Killington Resort, the Beast of the East

You are at the foot of the Beast of the East, the largest ski resort in Vermont and one of the most storied in all of eastern North America. Its story starts with a young man and a stubborn idea. In nineteen fifty four, a young ski enthusiast named Preston Leete Smith looked at the wild slopes of Killington Peak and saw a mountain that could rival anything out West.

Smith had almost no money of his own, so he spent years persuading investors to back him, eventually forming a company called the Sherburne Corporation. To reach the mountain at all, the state of Vermont carved a new road up the valley, a climbing ribbon of pavement up the valley. Then, on December thirteenth, nineteen fifty eight, Killington Basin opened for its very first day of skiing.

From those humble beginnings the resort grew across six connected peaks, sprawling over thousands of acres of trails that tumble down every side of the massif. Skiers gave it the nickname that stuck, the Beast of the East, earned by its sheer scale, its punishing steeps, and its famous Superstar run that later hosted World Cup racing. Killington built its reputation on two things above all.

First, on being enormous, a mountain so large that a visitor could ski for days without repeating a trail. And second, on refusing to quit when winter faded. Aggressive snowmaking and careful snow farming let Killington open earlier and close later than almost anywhere else in the region, sometimes spinning its lifts deep into June while the valleys below turned green.

Preston Smith ran the mountain for decades, an exacting, tireless figure who helped invent the modern American ski resort. When you ride up from this base today, you are following the exact line he imagined standing here with empty pockets and an outsized dream, before there was a road, a lift, or a single tower on the hill.