's Powder Club takes Killington
By Lo Sniderman ’19
January 26, 2017
Tags features
If you’re a ski bum, you know the adrenaline rush of your first moments on the mountain all too well. While clicking in and strapping up, you hear the zip of jackets and the whistle of cold wind. One binding, then the next, then your first push, drop in, and finally flight down the hill. The feeling is nearly unparalleled—the only thing that makes it better is sharing the joy of the ski mountain with friends. Hamilton’s Powder Club seems to understand this, and so on the last weekend of Winter Break the Pow Club brought a group of Hamilton students on a trip to Killington, VT for a weekend of tackling the Beast of the East.
After a long bus ride, over 40 Hamilton students unboarded at Pinnacle condos, where they would spend the next two nights. Bed claiming and unpacking food were the first calls of order, followed by speaker setup, snack preparation and some ski mountain jams (Grateful Dead, anyone?). Condo members got to relax and get to know those in their condo that they hadn’t met before, and hop around to neighboring condos to check out the different set-ups.
A general wave of disappointment momentarily shook the group when we discovered that the hot-tubs were out of service for the weekend. There was almost—almost—an opportunity to break out that extra bathing suit you brought to college but have never worn. However, the prospect of spending the next day on the mountain meant that trip members didn’t stay sad for long.
Rise and shine and strap on your boots; it was time for our first day of shredding. It was cold and sunny: perfect weather for a day of skiing and boarding with friends. Smiles were all around on the day’s first ride on the chair lift, which brings skiers up to a maze of routes through Killington’s six peaks and 3,000 ft of vertical drop. Annie Canning ’19 commented that the size of the mountain was a huge plus: “Killington’s large size provided long, impressive trails and fun après ski options that better provided for the skiers’ enjoyment than other mountains I have visited.” The air was clear and crisp, amplifying the beauty of the views at every turn. With an even distribution of easier, more difficult, and very difficult trails, there was something for skiers of every level on the trip. The gondola rides were a perfect chance to have interesting conversations with the Killington locals, visitors and veterans who navigate the mountain like it’s their backyard.
There were certainly some rough patches during the day—the conditions, for one, were not optimal considering the lack of snowfall, and the scene for finding a table at lunchtime was worse than Commons at noon. John McGonnigal ’17 affirmed that some slick terrain was not enough to dim the spirits of Ham students: “the on-mountain conditions were certainly not ideal, but that was never the trip’s main attraction for me. It was the people who were going that got me the most excited, so in the end I didn’t care that it was a little icy.”
The two long days of hitting the slopes concluded with après ski hangs in the condos and a chance to relax with friends from Hamilton that hadn’t seen one another since before Winter Break. When the group returned home on Sunday, everyone got back to their dorms exhausted but excited about having spent a few days on the mountain and the new friends they made.
As far as the trip’s fine details—don’t be surprised if you get ambiguous responses when asking friends about how it was. After all, what happens in Killington stays in Killington.