This past weekend about 25 HubSpotters and their significant others went on a ski trip to Killington, VT. I organized this trip with help from my colleague Sam S, and it was a blast.

The main ingredient for a ski trip is, naturally, snow.  This winter has been atypical in Boston and New England, with very little (practically zero) snow on the ground.  But we got super-lucky this weekend, with a major storm hitting Killington the day we drove up.

All told, there were 15 inches of fresh fluffy white powder on the mountain for us to ride, and we took advantage, hitting the lifts near opening time each day.  On Saturday it was still snowing and windy much of the day, presenting some visibility challenges, but Sunday was one of the most glorious ski days I’ve ever seen, all sunny and blue skies.

Two other key ski trip ingredients are the lodging and apres ski scene.  Again, both of those worked out really well.

We stayed at a rental house off the main access road, about 3 minutes (literally) driving from the base lodges.  It was a big house, sleeping all of us, and it has its own outdoor hot tub, indoor sauna, pool table, foosball table, many recliners and couches, and more.  It was fairly clean and in good working order, so that was good.

Besides the house options for apres ski, some of us also went out to local bars both nights.  I like Killington’s apres scene, which is one of the reasons we went there, and again we were not disappointed.  The Pickle Barrel always provides good entertainment, and if you have some food at JAX next door beforehand, they’ll give you a card that gets you into the Pickle without cover.

Finally, and perhaps most important, is the company.  We had a great crew, and everyone got along well.  Some people were beginners just learning how to ride, whereas others were college ski racers or just generally advanced daredevils.  We rode in small groups and individually, but everyone had a good time.

Also, this was my first trip ever with my new GoPro Hero2 camera.  I mounted it on my helmet and shot a couple of videos.  They are fairly long, slow, and boring, as you may have already seen above.  I should edit them down to the interesting scenes.  I also rode really slowly because I wasn’t sure how well the image stabilization works, but it seems pretty awesome.

All-in-all, a great trip that I would be happy to do again.