Killington: Skiing's Crown Jewel?

Killington, host to one-quarter of all the downhill skiing in Vermont, is a kind of ultimate statement about taming a forbidding mountain landscape to make a playground. The scale of the place is certainly world-class; Killington (a.k.a. Killington-Pico, since the resort has absorbed its financially troubled neighbor) would be a huge ski resort anywhere.

The drive from Pico's base lodge -- a couple miles west of Route 100's junction with US 4 -- to Killington's southernmost Sunrise gateway is a trip of nearly 10 miles. But skiers who can read the intricate map of trails and lifts can go from one end to the other and back again in the course of a day on the slopes.

The extent of human impact on the landscape is a bit fantastic; remarkably, though, from the deck of the restaurant at the top of 4,241-foot Killington Peak (accessible year-round on a new, high-speed gondola) Killington's sprawl looks surprisingly circumscribed by what might almost pass for a wilderness. The playground is extensive, but it also has been well contained.

By Vermont standards, Killington in winter is virtually a city; during peak months, it takes over 2,000 employees just to run the place. And that's not counting staff at all the privately owned inns and restaurants, the bars and shops that line the Killington Access Road and spill for 10 miles west down US 4 to Rutland.

Given the pressures of this population, one commodity in chronic short supply is water: water to flush toilets, fill hotel baths and pools, and also to make snow on over 800 acres. When it was proposed that the resort could make snow out of water previously used for other, less pure-and-newly-driven purposes, critics launched a campaign of cynical bumper stickers: "Killington -- Where the Affluent Meet the Effluent." New supplies of water are now scheduled to be drawn from a reservoir some miles away, but mountain resorts this big seem destined to cause infrastructure headaches whose solutions rankle Vermont's environmental activists.

Killington hosts occasional "Vermont Days," when the state's residents can buy lift tickets at deep discount; thousands who would not ordinarily ski here come, because the trails are great and who can pass up a bargain? This is supposed to generate good will, but typical Vermonters ski in blue jeans, old barn jackets, and stocking caps. Neither are their boots and poles and bindings up to date. Stunned, the New York snow bunnies in designer outfits wonder how these rubes got in the lift line with them. Once I saw a snow bunny trip trying to get on the chair; she lay there in the snow for 30 seconds, shutting down the lift. Behind her, four Vermonters joked about stabbing her with their ski poles.

Don Mitchell lives on and operates a sheep farm in the Champlain Valley, and teaches literature and creative writing at Middlebury College. The preceding article was excerpted from Compass American Guides: Vermont, 1st edition.