Emergency ski trip: Okemo (Ludlow), Vermont, USA

I spent three excellent days skiing at Killington, and then went off for two days of skiing at Okemo.

I know Okemo well, and it is a ski area I like. It is not challenging, but it is a lot of fun, with some truly great ‘cruiser’ trails.

Two things were new for this trip. A whole new ski area has been opened up:

The ‘new’ ski area

There were some fun runs around it (and some truly amazingly big and expensive houses in the woods), but I found the area ’soulless’.

The second new thing, and this is something I have never seen before, is a ‘magic’ carpet on the TOP of the main lift from the lodge. This was just weird. A ‘magic carpet’ is one of those moving walkways that you normally see at the bottom of a lift where they are used to get skiers up to speed for non-attachable high-speed chair lifts. Having one at the top is just wrong! Basically the chair gets to the top, and you put your skis down on a fast moving carpet, and as you stand up (and your back gets wrenched and you wabble) before being shot off the end on to the snow.

Summary: Two great days of skiing. Weather was cold, but the snow was just amazing. The Best Western in Ludlow (the town near Okemo) was warm, and comfortable. Ludlow is a small and quiet town, with not a great ‘post-ski’ scene. Only a couple of bars, and dead quite.