Pico Mountain, Vermont: 2/15/14

My family always does a ski weekend on President's day.  This year we did Pico and Killington.  This year, my dad arrived late due to flight cancellations on his business trip, so I started with my mom.  I can both ski and snowboard and I was snowboarding today.  There was a line for first chair on the Golden Express.  When we were told to make 4 with two others, they refused to ride up with us because I was a snowboarder.  They eventually gave in to the lifties, but made me ride up on the far left side of the chair with my mom separating me from them.

This was our first ride on the Golden Express.



Top of the Golden Express



We saw that Expressway was bumped up.  My mom hates bumps, so we started on Gold Rush instead.



After that, it was back up the Golden Express, then down Fool's Gold to the Summit Express.



Approaching the top.



View looking back on the Summit Express.



We then took a run down 49'er.



We took the Summit Express up again, and then took 49'er and then crossed over to Mid Pike.  Notice the untracked powder in this picture.



After this run, we went down to the base and took the Little Pico Triple up.



View of the base area.



Some of you may think that Vermont is flat, but the Little Pico Triple has some pitch to it.



We found a run called C-Slope.  This run is an old school natural run through the trees.  It feels just like the ski bowl runs at Gore.



After this, we decided to try the Outpost Double.



The lift is really cool, but my mom didn't like the fact that the runs were all moguls, so we only took 2 runs here.  It was lunchtime, and my dad had arrived, so we met up with him and took a break for lunch.  After lunch, we took a bunch of laps riding the Golden Express to Gold Rush.  That was my mom's pick of the day.  After this, we decided to take the Knomes Knoll Triple and try the runs off it.



We found Sundowner, which is another old school natural run.



After some runs on Sidewinder, my mom called it a day.  I switched from snowboarding to skiing so that I could hit some of the expert bump runs.  My dad and I went straight to the Outpost Double and took Sidewinder.  This was a rocky bumped up mess and I scratched up my skis pretty good on it.  This is a picture of my dad on Sidewinder.



After this we took some more runs, hitting every trail pod.  My dad quit around 3:45 and I took one last run off the summit.



We really enjoyed Pico.  It was not very crowded.  The longest we waited was 5 minutes at the Golden Express when the Summit Express crapped out.  The snow was great and it was 100% open.  If the opportunity arises to hit Pico on a similar day, we will be back.  Anyone who does not like Vermont should consider trying Pico, as it is a different experience from  most mountains in the state.  I feel like it combines some of the great things about Whiteface and Gore.  It has the sustained vertical (easy to do 1,900+ vertical in one run) that Whiteface has, as well as the cruisers and old school feeling that Gore has.

nice report

i love pico..real nice vibe and terrain..

He quit at 3:45? What a slacker!