Building a Better Beast For 18-19 Season

Vermont’s Killington Resort, long known as the Beast of the East with the longest season in New England and some of the region’s most advanced ski terrain, it taking steps this summer to improve trail flow geared toward the intermediate-level skier and snowboarder.
With $16 million in improvements, Killington’s plans include new lifts, relocating lifts, and new cabins for the K1 Gondola. Plus a number of new bridges that will provide improved trail flow on some of the resort’s most popular intermediate trails, including Skyeburst, The Stash, Upper/Lower Chute and Mousetrap.
“While we are committed to staying core to our beastly advanced terrain, we are also putting the focus on our blue family-friendly terrain,” said Killington Resort President and General Manager Mike Solimano. “The investments we’re making will re-shape the guest experience for years to come. Uphill capacity will increase to 48,000 per hour and the downhill enhancements will create more diverse terrain for all levels of skiers and riders.”
Killington’s lift enhancement include:
New Snowdon 6-Person Bubble Chairlift
A new six-person high-speed bubble chairlift will replace the current Snowdon (aka, “Slowden”) chair. There also will be a storage facility built to house chairs from inclement weather to assist when weather impedes operations.
South Ridge Quad Installed
The highly anticipated return of lift service in the South Ridge area will resume with the relocation of the refurbished, Snowdon Quad chairlift.
New and Improved K-1 Express Gondola
All cabins will be replaced with brand-new Leitner-Poma Sigma 8-person cabins, which will be stored in a new cabin storage facility to improve reliability and de-icing time.
Upper Snowden Poma Relocated
The only surface lift at Killington will be moved to the top of Ramshead Mountain and offer exclusive race training access.
In addition to numerous other improvements that will take place in the Bear Mountain area this summer, including upgrades to the Bear Mountain Lodge, Killington Resort and Pico Mountain will introduce Axess smart gates with RFID at lift access points. This technology will improve the guest experience by the use of hands-free automated gates instead of manual barcode scanning.
Bottom line is a visit to Killington next year will be a complexly new experience. In addition, the Beast will remain true to it’s longtime “First to Open, Last to Close” big mountain attitude. Plus, the resort plans to kick off the season once again with the FIS Ski World Cup Thanksgiving Weekend featuring women’s slalom and giant slalom events.