This attitude can be hard to maintain when more times that not, the jumps are bad, the trails are icy, and the pipe hasn't been cut. The east coast is the butt of all jokes, the source of bad knees, and the home of sick pipe riders who can't freeride to save their lives. It's not a place that people dream of moving to, but yet if you're here, you ride it, and no matter how much you complain, you love it.

So, with the conditions not at their best, one would wonder why anyone would choose to wreck their equipment and get their clothes dirty just to ride one trail, but when you haven't ridden in months, you're excited all the same. This is early season riding in the east. The mountains don't have to wait for mother nature to kick in to open, they make their own snow. They also don't wait until they have more than one trail covered. Killington opens every year with one trail, sometimes only for two days, just so they can boast the longest season in the east. While this is solely for marketing, making their resort look good with stats that other mountains can't compete with, nobody seems to care when they get to ride in early October.

This season the grand opening was rather late, though equally anticipated, and supposedly for the season, falling on October 22nd. I didn't have to question how hardcore I was when I rolled out of bed around ten, called and made arrangements to have a pass waiting for me, and then struggled frantically to find the baseplates to my bindings which had apparently misplaced themselves over the summer. I knew I was hardcore because I was going riding, with no intentions of it being any good, and I was thrilled about this.

Although opening day is usually, as it should be, free, this one cost ten dollars, which was supposedly going towards charity, but frankly, American Skiing Company isn’t known for operations that don’t improve their finances, so I think they’re secretly keeping it for themselves. Enough about that though, just to get to the trail of "fast grass" you had to be hardcore. The trip started with a six minute gondola ride, which wasn’t bad at all, however it dropped you off far above the trail, so it was necessary to take a shuttle bus to get to the final destination. When I say shuttle bus, I mean, the back of a pick-up truck. Right here is when being hardcore really comes into play. I think this almost could be considered being extreme, because it was certainly death defying. The ride took about 10 minutes, through a winding cat track that made me hope the driver knew what he was doing. After taking a few dull snowboard edges into the side due to jerking movements by the vehicle and the butter fingers of some passengers, the truck finally stopped in the middle of Rime, the snow covered trail.

In true early season tradition, the ‘corest of the ‘core were mostly snowboarders. All discussions previous to actual arrival involved the sentence "I hope there’s some good hits." Of course, there were no good jumps, in fact, all the terrain consisted of a lot of waterbars, but that seemed to be satisfaction enough for all the new school huckers that were ‘core enough to be there. If the roller-style no lip jumps weren’t bad enough the landings were yet another thing. Flat and grassy, oh yeah.

The man made snow formed itself into moguls, and no base means that in-between the moguls there was NO SNOW! This problem was solvable by riding down the sides of the trails which somehow maintained coverage. There were also downed trees and rocks that were covered with sticky snow to keep cool with the jib nation. The best part of the day however was the 20 foot mud patch right before the chairlift which was unavoidable if you wanted not to walk. This was really fun to have to ride across because after riding down the whole trail, your legs were burning, and the last thing you wanted to do was wheelie or ollie the dirt. Once again, you had to be hardcore.